How to grow your focus

So many things that we do every day need a little bit of focus: paying attention to our friends, learning, even playing games.

What's really interesting about this skill is that it's something that we can grow through practice. Some of us can focus more easily than others and that's okay because the brain is always changing and growing depending on what we pay attention to.

It means that even if you find it really hard to focus, it's still something that through practice can get easier. Maybe you can only focus on things for a very short time. Or maybe you get very easily distracted.

For the exercise we're going to do together, distraction is not a problem. Distraction can actually help us and I'll tell you how.

What we're going to do is pay attention to something and when we get distracted, we have to notice that and then bring our attention back.

If you imagine that your attention is like a muscle. Every time you get distracted and then bring your attention back to what you're focusing on, you're strengthening that muscle.

So instead of seeing distraction as a bad thing. If we notice it, we can use it to strengthen our focus instead.

For this exercise, the thing you're going to focus on is your breath moving in your belly.

See if you can feel it now. You can even place your hands on your belly if that helps and feel it from the outside too.

Feel how the belly expands as the breath goes in and feel how the belly softens and deflates a bit as the breath goes out.

So what we're going to do is see if we can pay attention to the breath in the belly and count the breaths.

So one full in breath and out breath

One

In

Out

Two

And we're going to see if you can keep your attention on the feeling of breathing and counting as high as you can.

Now if something distracts you and takes your attention away. It could be a sound like traffic noise or a thought, like, "hmm, what am I doing later?" or a sensation like hunger. You just notice the mind has wandered off and bring the attention back to the feeling of the breath.

See how many breaths you can count and stay focused. You can do this any time and the more you do it, the easier it will get.