Hi Everyone and welcome back to the Hockey Journey Podcast, episode number 107, Are You Lacking Focus, presented to you by Online Hockey Training dot com. I'm your host Coach Lance Pitlick. If you're new here, please make sure you subscribe, so you won't miss out on any future episodes.
Before we start getting things back on the rails from a maybe not so productive summer thus far and begin this conversation, if you want to learn more about me, my hockey experiences, what I know, and most importantly, how I've been helping hockey players get really good with a stick and puck, just head on over to onlinehockeytraining.com and gain instant access to my 10 part video series where I'll show you everything. Consider it my gift to you.
Lastly, if you live in Minnesota or are visiting the State of Hockey sometime soon and you want to schedule an in-person off-ice stick skills lesson, I'd love to have the opportunity to show you my little world. Go to sweethockeycoach.com, and watch the video on the homepage for instructions. Thanks and I look forward to working with you sometime soon.
So here we are, the first week in August, summer is winding down and you young ones out there will be heading back to school soon. This is a great time to reflect on what you had hoped you would have accomplished this summer from a hockey training perspective thus far. Have you been crushing it or have you lacked focus and maybe even been really lazy the last couple months? If this sounds like you, don't worry, as today is a great day to begin to get things back on track where you're winning most days again.
If you've been a long-time listener of the Hockey Journey Podcast, you know that I love reading books. Here are a few that have crossed my path at some point when I was struggling with laziness, that got me operating at a more focused and productive level and I'd like to share some of them with you here today. Know that I'm only scratching the surface of all the learning goodness in each of the titles. If something really connects with you by the end of this episode, I highly encourage you to pick up a copy of your own. I'll put the links in the description. With that being said, let's get focused and let's begin.
Book Number One
Your Brain at Work
Strategies for Overcoming Distraction, Regaining Focus, and Working Smarter All Day Long
By David Rock
Quote #1
“An avalanche of emails. An overload of information. A meeting schedule that leaves you exhausted. Ever more change and uncertainty. The occasional win just to keep you going. If this sounds like your average day at work, you’ve picked up the right book. This book will help you work smarter, be more focused, and productive, stay cool under pressure, reduce the length of meetings, and even tackle the hardest challenge of all: influencing other people. Along the way it may help you be a better parent and partner, and perhaps even live longer. It will even make coffee for you. Okay, maybe not that last bit, but everything else I mean quite seriously. This book will transform your performance at work by letting you in on recent and important discoveries about the human brain. You’ll have the chance to get more focused and productive by understanding your own brain at work—at work. It’s only through knowing your brain that you can change it. (How your brain can change by understanding itself is something you will learn about here, too.)”. (End Quote)
Quote #2
PRIORITIZE PRIORITIZING
“If Emily knew how energy-hungry her stage was, she would start her Monday morningdifferently. The big difference is she would prioritize prioritizing. She would prioritize first,before any other attention rich activity such as emailing. That’s because prioritizing is one of the brain’s most energy-hungry processes. After even just a few mental activities, you may not have the resources left to prioritize. Using your stage for something energy intensive such as prioritizing is like flying one of those toy helicopters you see at parks, the ones that are supposed to be for kids but that dads actually buy for themselves. Once Dad gets the helicopter off the ground a few times, it won’t get off the ground again because the power is too low. It gets close, rising a few inches off, and thencollapses back down. And the more you try, the less energy there is. Best to recharge and try again later. In a similar way, doing ten minutes of emailing can use up the power needed for prioritizing. Emily experienced this when she couldn’t ‘see’ how to prioritize her day and ended up dealing with her emails instead.” (End Quote)
Quote #3
WANT TO DECREASE YOUR IQ BY 15 POINTS? HERE’S HOW!
