Are You Scatterbrained? I am.

I don't know if I passed my black belt test.  It will be a surprise to me.  I don't get a letter.  I don't get a phone call or a visit.  I get an unannounced gathering of my friends and family when I go to my regularly scheduled class.  Then a roast-ish type evening will ensue, along with a sword that will be engraved with my "karate name" and my passing date.  I don't know my karate name, not do I get to choose it.  Here's my guess as to what it might be: Squirrel.  

Do you remember the golden retriever in the movie "Up"?  He has a collar that allows him to speak audibly so humans can understand him.  He's a friendly fellow and introduces himself and continues speaking, then he's suddenly distracted by a "Squirrel!" That's me.  My problem is not lack of focus.  It's more an issue of a lot going on at once.  My brain is always going in a million directions.  Normally, it's not too much of an issue, but as I studied the last few weeks for my black belt test, I temporarily put a few things on hold.  I wanted to use brain space that I normally allocate to other tasks.  For example, I used to remember phone numbers. If my husband needed to call someone, he would just ask me their number.  That was obviously before the days of cell phones.  Now our phones remember for us.  I don't know near as many phone numbers as I used to.  My phone remembers for me.  Now I remember account logins and passwords instead.

All this is to say that we have brain space, focus power, memory skills. Call it what you want. I believe we can choose what we want to remember.  Whether it is a name of someone you just met, an important date, or the details of our dream, we can choose to create focus. Sometimes it's by writing down what we need to come back to. Sometimes it's dismissing the extra things all together. I don't know the science behind this theory.  This one is just from personal experience.  Does our brain get full? I don't know.  I know mine seems to.  When I'm learning something new, I can learn for a while then I need to walk away so I have time to absorb it.

I'm a bit all over the place, all the time--even in this post today I'm a bit scattered.  It is helpful for me to keep sticky notes handy (on my phone or actual paper) where I can write down the extra, random thoughts and come back to them later. If you're scatterbrained or just think so quickly that you can't process it all before you jump to the next thing, I would encourage you to not be discouraged about it...find a way to make it work.  We're not all created the same.  That would be so boring!  Embrace the crazy.  Think less, live more!

I'd love to hear what little tricks you use to help focus and remove distractions.  Comment below.