Sinking Toys and Focus

During the summer my children and I spent a great deal of time out at the pool. My oldest, Payton, has been swimming for a couple of summers and Grace, my second child, learned to swim this past summer. Towards the end of this past summer, they both became interested in these toys that sink to the bottom of the pool. The object is to throw these things in, they sink to the bottom and the kids dive in after them and retrieve them. I remember doing that as a child myself, actually I found myself playing with them quite a bit. (It's funny how some things never change)

In the beginning, as much as they wanted to go down and get thoses things, they were having a difficult time with it. They'd dive in the water with their goggles on, and it seemed that as quickly as they dove in they would pop right back up without the toys. Was it a matter of lack of skill? Was this going to take another couple of summers, after all they are still quite young, only six and four? What was it?

I determined that it was focus. My take on the situation was that although initially their intention was to go down and get the toys, when they jumped in the water their focus came off the task at hand and went to the surrounding water and their inability to breathe under water. Think about it, one or two little toys at the bottom or a huge pool of water. It's very easy to focus on the water rather than the toys, you're surrounded by it, it's all around you, you're covered in it, it's certainly bigger than you, and blah, blah, blah. Isn't this a lot like life and the goals we set out on? You want and desire this one thing in life, and you're surrounded by distractions, nay-sayers, circumstances that seem bigger than life. It's very easy to lose your focus isn't it? It especially becomes easy to say things like "I need to go back to school" "I need to get more knowledge" "I need to improve my skills" Perhaps, and then again perhaps you just need to re-direct your focus.

It turned out that my kids didn't need to improve their skills and they didn't need to take another summer or two, nor did they need to get any older. They simply needed to stay focused on the goal. I simply asked them "What do you want?" "The torpedo." "What color is the torpedo?" "The red one." "Which one?" "The red one." "Which one?" "The red one." "Go get it!" and just like that the impossible was done. Until next time...

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