Latest / Man In Your Corner with Shaun Tucker / Put Down Your Phone, Pick Up a Book: The Lost Skill of Focus | Ep. 121
Transcript
- Shaun: Welcome back to the reset. I am Shaun Tucker, human performance scientist and authority architect. We are here in the Living Lab documenting the struggle, the science, and The shift for every high performance dad and founder who's ready to bridge the gap between their ambition and their presence. Today we're going to talk about, I'm going to share a little story actually. Yesterday I was at the Queen Victoria Market here in Melbourne, and I walked past this sign that just caught my attention. It said, This is a sign to put down your phone and pick up a book. And I loved it because. Something about it s sparked something in me. Because something you need to know about me is the last probably four to five years, I haven't really had the urge or desire to pick up a and read a book. 2018, 2019, maybe the beginning of 2020, and throughout 2020, as I was doing 75 Hard, I was eager to pick up books and read them. But Since that point, I'd I've just found it very demotivating and really hard to focus on actually reading the page in the book because there's a million things going on in my head. which is something I'd like to talk to today. Because yeah, in the last few days I've noticed that my capacity is pretty stretched. I've had to regulate myself pretty hard, especially after doing our Our workout on Sunday. This Sunday just gone. The dad's 6 a.m. workout. I got some new equipment. I brought that along. Some old ⁓ BFT training sandbags. And the weights that we had went up to about 12 kilos or 14 kilos beforehand. Now I've got weights that go up to 25. So me being the leader or the captain, I'm like, well, I can't go for the 15 or the 20 kilo. I've got to go straight up to the 25. And boy, it humbled me. And I think it steps and speaks for that quote that I just said, which is this is a sign to stop to this is a sign to put down your phone and pick up a book. Because it forces you to slow down. That phone, the one that is recording me right now, it is designed to capture your attention and hold your attention for extended periods of time. Attention has been commoditized. Your focus is literally being stolen. And you're probably unaware of it. So what we want to do is actually give you some practical tools and tips so that you can really start working with and building this tool of focus because it's one skill. It's that one skill that kind of crosses over into everything that you do. And it speaks so much into the word of presence because if your focus is split and you've got a million things going on in your head, there's no real way to Really even talk about presence because focus with presence, it's basically the same thing. Presence without focus, that's not presence. That's that's really just mask wearing. And maybe you can become really good at mask wearing and just sitting there and ⁓ not really paying attention to what's happening in the room. Some people are really good at that. mentally absent but they're still present because they're so autonomous or autonomic. So they're basically subconsciously just programmed to to act and go and flow. You see this in supermarkets, you see this with basically anyone that has a job, anyone that has a routine, anyone that has habits, becomes so easy for them to do it, their brain doesn't have to actually do anything. ⁓ and their physical body, it's so habituated that the body is so efficient at carrying out that activity. That's not what we want. With this exercise, the the whole point of it, ⁓ of putting down your phone and picking up a book really is to train your focus. And I have spent the last 40 days doing my yoga and meditation practices All with eyes closed, with the intention to bring focus and intention and attention to my being. I've spent three to three and a half hours every single day doing these practices, doing my sadhana for that specific purpose. And so now what the the next step for me is is to take that internal kind of perspective and perception and bring it outside of myself. What a great tool to use. A book, right? I've had this book sitting in my desk or on my desk for the last probably six months. I did start reading it like there is a little bookmark there. But I haven't ⁓ haven't finished reading this book and it's such an interesting story and not even story, such an interesting ⁓ book because if you don't know who Sadhguru is, I highly recommend you check him out because one of the things that he did for me is I was meditating long before I suppose finding him and finding their practices, the Isha Foundation practices. But when I did the Isha Kriya for the first time, which you can find on YouTube for free. It's a 14 minute practice. It was the first thing that actually did something internally for me. I felt the shift. I felt that I don't know, my my being touched something greater than me and tears started flowing down my eyes. Which is not unusual now for me, but that was the first time. And for some reason, for whatever reason, my being, my part of me that I just can't explain, it just it wanted more of it. And so the last five, six years has been me doing those practices, which has really helped my attention and focus big time. But I'm not saying go and do all the practices, I'm not saying that. ⁓ this is definitely not sponsored by Isha Foundation at all, but they have helped me immensely ⁓ with yeah actually going back to the place of control versus liberation. I feel like I'm much more on the path of liberation. Before that I was much more on the path of trying to control everything. And as you know, probably, ⁓ controlling everything will just lead to mental madness and Yeah, not a not a fun path. Anyway, ⁓ that's different story for a different time. So why is it important to read? Knowledge aside, why is it important to read? My personal opinion is it allows you to focus on something. It gives you some external stimuli to actually focus. And I remember reading an email from Stephen Kotler ⁓ It was talking about Stephen Kotler who, if you don't know him, is really into flow and looking at the research behind what makes flow flow and how do people get into those states. So really fascinating, ⁓ really, really fascinating guy, and has he's an author, he's written a number of books. But the story was actually talking about him. They were at a lodge together, and Stephen literally said to the other guy, he said, Look, I'm ⁓ Gonna read these books. And he sat there for the next 12 to 14 hours. Yeah, I think he had three books sitting in a pile. These are the books that I'm gonna read this weekend. He said, Yeah, I'm gonna read these books. And he literally sat there for hours and hours and hours on end just reading the books. And If you struggle with meditation, if you struggle sitting down and staying in the one spot for an extended period of time, sitting down on a on a couch or a sofa or a chair for fourteen hours reading a book. hardly even go into the toilet because what happens when your body stills itself, when you sit in the kind of meditative po ⁓ postures or yogic postures is your body settles and you're actually your digestion slows down. Your processes slow down your body. It's actually really interesting. So you don't need to go to the toilet as much. You don't need to get up and move. You you can just stay still. And In this email he was talking about Stephen's ability to focus is just insane. So I think, yeah, why not? Why not pick up a book? Why not put down the phone? Why not train this idea of focus? I think one of the metrics that I was using when I was doing 75 Heart is one of the action steps you have to take is ten pages of a self help book every day. I'm not so much about just hitting ten pages, but maybe that's where you start. Or maybe it's just one page. Or maybe it's just, all right, let's put a timer and let's see how long I can read and focus without becoming super distracted. Because that that's the training device. I mean your thoughts are gonna take you places anyway, but it's coming back to that that skill of when you have one thing to focus on, and I know Ramdas, who passed away in twenty nineteen, ⁓ was big on when he was educating Doing world tours and basically giving away his teachings was the one like have one thing. I can't remember what it's called, but one thing to focus on. And w the meditation process was mostly focused on the breath. Just watch your breath. And he would sit for 14 to 18 hours in meditation for months on end, just watching his breath. Alright, so this is a skill that you can train at any time. Can just sit there and watch your breath. Most people don't have the capacity for that. But yeah, maybe just picking up a book, something that's interesting. It doesn't even have to be a self-help book. Maybe it's a fiction novel. I don't know. But just something you can really become immersed in and involved in. I think that's a really great way to build your skill of focus. So that brings us to the end of the episode today. If you have found value in this episode, Share with one person. I would really appreciate that and it's how we grow the show. So if you're ready to stop being a passenger and start being an architect of your legacy for your life, then make sure you DM the word reset and I'll send you the seven day integrity reset over to you. Cause remember, most people are waiting for their life to change. We architect our choices. Change your state, choose how you show up. I am Shaun Tucker. I'll see you in the next one.