Loss of focus

Loss of focus, even for a moment, is always detrimental to what we are doing. That is quite obvious at pro-level sports disciplines - the moment you lose focus, your opponent takes advantage and scores. In the end of the day, if you want to be a “pro” in any discipline, you need to learn how to sustain your focus for long periods of time. Always being present and in the now. I came to this realisation while watching the Australian Open finals this year. I guess that’s also amongst the reasons why the crowd could play a vital role in most games. It could be both a distracting and a “get yourself together” force for players on the field.

Unfortunately, that seems to be valid for everything we do in our lives and everything we work on. Why “unfortunately”? Well, as it isn’t obvious. We don’t always have that opponent waiting for our mistake to score. So we lose track. And we lose focus very easily without any apparent repercussions. Then, we still want to be pro and play the majors, and we wonder why that isn’t happening. It also happens that we blame external circumstances. At the same time, the simple truth is that we just can’t sustain our focus at a pro-level.

Fortunately, that is something that we have control over, and as long as we are willing to develop that skill - we can play the majors. In any discipline.