“A study done at the University of London found that constant emailing and text-messaging reduces mental capability by an average of ten points on an IQ test. It was five points for women, and fifteen points for men. This effect is similar to missing a night of sleep. For men, it’s around three times more than the effect of smoking cannabis. While this fact might make an interesting dinner party topic, it’s really not that amusing that one of the most common ‘productivity tools’ can make one as dumb as a stoner. (Apologies to technology manufacturers: there are good ways to use this technology, specifically being able to ‘switch off’ for hours at a time.) ‘Always on’ may not be the most productive way to work. One of the reasons for this will become clearer in thechapter on staying cool under pressure; however, in summary, the brain is being forced to be on ‘alert’ far too much. This increases what is known as your allostatic load, which is a reading of stress hormones and other factors relating to a sense of threat. The wear and tear from this has an impact. As Stone says, ‘This always on, anywhere, anytime, anyplace era has created an artificial sense of constant crisis. What happens to mammals in a state of constant crisis is the adrenalized fight-or-flight mechanism kicks in. It’s great when tigers are chasing us. How many of those five hundred emails a day is a tiger?” (End Quote)
Quote #4
SAY HELLO TO YOUR BASAL GANGLIA
“The basal ganglia are highly efficient at executing patterns. Use this resource every way you can. Once you repeat a pattern often enough, the basal ganglia can drive the process, freeing up the stage for new functions. Develop routines that can be repeated over and over again: How you call people. How you open up a document, how you delete emails, how you schedule your time. The more you use a pattern, the less attention you will need to pay to doing this task, and the more you will be able to do at one time. While doing this process is obviously not possible with higher-order tasks such as writing a letter, you might be surprised how much can be embedded. For example, I can now, using keystrokes, take less than three seconds (I timed it) and almost no attention to respond to an email with a smiley face, which says essentially, ‘Got your email, and I am happy.’” (End Quote)
Bonus Quote #5
MEET YOUR DIRECTOR
“The idea of a director goes by many names and has been of great interest to scientists,philosophers, artists, and mystics for centuries. At the dawn of Western philosophy, Socrates said, ‘The unexamined life is not worth living.’ Today, some people refer to the experience of observing yourself as self-awareness or mindfulness. Sometimes it is called metacognition, which means ‘thinking about your thinking.’ Or meta-awareness, which means ‘awareness of your awareness.’ Whatever it’s called, this phenomenon is a central thread in much of the world’s literature, appearing as a core idea in philosophy, psychology, ethics, leadership, management, education, learning, training, parenting, dieting, sports, and self-improvement. It’s hard to read anything about human experience without someone saying that ‘knowing yourself’ is the first step toward any kind of change.”
“Daniel Siegel explains it this way: ‘With the acquisition of a stabilized and refined focuson the mind itself, previously undifferentiated pathways of firing become detectable and then accessible to modification. It is in this way that we can use the focus of the mind to change the function and ultimately the structure of the brain.’ What Siegel is saying is that if you can activate your director at will, you perceive more information about your own mental state at any given time. You can then make choices to change what you pay attention to. And right here is the point of this intermission—and perhaps this book: By understanding your brain, you increase your capacity to notice your own experience, whether it’s the small capacity of the stage, the dopamine high of novelty, or the way you need a moment to gather an insight, the more opportunities you have to become mindful, stop, and observe. Instead of becoming more self aware by meditating on a mountain, you can do so while you work.” (End Quote)
Bonus Quote #6
HERE’S HOW TO STAY COOL UNDER PRESSURE
“Another study of labeling illustrates an intriguing quirk of human nature. Participants were asked to predict if they would feel better or worse if they spoke about their emotions. There was a strong tendency for people to expect that labeling emotions would result in increasing their emotional arousal. Surprisingly, people even predicted that labeling emotions would make the emotions worse, even after doing an experiment that illustrated that labeling their emotions decreased them! Because people incorrectly predict that voicing their feelings will make those feelings worse, a lot of people, especially in the business world, don’t discuss their feelings. This is an example of humans developing some unfortunate habits from incorrect assumptions about human nature. We shouldn’t be too hard on humanity, though. Plenty of studies show that speaking about emotional experience does bring the emotions back to the surface. The key is how you do it. To reduce arousal, you need to use just a few words to describe an emotion, and ideally use symbolic language, which means using indirect metaphors, metrics, and simplifications of your experience. This requires you to activate your prefrontal cortex, which reduces the arousal in the limbic system. Here’s the bottom line: describe an emotion in just a word or two, and it helps reduce the emotion. Open up a dialogue about an emotion, though, and you tend to increase it.” (End Quote)
