FOCUS!!!

Sometimes, like today, I get frustrated with some of my students for their inability to focus on simple tasks.  There are several of them that I feel like I almost always have to give directions to at least twice, sometimes more like three or four times before it starts to sink in.  Often times I wonder if I'm nothing more than the teacher in the front of the class on a Peanuts cartoon and all the students are hearing is "Wah, wah, wah, wah, wah."

Part of the reason I feel frustrated is because I see myself in them.  Lately, and during other episodes of depression, I have an extremely difficult time focusing on simple tasks that shouldn't be difficult to complete.  This can be completely exhausting to put it lightly, both because I know I have work to do and because I know it really shouldn't take me as long as it does when I do finally get around to completing it.

The answer, for both my students and myself, is elusive.  How do you focus when it seems as though your brain simply won't allow you to?  You could drug students, and many people do and I've even recommended that at different times.  I'm on drugs myself for the bipolar stuff, maybe I'll make it rich someday by making a drug for bipolars that helps with mood stabilization as well as helps one focus.  Probably not though, if I were to guess.  Call it my lack of basic chemistry knowledge, but I don't think I'll be creating any pharmaceutical drugs anytime soon.  

What I see in some of my students that struggle with focus is a lack of stability in their home lives.  The ones who seem to have the most difficulty focusing are the ones whose moms had them when they were 15 or 16 and are now 20 or 21.  That is simply too young to be having a child of your own since you can't possibly be expected to provide a good solid structure at that age.  

What about my own life, though?  I have a solid place to live, I have a fairly regular rhythm and routine every week.  Could it be that I travel every summer and somehow that disrupts my rhythm so much that I'm thrown off for the next school year?  I would hate to have to give that up.  Travel is what adds excitement to my mostly boring life the rest of the year.  I'm known as a traveler, it's just part of who I am.  What if I were to strip that away though, in hopes of finding more stability?  I think my life would be miserable if I were to do that actually.

Focusing is difficult on both ends of the bipolar continuum.  If I'm really manic, I can't focus a string of thoughts coherently to save my life as I'm constantly bouncing from one idea to the next.  If I'm depressed, I have a hard time concentrating on work or other important matters for very long periods of time.  Hypomania would seem to be the best in this regard, I'm able to focus well and exert a ton of energy on a given topic for an extended period of time.  Hypomania by the way is the opposite of a mild depression.  It's halfway to full blown mania but not quite there yet.  It's a really good place to be, if it weren't inevitably followed by mild depression.

Maybe there are some ways that I can help myself focus.  I do better when I write things down, as in a to do list or something similar.  I do okay with written goals and the like.  A self-help book about depression I've recently picked up again talks about writing an event down, writing your automatic thoughts down, and then putting them on trial so to speak by coming up with a more rational response to them.  Writing has always helped me, whether that be to vent or express myself or persuade someone.  Maybe that's part of the answer.

I think part of the reason I struggle with focusing though is because I've been programmed to do so.  I read a few books this past summer about some of the side effects of technology and one of the main side effects is that we're in essence training our brains to be rewarded when we click on a hyper link on a webpage.  This, in effect, rewards distraction, so is it any real wonder that we're in a constant state of distraction?  What would happen to a high school student if you took away their phone for a week?  What would happen to me if you took my phone away for a week?  Well, I have done that on different mission trips and it's really freeing somehow.  You feel more plugged into what you're doing at the moment and closer to the people you're spending time with as opposed to always feeling pulled in different directions.

I long for the ability to focus on several things.  From focusing on my school work to focusing on conversations with others to focusing on God in my quiet times, my life cries out for focus.  Focused intensity can change a person's behavior completely.  The most important thing to focus on, in my humble opinion, is Christ.  If we focus on Him, everything else falls in place.  I don't know about you, but my mind wanders everywhere when I try to focus and pray.  Why is that I wonder?  It's not that I don't want to focus on Christ, it's just that I have a million things running through my mind at any given time.

Well, I've purposely tried to stay focused on this topic for this entire blog entry, mainly to prove to myself that I can focus if I put forth the effort.  Now I'm going to go write some goals down and try to focus on other areas of my life.  Hope you enjoyed the read!