The True Gift of Focus

I think one message I would love for your audience to take away from this podcast, Matt, is that it's not about focus. It's about what focus gives you. Some people go like, they don't understand it.

Why do you want to focus? Again, it's like meditation, right? It's not about meditation. It's like, what does meditation give you?

That practice gives you something that is so special. gives you the deepest, most intimate experiences with the people and things that you love. Whether it's fishing or riding a dead bike, if you could be fully present with it, you fully experience it. If you're standing there fishing and

you're mentally absent, you never experience it. Yeah, I think the most important thing in our lives is the memories. And what I hear you saying is if you're not focused on it, you can't actually make a memory. No, we've We've probably experienced amazing things in our life where, like you said, driving through

Paris, looking at our phone, beauty everywhere. But it's not a memory because we're not focused on the potential of it becoming one. Yeah. And then you think about the people you love.

You can go through your whole life being physically with them but mentally absent. And then you just go, okay, I didn't experience any of it. And I realize my life is finite. It's not short, but it's finite.

a clear definitive end. I don't know when that end is, but I know it will end. And I would always ask people, you know, how do you get orange juice? You squeeze the orange. How do you figure out your priorities in life? You squeeze time. If I told you you had three hours to live, Matt, would you do this podcast?

No, sir. No. But I do really like talking to you, but I wouldn't be here. But you wouldn't be here, right? So same with me. If you tell most people if you

had three hours to live, what would you do? All their priorities would rise to the the surface of their mind, write them down. And then the goal is not to live, pretend like you're going to die in three hours, but the goal is to bring to the surface what's important and then focus

on those things. Yeah. And like you said so well, like people will listen to that and go like, oh, that sounds cute, but I've got a job.

I've got all this stuff. Like it's chaos. What you said was so brilliant. Take the absolute activities that happen every day.

Yeah. You brush your teeth. You spend time with your daughter, you eat dinner, start there, focus there, build up the practice, build up the habits.

I mean, one of the things I've done is I used to not be very comfortable sitting with just me, like in silence. And so I recognize every day I have to drive to work and I have to drive home. So can I sit in a hundred percent silence for the 18 minutes

it takes to get to the office? No podcast, no music, nothing. Just the road, just the noise, just the nail in my tire, making the clunking, like whatever it is, right?

And I just be present. And what I found is that's actually some of the most beneficial time for me. And then on the way home, I challenge myself most days, can I do it today? Now, some days I'm trying to finish up the day and handle that last call or whatever.

But if I can do that, just be present with me for those 18 minutes in the morning and then those 18 minutes at night, I have found in me that I can see me, accept me, forgive me, understand me, and then I can be a totally better or more improved version with my family, with my kids, because I see me. Yes. And why is it that we are willing to give everything and everyone else so much time and

attention but not ourselves? You know, how many podcasts do people listen to? Music, all the time engaging, but you ask people to spend 20 minutes in the car by themselves, so if they're waiting for the subway, they have to pull their phone out of the pocket, scroll until the train comes. Why don't you just stand there and listen to yourself?

Your mind can't tell you about you if you're constantly engaging in something else, your mind's just kind of like, Oh, he's busy. Yeah. And I think a lot of people that are feeling pain in their body, it's their

body's way of trying to say, Hey, listen to the mind, because they're so distracted. It's like, okay, you're not listening to the mind. So let me tell you, your knee really hurts.

So let me tell you your shoulder really hurts. So let me tell you your back hurts. You have a headache or your neck hurts. And like literally before we started recording this, I was talking to Corey.

I was like, man, my neck really hurts. And immediately I go because I've done the work and I see it like, huh, what is my mind trying to tell me? Like, okay, maybe it's this, maybe it's that, maybe it's this.

Like I'm trying to pinpoint like, what am I missing? What am I not hearing that I need to hear? But I think a lot of times people just go, oh, the body hurts. Let me pop some Advil, silence the noise and not have to listen to the body, not

have to listen to the mind.