Bonus Quote #7
THE KILLER APP FOR EMOTIONAL REGULATION
“As you learn more about your brain, it becomes possible to stay calm in just about any situation, including the overwhelming limbic system arousal driven by uncertainty about the future. It’s reappraisal that gives you this capacity. Consider what Kevin Ochsner said when I asked him about the impact of his reappraisal research on his own thinking. ‘If our emotional responses fundamentally flow out of interpretations, or appraisals, of the world, and we can change those appraisals, then we have to try and do so. And to not do so, at some level, is rather irresponsible.’ ... Gross, with the wonderful understatement of a pure scientist, says, ‘It looks as though reappraisal is a fairly efficient way of cutting down the experience and biological representation of negative emotion.’ He may be too subtle. To me, reappraisal is one of the most important skills needed for success in life, the other being the ability to observe your mental processes. When I asked Gross what he thought about reappraisal and its role in education and wider society, he was more effusive: ‘I think this knowledge should be taught early, and often. It should be in the water we drink.’” (End Quote)
Book Number Two
Focus
The Hidden Driver of Excellence
By Daniel Goleman
Quote #1
“In very recent years the science of attention has blossomed far beyond vigilance. That science tells us these skills determine how well we perform any task. If they are stunted, we do poorly; if muscular, we can excel. Our very nimbleness in life depends on this subtle faculty. While the link between attention and excellence remains hidden most of the time, it ripples through almost everything we seek to accomplish. This supple tool embeds within countless mental operations. A short list of some basics includes comprehension, memory, learning, sensing how we feel and why, reading emotions in other people and interacting smoothly. Surfacing this invisible factor in effectiveness lets us better see the benefits of improving this mental faculty, and better understand just how to do that. Through an optical illusion of the mind we typically register the end products of attention—our ideas good and bad, a telling wink or inviting smile, the whiff of morning coffee—without noticing the beam of awareness itself. Though it matters enormously for how we navigate life, attention in all its varieties represents a little-noticed and underrated mental asset. My goal here is to spotlight this elusive and underappreciated mental faculty in the mind’s operations and its role in living a fulfilling life.” (End Quote)
Quote #2
YOUR FOCUS IS YOUR REALITY
“Attention, from the Latin attendere, to reach toward, connects us with the world, shaping and defining our experience. ‘Attention,’ cognitive neuroscientists Michael Posner and Mary Rothbart write, provides the mechanisms ‘that underlie our awareness of the world and voluntary regulation of our thoughts and feelings.’ Ann Treisman, a dean of this research area, notes that how we deploy our attention determines what we see. Or as Yoda says, ‘Your focus is your reality.’” (End Quote)
Quote #3
FRUITLESS RUMINATION VS. PRODUCTIVE REFLECTION
“The biggest challenge for even the most focused, though, comes from the emotional turmoil of our lives, like a recent blowup in a close relationship that keeps intruding into your thoughts. Such thoughts barge in for a good reason: to get us to think through what to do about what’s upsetting us. The dividing line between fruitless rumination and productive reflection lies in whether or not we come up with some tentative solution or insight and then can let those distressing thoughts go—or if, on the other hand, we just keep obsessing over the same loop of worry.” (End Quote)
Quote #4
RESTING YOUR MENTAL MUSCLES
“Tightly focused attention gets fatigued—much like an overworked muscle—when we push to the point of cognitive exhaustion. The signs of mental fatigue, such as a drop in effectiveness and a rise in distractedness and irritability, signify that the mental effort needed to sustain focus has depleted the glucose that feeds neural energy. The antidote to attention fatigue is the same as for the physical kind: take a rest. But what rests amuscle? Try switching from the effort of top-down control to more passive bottom-up activities, taking a relaxing break in a restful setting. The most restful settings are in nature, argues Stephen Kaplan at the University of Michigan, who proposes what he calls ‘attention restoration theory.’ Such restoration occurs when we switch from effortful attention, where the mind needs to suppress distractions, to letting go and allowing our attention to be captured by whatever presents itself. But only certain kinds of bottom-up focus act to restore energy for focused attention. Surfing the Web, playing video games, or answering email does not.” (End Quote)
