Brain training...Finding focus amongst the distractions

Brain Neurons

Every now and then, I carpool with a friend of mine.  When we do, I usually pick him up at 7:30 am in front of the Starbucks off the freeway.  Last week, I happened to arrive 5 minutes late.  In my friend's haste to multi-task a coffee in one hand and a live call coming through the cell phone in his other, when 7:30 am came, he mistook another person's car for mine.  We both shared a good laugh after he told me that he actually attempted to get into the stranger's car while on his cell phone.  The driver of the vehicle was taken back as my friend kept trying to open the locked handle with frustration. Racing through his mind were thoughts of "Why won't Vic open the door for me?" "Can't he see my hands are full?!"  To his credit, the wrong vehicle was of similar make, model and color, but similarities only go so far.  The driver of the other car was a good sport about it all while my friend explained his mental fumble. 

 The world moves at a fast pace.  As technology advances so does the expectation for our own ability to keep up with the fire hose information flow.  Your attention is always on call and in demand.  If not careful, the implications of each moment could misrepresent your good intentions.  Managing the moment isn't a new phenomenon, it's just that we live in a day and age whereby the value of the moment is inflated in relation to the pace at which we move.  Business transactions are global, and the market is always open somewhere.  Yet, no matter how confident we believe we are with our ability to multi-task, a recent finding called the "Cocktail effect" suggests otherwise.

As a matter of survival, when distractions are all around us, we only have the ability to focus in on one thing.  Our selective attention described by the cocktail effect, infers that we are limited to one constructive objective with each moment.  Consequently, our ability to discern what matters most with each moment becomes all that more valuable.  Some may feel like they do just fine with being decisive in a fast paced world, but just moving things along to check a to do list can be even more disastrous then doing nothing at all.  Activity for activity's sake often overlooks the big picture and just leans upon personal biases.  Take a step back and ask yourself "Do I have all of the information for that moment?" Maybe, maybe not. Fortunately, our brains can  adapt to this 21st century phenomenon.  However,  requirements for maximizing the moment is a skill that requires incremental training.

Similar to the an athlete taking the next step up in levels, the brain can learn to adapt to the pace of information if in fact it is being trained properly. When an athlete moves up, their performance is limited in relation to the learning curve it takes to get used to the advanced speed of the game. The jump from high school to college may be fundamentally the same schematic load, but the speed at which a player processes the information exponentially increases as the athletic mean of the competition increases. First experiences for a newcomer to college athletics can make them feel like a squirrel trying to cross the freeway.  Eventually, given time and experience, the game appears to slow down for the newcomer.  Now we all know the game didn't compassionately slow down to accommodate, in actuality the newcomer adapted by becoming faster!  By embracing the challenge, the athlete competed with focus and attention in the moments that were presented, since they refused to be left behind.

While we can all agree that training and athletics go hand in hand, it begs the question "Why do we feel intruded upon when the game of life takes us to a new level?" Instead of leaving your personal and professional moments to chance, take an approach to lean into your new limitations.  As an athlete makes training a norm for their weekly schedule, we too can benefit from a daily regiment of mental training.  A great tool that I recently found is Lumosity.  Lumosity is a mental training website that provides me with exercises that help to train my moment by moment strategic awareness.  Thus far, I've found their prescribed training methods to be fun and challenging as they take me through a variety of mental awareness puzzles and games.  I hate to sound like an add, but in my brief time of using their service, the mental training is making the game of life is appear to slow down for me.  My daily challenges haven't left me, but the intentionality is making me more aware of the flavor and value of the moment.  I will be sure to suggest the site to my commuter friend so that he can excel in his next Cocktail Effect moment.  (Below is a video discussing the findings of the Cocktail Effect.)

Win Today!

Victor

Good intentions...Can of worms

Your best intentions can be the culprit behind your social aggravation. Those well-intended niceties spoken to the people in your daily sphere were supposed to have communicated a sense of "you matter." Instead, ambiguous discussions were recycled into fuel for the optimist to create an alternate perception that puts them in a better light.  Later, when time and misinterpreted intentions are full grown, and the hoped for fruit is nowhere to be found, the person that you felt you communicated your decision compassionately with, suddenly becomes your integrity's nemesis.  What you believed was a soft letting down, or a simple surface interaction, was actually a moment of truth for the other person.

Letting others feel that they matter is a motivating activity that we certainly need more of if we are to create a productive environment.  However, like any veteran change agent knows, activity can always have a shadow side.  In this case, the shadow side of a well intended surface interaction is how the other person weighs the content of your discussion.  Since we are emotional first, the information you intended may in actuality have been processed through a favorable lens that filtered the facts to support a hope for their own desired outcome.  When timelines and anticipation collide, the disappointment felt by your counterpart is exponentially more in comparison to what it would have been if affection was balanced with attention during the initial conversation.  The fallout can be as simple as a trust debit, or as grand as your character/brand defamation. Before you know it, the person's disappointment is being delivered to anyone who will give them an ear. All the while, you can't believe how your good intentions turned into such a can of worms. Making one feel that they matter is much more than nice talk.  It must be done with a sincerity of interaction. Here are five tips I'm learning to help ensure that my next honest attempt at making others matter is a successful one.

