Tag Archives: focus

Do You See What I See?

mag

By Vicki Hughes     Posted March 31, 2013

I had a thought provoking conversation with a friend a few days ago. She was curious about the sea glass jewelry I make from the softened glass fragments that I find here on remote Fairhope beaches. She asked me, “How do you find sea glass? I’ve lived along beaches for years and I’ve never found any.” She clarified, she wasn’t after my secret honey holes, she just wondered if there was a trick to it.

I told her, “I honestly believe it’s a matter of intention. I expect to find it, and I do. I think you have to train your brain to see it. But once you learn to see it, you can’t un-see it anymore.”

I explained how, in the beginning, when I took John with me the first few times, he didn’t find any sea glass at all, only a few cool rocks. He’d hold one up hopefully, and ask, “It this glass?” I’d shake me head, “Nope, keep looking.” But now, he is a glass finding machine! We never go to the beach to “pick glass” and come home empty handed.

Sometimes we don’t see certain things because we’ve convinced ourselves that seeing them is too hard. I feel this way about four leaf clovers. I look down at a patch of clover, and I’m all, “There is no way I will ever be able to find one, specific, odd-ball clover with a genetic mutation, in all of THAT!” And apparently I never will. Not with that attitude. Do yo know how many four leaf clovers Momma has found? Me neither, but it’s a lot. I try to be happy for her, but I’m secretly jealous. Don’t even get me started about her winning drawings and raffles.

I believe we all see what we are looking for, that which we are focused on. It behooves us to look for what we actually want. We get results when we stay focused on something, and allow a little time to pass so the results can show up. It takes some time for results to appear, and we short circuit the magic if we stop looking fifteen minutes into the game.

This explains why I’m not very good at fishing. I quit too soon. If a fish doesn’t jump on my hook within the first few minutes, I get bored and assume there are no fish, and give up. John on the other hand, has learned the art of waiting. He knows they’re out there, and he patiently waits for them to get their lunch break and stop by his line for a snack. He’s catching fish which don’t exist in my world, and I’m wandering around the shoreline, doodling in a journal.

We’re all anticipating something, positive or negative. We will get confirming evidence for whatever it may be, and then we will see more, and more, and more. We look for people to be kind and helpful, or for them to be selfish, annoying jerks. We look for bills, or we look for new sources of income. We look for disaster or opportunity. What we look for has an uncanny way of showing up.

A few days ago, I started looking for idiot drivers, and pretty soon, they all showed up! Magic. It was a stunning reminder of my role and responsibility in the creation of my reality. All of the good drivers didn’t evaporate when I got fixated on the crappy drivers, but I was no longer able to notice the good drivers, only the clowns in cars. Suddenly, I was seeing the ones that were weaving, and nearly rear ending me, and the ones who sat like stones in front of me at green lights, the ones who suddenly wanted to cross over into my lane as if I was invisible, “Hello?”

We’re all focused on something. The question is…what?

What would you like to tune into that would make life a little happier when it starts showing up?

© Vicki Hughes 2013

Hello!? Pay Attention!

ATTENTION

By Vicki Hughes       Posted March 23, 2013

Observation is the trick to writing. Noticing the obscure details, and then getting them written down, before they fly away like an eyelash in the wind.

Anne Lammott is one of my favorite authors. When I first read her book Bird by Bird, it changed my life. When she explained that I own what happens to me, a little tumbler on the lock of my writing clicked into place.

Events in my life are what I decide they are, and I’m the only one who can relate it in my perspective. Nobody besides me can see my life through my eyes. If I want you to see what I just saw, I need to write it down, to tell you the story. Paul Harvey used to conclude his radio broadcasts with, “And that’s the way it is.” Writing about our own lives could be footnoted with, “And that’s the way I saw it.”

When a writer writes a story, or shares an insight, all they can give us is their perspective, based on the view they had of the situation. As I’m sure you’re aware, there’s always another side to every story. Just ask a cop who has to write a report on a fender bender. Nobody sees it the same way, from the same angle.

At any given moment, we’re tuned into various parts of our environment. We would never be able to handle the sheer volume of information, if we were taking in all in.