Bonus Quote #5
MARSHMALLOWS, 3 TYPES OF FOCUS & WILLPOWER
“How we focus holds the key to willpower, says [Walter] Mischel. His hundreds of hours of observation of little kids fighting off temptation reveals ‘the strategic allocation of attention,’ as he puts it, to be the crucial skill. The kids who waited out the full fifteen minutes did it by distracting themselves with tactics like pretend play, singing songs, or covering their eyes. If a kid just stared at the marshmallows, he was a goner (or more precisely, the marshmallow was). At least three sub-varieties of attention, all aspects of the executive, are at play when we put self restraint against instant gratification. The first is the ability to voluntarily disengage our focus from an object of desire that powerfully grabs our attention. The second, resisting distraction, lets us keep our focus elsewhere—say, on fantasy play—rather than gravitating back to that juicy whatever. And the third allows us to keep our focus on a goal in the future, like the two marshmallows later. All that adds up to willpower.” (End Quote)
Bonus Quote #6
SMART PRACTICE
“Anders Ericsson, the Florida State University psychologist whose research on expertisespawned the 10,000-hour rule of thumb, told me, ‘You don’t get benefits from mechanical repetition, but by adjusting your execution over and over to get closer to your goal.’ ‘You have to tweak the system by pushing,’ he adds, ‘allowing for more errors at first as you increase your limits. Apart from sports like basketball or football that favor physical traits such as height and body size... almost anyone can achieve the highest levels of performance with smart practice.” (End Quote)
Bonus Quote #7
TIME TO HIT THE MENTAL GYM
“Think of attention as a mental muscle that we can strengthen by a workout. Memorization works that muscle, as does concentration. The mental analog of lifting a free weight over and over is noticing when our mind wanders and bring it back to target. ... As in any workout, the more reps the stronger the muscle becomes. More-experienced meditators, one study found, were able to deactivate their medial strip more rapidly after noticing mind wandering; as their thoughts become less ‘sticky’ with practice, it becomes easier to drop thoughts and return to their breath. There was more neural connectivity between the region for mind wandering and those that disengage attention. The increased connectivity in the brains of long-term meditators, this study suggests, are analogous to those competitive weightlifters with the perfect pecs.” (End Quote)
Bonus Quote #8
THE LARGEST LENS FOR OUR FOCUS
“‘We have the capacity to think several centuries into the future,’ the Dalai Lama said. ‘Start the task even if it will not be fulfilled within your lifetime. This generation has a responsibility to reshape the world. If we make an effort, it may be possible to achieve. Even if it seems hopeless now, never give up. Offer a positive vision, with enthusiasm and joy, and an optimistic outlook.’ ... We must ask ourselves: in the service of what exactly are we using whatever talents we may have? If our focus serves only our personal ends—self-interest, immediate reward, and our own small group—then in the long run all of us, as a species, are doomed. The largest lens for our focus encompasses global systems; considers the needs of everyone, including the powerless and poor; and peers far ahead in time. No matter what we are doing or what decisions we are making, the Dalai Lama suggests these self-queries for checking our motivation: Is it just for me, or for others? For the benefit of the few, or the many? For now, or for the future?” (End Quote)
Book Number Three
The Practicing Mind
Developing Focus and Discipline in Your Life
By Thomas M. Sterner
Quote #1
“Self-discipline, focus, patience, and self-awareness are interwoven threads in the fabric of both true inner peace and contentment in life. Together, living in the present moment and being process-oriented is the path that leads us to these all- important virtues. This magical path is there for everyone. It offers its untold riches to us all. “The Practicing Mind” is about remembering what you already know at some level and bringing that memory into the present, where it will serve to both place you onto the path and empower you to partake in the journey.” (End Quote)
Quote #2
PRACTICE VS. LEARNING
“To me, the words “practice” and “learning” are similar but not the same. The word “practice” implies the presence of awareness and will. The word learning does not. When we “practice” something we are involved in the deliberate repetition of a process with the intention of reaching a specific goal. The words deliberate and intention are key here because they define the difference between practicing something and just learning something.” (End Quote)
Quote #3
REAL POWER
“If you are not in control of your thoughts then you are not in control of yourself. Without self control, you have no real power, regardless of whatever else you accomplish.” (End Quote)
Quote #4
THE OBSERVER: YOUR TRUE SELF
