Focus, Brain Power, and Optimal Health
How important do you think the power of focus is for your health? Personally, I found it to be the deciding factor when stress and demands are high. Why? Because in those moments, when your back is against the wall, and you’re getting pressed the most, where and how you focus will determine if you give up from fear OR if you turn fear into fuel to break you through to the next level.
My biggest lesson on the importance of focus came early on as a competitive athlete when I was fighting in national, international and world levels in full contact martial arts. It was the internationals championships and I was fighting for the gold medal. My opponent came at me with all he had, and I barely got out of the first round!
See, in that first round all I focused on was the kicks and punches coming at me. My attention was only on protecting myself from his attacks. Now, you don’t need to be a full contact fighter to realize that if all you do is block and focus only on what’s coming at you, you’ll never win in the ring or in life. So, I make it to the end of the round and get to my corner and I say, “Coach! This guy is gonna kill me, what’s happening? What’s going on? I trained so hard for this!” I really didn’t think I was going to make it. Have you ever felt like just giving up because you saw no way out? That’s what I felt like.
But in that next moment everything changed. In that next moment my coach gave me an insight. A gem. This one insight allowed me to go back into that second round and beat my opponent. In fact with this one insight, I went on to win fight after fight after fight! Now you would think he told me a secret martial arts technique or movement or something that I physically did. In fact, it wasn’t a physical strategy but rather a psychological one, specifically as it relates to the power of focus… With an intense stare he says, “I want you to take all your attention, all your focus, away from the attacks coming at you and shift it only – I repeat only! – on the spaces and holes your opponent provides you every time he attacks.”
By shifting my focus from what I didn’t want – that is, to get hit – to focusing only on the spaces, the targets, the opportunities that were created every time he attacked, it changed EVERYTHING! Going into that second round with a completely different focus, I miraculously began to see the openings in my opponent.
In life, kicks and punches – also known as the demands of life and STRESS – are going to come at you. If you focus only on those stressors, guess what you’ll see more of? That’s right, more of the same. BUT when you train and condition yourself to see the opportunities that present themselves because of the demands, your life moves in a radically different direction. You must train yourself to focus this way because it is a skill, no different than ANY skill. The more you practice the better you get.
Years later, this concept went even deeper into my nervous system. I had an even more profound experience that caused me to dive into the science of the brain because I knew there had to be something behind this. See, when your focus begins to shift, a part of your brain called the reticular activating system begins to shift as well, and it brings into your awareness all the things that relate to what you’re focusing on.
In another words, that part of your brain starts to direct and bring up into your awareness additional things that relate to whatever is most important to you in your life. I understood this at the level of science, but it wasn’t until I had a personal experience that it really hit me, and I’ve used it ever since for my patients and myself. That experience happened in 2006 when my daughter Isabella was born, and it was a powerful experience for me. See, for years before she was born, I would walk through grocery stores and I never saw a diaper isle. I really never saw them! In fact, I don’t believe they even existed.
Then suddenly on March 28 2006, when my daughter was born, they started to put up diaper aisles in all the grocery stores! I mean it was amazing! It was this whole new isle dedicated to diapers! So what happened? What happened was my reticular activating system said, “What is the most important thing in your life right now?” Now, if you are a parent, you know that it’s diapers! My brain said I needed to be aware of that, and my reticular activating system brought into my awareness everything that had to do with babies, and diapers were on my radar from that day on. When I first had dogs, what happened? All of a sudden Petco’s started popping up everywhere! Of course they didn’t physically start popping up, but rather they started to pop up into my awareness because of this part of the brain.
Are you with me? Just remember, because our brains cannot process all of the information that it takes in at the same time, it brings into your awareness only what is most important to you – basically what you focus on the most. So if optimal heath is high on your radar and it’s the most important thing to you, where you focus entirely on it and you’re committed to it, you will start to see more things that relate to it! This is a critical concept when it comes to the power of focus because it’s not just what you focus on, but also ALL the things that relate to it that will come into your awareness. This can profoundly shift your health and your life if you commit to mastering this skill.
What’s interesting is that over the past 2 decades in clinical practice, I’ve seen an increasing trend of patients presenting with more and more difficulty in their ability to focus and sustain attention over periods of time. That poses a real big problem not only in one’s ability to master the skill of focus, but more importantly it can be a strong indicator that one’s brain function is declining.
Brain degeneration occurs as a normal process of aging. Your ability to keep your brain stimulated and activated by way of what is called neuroplasticity is ESSENTIAL in reducing the effects of brain decline. Now, neuroplasticity is simply your brain’s ability to increase its connection between one brain cell and another. This can be done through physical and mental exercising. Everything from short bursts of high intensity exercising, to mentally challenging yourself with learning new things, to brain games have been shown to improve brain connections.
A recent advance in technology, which is arguably one of the most direct and strongest ways to activate and regulate the brain, is a technology called Neurofeedback. Through this technology, we have the ability to place direct impact on the parts of the brain that are showing decline, and make changes in a fraction of the time that traditional treatments need. With that, I also want to point out that this is a time-sensitive issue, because time is the factor that leads to more and more brain degeneration. So if you’re noticing focus, memory, and mental speed decline do not wait! The sooner you take action, the better probability you have to improve brain health and performance.
One of the primary reasons for bringing this technology into our Center has been because we are now seeing more and more patients who are showing increasing signs of brain related conditions, such as memory and attentions issues, anxiety, depression, as well as concussions and traumatic brain injuries. So I’m really excited to be able to support patients with these types of conditions. The other reason for bringing in this technology is about improving brain performance. This is because another portion of our patients come to our center because they want to keep their edge and improve their brain performance even more! They’re already performing at high levels and want to maintain and improve their focus, memory, and mental speed.
What’s amazing about Neurofeedback is that it also enhances performance in areas where one is already skilled. These high achievers are focused and driven and are constantly pushing themselves to go further. These folks include not only the athlete and business executive, but also the stay-at-home mom who wants to be at her best, or the student who wants better grades. For these people, our assessment is focused on performance and what might be interfering with their success. These people are outcome-oriented. They want to live life on their terms and want to use every strategy possible that will support their goals and vision. Utilizing Neurofeedback brain training allows these individuals the ability to both optimize brain function and sustain the benefits much longer than anyone ever thought possible.
If you’d like to find out more about how we can assist you or someone you care about in improving brain health and performance, in a safe and effective way, contact our office at (619) 287-4005 to schedule a free consultation where we can answer any questions you have to find out if and how we can help you with your healthcare needs.