Billions and billions of bits of information surround you right now. You have to choose to stay focused on these words. “Hey! I’m talking here! Pay attention!”

Your brain has to ignore far more details than it pulls into focus, in order for you to to get anything accomplished. There’s no way I could write this sentence while simultaneously focusing on every bit of other information coming at me through my five senses!

Have you ever been laying in bed and suddenly become very aware of your heartbeat? Thumpity thump, thumpity thump. “There it goes again. Again….” Suddenly, you’re counting along, and then wondering, “Is that NORMAL?!”

If you were that aware of your heartbeat, and every blink of your eyes, and every smell in the room, and every place the sheets were touching you, we’d probably have to come after you with a butterfly net. We are blessedly able to tune out a laundry list of input, to enable us to get some other stuff done.

I’m not very useful to myself, or anyone else, if I’m sitting around wondering if my heartbeat is normal or not. I’m not much fun if I’m hissing, “Shhhhh! I’m counting!”

Be glad you have the option to tune into the things you want to. Be okay with the stuff you miss, or sometimes can’t see. We all have our strengths. Most importantly, choose more of the good stuff to pay attention to, because life is short. I’d rather spend it looking at the flowers, than the dog poop.

© Vicki Hughes 2013

Five Tricks For Overcoming Little Annoying Crap

You try and try, but they keep showing up.

You try and try, but they keep showing up.

By Vicki Hughes     Posted March 10, 2013

 

Little annoying crap has the power to suck the joy right out of an otherwise lovely day. We’ve all done it;  The client who no-shows, the person in front of us, who spaces out, and makes us miss our big shot at getting through the light before it turns red, the bill we thought we mailed , discovered when we pull down the sun visor to put on our lipstick. Little. Annoying. Crap.

Everyone has it.

The real problem comes in when we start giving it our undivided attention. We go from being stuck in traffic, to thinking our boss is an idiot, to thinking we will never get out of debt, to lamenting the complete deterioration of Western Civilization because everyone sucks.

Whoa! It’s just a traffic jam! It might be keeping you from a head on collision, or helping you miss the creepy  (Did he just sniff me??) guy who likes to follow you too closely when you get out of the elevator.

Chill.

I have found a few little tactics I like to use when I feel myself boarding the Teeth Grinding Train.

1)      Tell yourself this situation may be working to your advantage somehow. A traffic delay may save your life, or cause you to meet your new best friend, or find a fifty dollar bill on the sidewalk. If you can’t change it, choose to imagine something good coming from it.

2)      Decide to be un-offendable. To do this, you can say, “It’s not me, it’s YOU!” I suggest in most cases, you do this silently. In other words, you remind yourself that the person making you feel bat-shit crazy is not doing it just to get under your skin. They would be doing or saying the same routine, no matter who was standing in your shoes. People do what they do because of who they are. Stop taking their actions so personally and remember; sometimes you’re the one driving people nuts.

3)      Say to yourself, “Let’s just pretend that didn’t happen.” When you were five years old, you created countless new opportunities, futures and possibilities by pretending. You let your imagination do great things. You still can! I’m not talking about living in complete denial, I’m  suggesting we choose to focus on what makes us happy instead of spinning out movie-length scenarios of how this one event is going to ruin our lives forever! When I say to myself, “Let’s just pretend that didn’t happen,” it frees up parts of my brain to notice things that are funny or inspirational or at the very least, neutral. Neutral thoughts are better than being dialed into the little annoying crap.

4)      Distract yourself with something. Spending the weekend with a deaf uncle who blares the news 24/7? I suggest taking walks, offering to clean his birdfeeder, cooking some chili while plugging into your iPod and cranking your own tunes, or challenging him to a game of checkers. Distraction is a powerful tool. You can’t raise toddlers without it! Use it when you feel the Cranky Train leaving the station.

5)      Don’t throw away the brownie because of a few annoying nuts. I’m not a nut person, but if you were to hand me a fudgy brownie with nuts, I would not be inclined to toss it in the trash. I would enjoy what I did like, and leave the rest. We can’t always guarantee that our brownies or our lives are nut-free, but we can choose to enjoy the sweet parts, and leave the rest.

© Vicki Hughes 2013