“We must work at being more objectively aware of ourselves. We cannot refine any part of our daily thought processes if we are not separate from them. At first this seems to be a confusing concept to grasp, but with the slightest shift in perception it becomes clear. If you are aware of anything you are doing, that implies that there are two entities involved: one who is doing something and one who is aware or observing you do it. If you are talking to yourself, you probably think you are doing the talking. That seems reasonable enough, but who is listening to you talk to yourself? Who is aware that you are observing the process of an internal dialogue? Who is this second party that is aware that you are aware? The answer is your true self. The one who is talking is your ego or personality. The one who is quietly aware is who you really are, the Observer. The more you become aligned to the quiet Observer, your true self, the less you judge. Your internal dialogue begins to shut down and you become more detached about the variousexternal stimuli that come at you all day long. You begin to actually view your internal dialogue with an unbiased and sometimes amused perspective.” (End Quote)
Bonus Quote #5
THE INSTRUCTOR’S AWARENESS
“By now, you should realize, or shall we say be aware of, several themes running throughout this book. One of these themes is awareness itself. You cannot change what you are not aware of, and that truth is no more important than in the world of self-improvement. We need to be more aware of what we are doing, what we are thinking, and what we are intending to accomplish in order to be more in control of what we are experiencing in life. But in fact, for most of us, this is a problem because we are so disconnected from our thoughts. We just have them. The horses are running and we don’t have the reins. We need to be more of an observer of our thoughts and actions, like an instructor watching a student performing a task. The instructor is not judgmental or emotional. The instructor knows just what he or she wants the student to produce. Theteacher observes the student’s actions, and when the student does something which is moving in the wrong direction, the instructor gently brings it to the student’s attention and pulls the student back on the proper path. A good instructor does not get emotional in response to the student moving off the path. That kind of negative emotion comes from expectations, and that is not the perspective we want to have if we are to be our own instructor. Expectations are tied to a result or product; once again, we are experiencing the feeling of “things should be this way right now, and until then I won’t be happy.” When you or someone else is experiencing these kinds of emotions, it is an indicator of falling out of the process, or falling out of the present moment.” (End Quote)
Bonus Quote #6
MEDITATION: THE MOST EFFECTIVE PRACTICE
“How do we become aligned to the Observer? How do we free ourselves from the confines of our ego? Though there are certainly a number of ways to accomplish this, in my opinion, the most effective method for creating this awareness spontaneously and effortlessly is meditation. Through meditation, it just happens on it’s own over time. As you practice meditation, you become more and more aware of this silent observer within you. Through your effort, you realize that meditation is a process of quieting the mind and your attachment to the external world by going deep within yourself.” (End Quote)
Bonus Quote #7
SOMEBODY CALL THE DOC!
“With or without meditation, it is necessary to consciously work at shifting your alignment to the Observer. An effective adjunct method to meditation that I use for this purpose is what I call “DOC,” which stands for Do, Observe, Correct. This technique can be applied to any activity in which you are trying to engage the practicing mind... What we want to do is make DOC a more natural way of how we approach life. If, for example,you feel you are someone who tends to worry too much, then try to apply DOC to your actions. When you notice yourself fretting over something, you have accomplished the DO portion. OBSERVE this behavior that you want to change. In your observation of yourself worrying, you have separated yourself from the act of worry. Now realize that the emotions you are experiencing have no affect on the problem you are focusing on. Release yourself from the emotions as best as you can - that is the CORRECT portion - and try to look at the problem as an observer.” (End Quote)
Bonus Quote #8
#1 DESIRE: TO STAY FOCUSED ON THE WORK
“When you let go of your attachment to the object you desire and make your desire theexperience of staying focused on working toward your goal, you are fulfilling your desire in every minute and you are patient with the circumstance. There is no reason not to be. There is no effort or “trying to be patient” here. It is just a natural response to your perspective. This shift in perspective is very small and subtle on the one hand, but it has enormous freeing power. No task seems too large to undertake. Your confidence goes way up as does your patience with yourself. You are always achieving your goal and there are no mistakes or time limits to create stress.”