Sincere listening requires an honest ear - When someone wants your attention, it doesn't mean you have to give them their way to communicate your appreciation. While it is much more convenient to skirt the hard facts and frame your position so that it lets others leave your office with a positive feeling, eventually this will only hurt you and the organization all the more.  Sharing the facts notwithstanding the emotion, respects the person.  Even more, it is interpreted as an honest ear.


Know your setting - Casual answers should be reserved for casual settings.  If you are in a work environment, understand that you are interacting in the midst of the greatest emotional triggers for others. Their livelihood.  Weigh your words so that when the day ends, false hope doesn't go home with those you spoke with throughout the day.

Know your audience - The weight of your words changes depending on who you are speaking with. If you are speaking with your child, your words are like the oracles of God. If speaking amongst your buddies, they can be as light as a feather. Slow down, and take account of the parties involved. Making others matter takes recognition.

Recapitulate -  Ordering food is an emotional event for us. Drive-thru service restaurants understand that an order gone wrong can set off an emotional thunder that will echo to many other potential customers.  This is why they spend so much time training the cashier to repeat the order.  In the same manner, take the time to summarize what you are agreeing to or stating.  This will help reduce the confusion that may occur due to the emotional filter that the other party has on.

Write down your responsibilities - Did you agree to a follow-up on anything? Even if what you said was a casual "yeah maybe," in the other person's mind it's something that will occur. Following-up with that person may be a marginal cost to you, but it provides finality for the other person.  Write down or record the slightest of follow-up responsibilities that you may have insinuated.

Each interaction is a purposeful moment.  BRAND YOU is counting on your ability to manage it correctly. In the end, good intentions managed well, will serve to enhance the respect others have for you as a stand-up guy or gal who make others genuinely matter.

Win Today!


Victor

Leaning into limitations...Making the impossible possible

Bungled attempts at one-man flight

"I learned this, at least, by my experiment: that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.” – Henry David Thoreau

In human history, there have been things in this world that have appeared impossible. However, as time and ingenuity progressed, impossible then evolved into limitations that just took time to be figured out.  Mankind wanted to fly.  In themselves it was impossible. Yet, through an industriousness mindset and a lot of failure, flying became possible. 

Even to this day, when flight has lost its marvel, "impossible" limitations still surround us all. How we interpret those limitations will determine if we use them to grow or diminish. If seen as ambition fences, limitations will wrangle our aspirations to the point of feeling boxed in.  Eventually, the boxed in feeling gives way to hopelessness; robbing the very dreams that we believed we were supposed to somehow achieve.  On the other hand, as it pertains to you and me, limitations may not be the fences at all. In fact, they may be the tutors that will serve to draw out the behavioral adaptations to make"impossible" possible.

When impossible occurs, the issue isn't zero-sum. The core of the matter is; what are you really trying to accomplish in the first place?  For Oral and Wilbur Wright, the goal was that of transportation. Could a human being efficiently transport themselves from point A to point B in a straight line?  Air travel would accomplish this.  Instead of creating wings so that the traveler could individually experience the romance of flying like a bird,  a larger encompassing vehicle was needed to be built in order to accomplish air travel.   Impossible made possible.

I am very fortunate to have had the privilege of speaking with many a person who, from my vantage point, were living the "dream." Through our conversations exchanged, I learned that while such persons may be experiencing a life full of accomplishment, their day to day "dream" job has headaches like any other position. Those headaches are just called by different names.  For some, the title of their achievements still lacked in providing the self-worth fulfillment that they hoped would come with their professional arrival.  When limitations arrive in your life, ask yourself, "What am I really trying to achieve?"  If re-framed, limitations can be the catalyst to positively re-invent ourselves.  More often than not, our envisioned goals are just models of achievement that we associated with self-worth.  Once limitations are re-calibrated, our endeavors may find the traction to discover an even greater avenue for a more fruitful actuality.

Recently, I viewed the life on film story about Manuel De Los Santos. Manuel is a Dominican living in Paris who lost his leg in a motorcycle accident. With the loss of his leg, he also lost his dream of playing baseball.  Through a series of insignificant events, he significantly changed his mindset and his life. In the video below, Manuel encourages us all with this statement, "I think for me, and for many, the most important thing is to try and find something that (makes us) feel good. When you feel good, the impossible becomes possible."

Win Today!

Victor

Is your world still flat?

As I prepared to attend a funeral for a relatively young man, the words of King Solomon echoed in my mind.  "The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning, but the heart of fools is in the house of pleasure (Ecclesiastes 7:4)."  The reality and brevity of life crystallize with clarity when one happens to attend this everyday human occurrence.  Life is happening now. Without warning it can be gone tomorrow.  Not to go off on a morbid downer, but as Solomon is stating, the reminder should in fact inject productive action into our everyday lives.