Get Focused So You Can Win!

Welcome to LegalBiz Cafe! Digitally remastered with AI, in this podcast series, Attorney Shaune B. Arnold gives to frustrated professionals like YOU the tools and resources you need to make the LEAP to entrepreneurship so you can start, build or fix a business you will absolutely LOVE. 

In this laser-focused episode, Shaune teaches proven techniques to sharpen your attention span and crush distractions. From the Hawaiian Hakalau method to breath-focused trance states, discover how to train your brain, master deep concentration, and finally complete the projects—and business—of your dreams. 

Transcript

Hello, friends! …And welcome …once again …to legal biz cafe. I am your host. Attorney Shaune B Arnold. Listen, …we are getting focused tonight. We are going to get focused so that you can win. Tonight, we are going to explore some techniques for increasing your attention span.

But before we go honing in, I want to have a little chat with you about what we're doing here at legal biz Cafe. We are dealing with your mindset here, your mindset as an entrepreneur. You see, I've been a business strategist for 40 years, and I've been a business attorney, for 30 of those 40 years, and I find that when I work with my clients, they are stuck in their businesses for reasons that have nothing to do with their businesses.

I often wind up taking a position where I am buttressing their mindset. So that is what I am doing here with you today. In particular, I want to talk to you about your focus or your lack of focus, as the case might be.

You know, we've all heard about ADHD in kids. And please don't even get me started on the notion of drugging them into submission with psychotropic drugs, because we don't want to teach them. We need to teach CHILDREN, …not SUBJECTS. But that's a discussion for another day. What I'm talking about today is the fact that many adults also suffer from ADHD and don't even realize it. They’ve never been diagnosed.

I heard a shocking statistic just yesterday, …the average adult has a seven second attention span… seven seconds! Okay. Now, if that is not ADHD, I don't know what is. Seriously, if you think about it, you can tell just by looking around you at people. You can see it in how people drive. They have cell phones, they're eating, they're listening to music and some are even watching videos.

In some cases, they have all kinds of distractions going on to fill up the time and to fill up the space. You can sense it when you talk to somebody and they just zone out on you, or they check their device, or they check their watch. You KNOW they don't have any place to go because they've been checking that device repeatedly all day, and they haven't made a single phone call. They’re just checking it. They're unable to look you in the eye and focus on your conversation.

You can see it in how mobile our society has become. We move, on average, every few years, and we change jobs just as often, and I can't help but feel that we're missing something very, very important, that we're moving too fast.

Do you find yourself filling up space? Do you find yourself filling up the time with busy work and with unproductive activities, rather than making a list of the things that you have to do and then being about the business of doing those things.

Now, that having been said, I'm not talking about driving yourself into a grave. Sunsets, soft conversations, home cooked meals and life goals are amazing and actually take time to develop. So we're going to slow it down this evening just a bit, and we're going to discuss a couple of techniques that I know of that help me focus well enough to read an average of about 200 pages a day of legal books for three solid years in order to get my doctorate.

A lot of people have asked me over the years how I did it; how I got through UCLA and UC Hastings College of the Law. I hear them say things like, wow, you're blessed, or Ooh, you're really smart, or occasionally You're so lucky.

And you know, I thought about it, I really thought about it long and hard, and I think that I finally discovered my secret sauce. Now, you might laugh that it took me so much long, hard thinking to figure it out, but, you know, each of us has a tendency to blow past those things that we're really good at because they're easy, and we don't stop to analyze why they're easy.

For me, it is undoubtedly my ability to focus that is one of my biggest gifts. And so I want to share these techniques with you tonight for how I do it, how I focus for hours at a time on any given task, and how I get it done.

At this stage of my life, I'm seeing my ability to focus as just a huge blessing. So let me help you put your mind in a learning state if a learning state is what you're looking to do. And we'll also talk about some other techniques for focusing in and basically putting yourself into a trance so that you can get rid of the distractions and really focus on what you have to do.

The first technique is called Hakalau, and that is a Hawaiian technique. And in Hakalau, you want to sit quietly and put your feet on the ground and just be very comfortable, but be very neutral in your body structure, so that there is no binding or twisting anywhere, and then holding your chin level with the ground, raise your eyes just a little bit, just above your head, and focus on the far wall, and then slowly expand your focus, expand your focus so that you can eventually see absolutely everything that's going on in the room at the same time, without stress. It's just a knowledge that you have; a gnosis in your bones, that you anticipate what's going to happen next in the room, because you see it all.

When you get to that point, you will be in a trance. Your mind will be open, and you will have the mental capacity to actually super learn, to take in more of what you're reading and retain more of the videos that you're watching, the research that you're doing, whatever that task is, you'll be able to take in more of it once you expand your awareness of it, and you can process much more information in this way.

One other focus technique that I really want to share with you this evening is to induce a trance by focusing on your breath. You know when you breathe in and out, if you focus on that breath, that is the only really true indication that you have of this moment in time, of now. If you think about it, because everything else is always half a second or one second in the past, or some time in the future. When you focus on your breath, you can really ground yourself in the present moment.

I want you to practice being aware, first of just your natural breath, and to start to track your breath and be aware of whether you're even breathing deeply, whether you're using your full lung capacity, and then begin to breathe deeply, focusing on your breath, focusing on the rhythm of your breath.

And then, if you have a lot of material that you need to get through, begin to focus on the material. And don't be intimidated by the fact that you've got 200 pages to read tonight. Start with the first word. Read the first sentence. Ask yourself what you just read. If you don’t know, read it again. This will help you slow your mind.

The funny thing about our brain is that it's going to want to kick back. It wants to wander. It doesn't want to do the work. But you are the boss. You control your mind. Your mind does not control you. So match the rhythm of your breathing with the rhythm of your reading. Read each word slowly, and if your mind fights back, force yourself to go back to where you last remembered where you were and start again.

This takes practice. Some people actually use music or TV as a filler in the room. You know, whatever blows your hair back, it's all good. Whatever helps you focus in on the task at hand is a really good thing. It takes time to get good at this skill, so be patient with yourself.

If you notice you are not completing what you start, or you aren't starting what you talk about all the time, like building or fixing that business of your dreams, then you can use these techniques to help you train your mind to focus and to quiet the mind chatter.

This is something that I know you can do, and once you learn to focus in on the task at hand, to complete that task, then no weapons formed against you can prosper by any means.

Ladies and gentlemen, I want to thank you so much for joining me on this week's episode of legal biz cafe. I am your host, attorney, Shaune Arnold. I want to invite you to follow me on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter X. You can find me in all of those places under Sean dot Arnold.

I am attorney Shaune Arnold …reminding you, …as always… to MAXIMIZE YOUR COMPETENCE, to get the CONFIDENCE YOU NEED to succeed.

I will see you right back here next week on legal biz cafe. …Bye-bye, friends.