Sterner also tells us: “That subtle shift in perception, and that is all it was, brought aboutunlimited patience with myself. I became patient with my progress. I not only stopped looking at my progress, I stopped looking for my progress all together. Progress is a natural result of staying focused on the process of doing anything. When you stay on purpose, focused in the present moment, the goal comes to you with frictionless ease. However, when you constantly focus on the goal you are aiming for, you push it away instead of pulling it toward you. In every moment of your struggle, by looking at the goal and constantly referencing your position to it, you are affirming to yourself that you haven’t reached it. You only need to acknowledge the goal to yourself occasionally, using it as a rudder to keep you moving in the right direction.” (End Quote)
Bonus Quote #9
TRANSFORMING THE MUNDANE INTO MAGIC
“Try this the next time you are faced with doing something you define as not enjoyable or as work. It doesn’t matter if it is mowing the lawn or cleaning up the dinner dishes. If the activity takes a long time, tell yourself you are going to just work on staying present in the moment and process-oriented for the first half hour. After that you can hate it as much as usual, but in that first half hour you are absolutely not going to think of anything but what you are doing. You are not going to go into the past and think of all the judgments you have made that define this activity as work. You are not going to go into the future anticipating when it will be completed, allowing you to go participate in an activity that you have defined as “not work.” You are just going to do whatever it is you are doing right now for half an hour. Don’t try to enjoy it, either, because in that effort you are bringing emotions and struggle into your effort. If you are going to mow the lawn, then accept that all you need to do is cut the grass. You are going to notice the feel of the mower as you push it, how it changes resistance with the undulations of your frontyard. You will pay attention to cut as wide a path as possible, not sloppily overlap the last pass you made as you gawk at the neighbor across the street washing their car. You will smell the cut grass and notice how the grass glows with green in the sunlight. Just do this for one-half hour of the activity. You will be amazed. Once you experience how the activity as mundane as mowing the grass is transformed, you will have the motivation to press on, because the potential effect this could have on your life and how you perceive it will become apparent to you.” (End Quote)
Bonus Quote #10
INFINITE STUDY
“I became aware that there was no point of musical excellence out there that would free me from the feeling of “I need to get better.” In that moment, I understood that there was no point I could reach where I would feel that I had finally done it, that I was as good as I needed to be, and that there was no need to improve because I had arrived at my goal. It was an epiphany. At first I felt a moment of overwhelming depression and fear, but it was immediately followed by joy and relief of the same magnitude. I knew that what I was experiencing was a realization that all true artists must go through. It was the only way to build the stamina necessary to continue in an infinite study.” (End Quote)
Bonus Quote #11
A FLOWER’S PERFECTION
“As we attempt to understand ourselves and our struggles with life’s endeavors, we may find peace in the observation of a flower. Ask yourself: at what point in a flower’s life, from seed to full bloom, has it reached perfection?”
Sterner adds: “Accepting that this is a lifetime effort, and that in the beginning your progress may seem almost unnoticeable, is part of the lesson to be learned. Keep thinking of the flower. Regardless of whatever stage of growth and evolution you are in, in every moment you are perfect at being who you are.” (End Quote)
What a way to finish up this episode, but with those 2 last quotes!! Pure Gold ladies and gentlemen!! Whenever I start having a hard time keeping my focus, which is something I am challenged with daily, sometimes I'll lose entire days because I couldn't focus on anything for more than a few minutes. When that happens, I'll grab a book, like one of the ones I just shared with you and read a chapter or two, and really pay attention to the pages that I had highlighted. That act seems to always get me back on the rails and it constantly reminds me that it never goes away. The mind never turns off, there's never a top of the mountain, the road never ends. I guess over-time we learn how to travel our road a little smarter, more knowledgeable, and we use the strategies we've acquired to make the journey slightly easier and more enjoyable. I call it winning your day :)
Was there a book that you really connected with, a quote that struck a chord and you can't stop thinking about it. That just means you should pick up a copy of your own, so you can read it in its entirety. I'll put the links in the description.
Well that concludes another episode of the hockey journey podcast. I can’t thank you enough for stopping by and listening. I hope you enjoyed this episode of getting focused. If you did and you think there’s someone in your circle of family and friends that might like this episode as well, please share it with just one person, it will really help me in growing this hockey community.
Again, I appreciate you being here, don’t forget to subscribe, rate or submit a review, I hope to see you back here soon, and do me a favor, make someone close to you smile today. All the best my friends!!
