Book: 20210206 to 20210221, "Focusing" by Eugene T. Gendlin(2003)

Focusing Now: An Introduction to the 25th Anniversary Edition

20210206 - FOCUSING:A Tool For Changing Times

This book is about the wisdom of body. I know that our organ has their own "memory" and "habit", but never thought much about it.

 

Good to learn something new.

part one - UNLOCKING THE WISDOM OF YOUR BODY

20210206 - 1. The Inner Act

It's about "deep feeling". We normally get distracted by rationality and emotion. Rationality cannot tell us "what we really, really want". Emotion doesn't tell us where it comes from.

Bodily wisdom tells us the source of our problems.

20210207 - 2. Change

Focusing and bodily sense is like "Epiphany". It's the approach to find out our subconscious.

Our subconscious is buried in many layers of "explanation". We need to keep digging until reaching the real bottom.

Our mood is always changing. Normally we don't know why it goes up, and we don't know why it goes down. When I feel sad, I could only wait till the wave "pass". Maybe it's just my subconscious trying to remind me something.

Subconscious is not always right. But if it keep reminding us something for long time, there must be something we need to do.

If we can analyze our subconscious, then we can control our mood.

Subconscious/bodily sense is pretty useful tool/resource/attitude. If we have "right" subconscious towards family members, colleagues, clients, etc. , life will be much easier, and it would be much easier to make great success in life.

20210209 - 3. What the Body Knows

What does bodily sense mean? It's more like the sixth sense.

With or without vision, we may stay in the same place doing the same thing, but the feeling and productivity is completely different. The sixth sense is similar to our vision.

This book is going to tell us how to get this sixth sense!!

part two - FOCUSING

20210210 - 4. The Focusing Manual

Whenever we get strange/irrational feeling, our body is trying to remind us about something important. So the first step should be: be sensitive to our feelings. Don't ignore it.

We cannot solve a problem if we cannot notice it.

The six steps are interesting. But I think many people can reach the same result with long time(days or even months of) thinking about it.

20210212 - 5. The Six Focusing Movements and What They Mean

Focusing helps conscious and subconscious to communicate with each other, and work together to fix the problems. 

The major obstacle is rational thoughts. They are wild distraction. In nature, we can avoid those distraction through two approaches: 1. Under great pressure; 2. Love it. But we can also avoid it through training: meditation.

If we can control our mind, then we can understand our subconscious easily. Focusing would be quite easy.

How do we know that we have controlled our mind? The disappearing of time. It's a bit like sleeping. We don't notice the time elapsing during sleep.

Subconscious has many layers. It's a huge iceberg. To figure it out, we need to be patient. It may take months. We always have enough time.

20210212 - 6. What Focusing Is Not

Rational analysis doesn't help much with subconscious. I think Focusing is more like self-hypnosis.

It's more like analyze mental issue with the first principle rule.

20210214 - 7. Clearing a Space for Yourself

Clearing a space is like learn to avoid the distraction from mind. We cannot get rid of a bad habit. We can only use a good habit to replace it. I believe it's same to distraction: we cannot get rid of(ignore) distraction unless we know how to do with it.

Stack up all ideas from mind, then, in the end, we get the huge empty space. This is the space to start the next step. From meditation point of view, this is the step to count from 1 to 10.

20210216 - 8. If You Can’t Find a Felt Space

Subconscious affects our attitude and mood, but apart from that, not much else. It's critical, and easy to ruin our life and career, but it doesn't help us directly.

It's like the trap along the road. We need to understand it, or else we might fall into it.

Felt sense is at everywhere all the time. In most of the cases, we let it to control our daily routines.

Emotion is the production of subconscious. Felt sense is the tool to analyze emotions as a whole.

20210216 - 9. If You Can’t Make Anything Shift

There is no specific routine to shift. We can almost do anything which is helpful. For example, start from the answer, then try to figure out what is in the way to reach there.

Just don't analyze the felt sense through rationality. Here we need to rely on our subconscious.

Rationality also works through some other way, I believe. If we think about the problem all the time, sooner or later, we will realize how to solve the problem.

part three - PEOPLE HELPING EACH OTHER

20210217 - 10. Finding Richness in Others

When another person is watching/listening us, we can do better in focusing. We don't need to say anything during the focusing practice.

This is why many people prefer to do meditation in group. Peer pressure could be good, but it's not necessary to everyone.

Ourselves are the only one who can make ourselves angry/sad/happy/nervous/shy/brave/etc., not any external person/object.

20210220 - 11. The Listening Manual

As a listener, repeat the crux by our own words can minimize the misunderstanding.

Focusing is about thinking through feeling.

Psychology is not isolated to real world. We can set up correct attitude and mood, but we need job, friends, place to live, to create happy life.

Don't criticize other people. Focus on the positive side, and let them find the way to go by themselves.

Mood is part of our illusion. It doesn't affect the reality. Angry, nervous, shy, excited, sad......don't help us to handle other people and the real world.

Interacting in a group is more about practicing listening. This means, meditation also helps. It helps us to focus on something for longer time.

Listening is not just for help other people. It also helps ourselves. Concentration give us the efficiency to analyze complicated things.

part four FOCUSING AND SOCIETY

20210220 - 12. New Relationships

Only 7% of communication relies on content. 40+% relies on tune, and 40+% relies on body language. 

Focusing teach us don't rely on dialogue content too much. Feeling is critical to most of the communications.

We spend too less time in effective listening. Group activities give us a good chance to practice listening.

I should catch all opportunities to practice listening.

20210221 - 13. Experience Beyond Roles  

Our modern society is changing rapidly. Computer, Internet, Smartphone......they changed our lives drastically.

How to get stable income? How to spend our time? What relationships we should maintain? We need an anchor, we need to follow both our subconscious and rationality.

APPENDIX

a. Philosophical Note

Both our subconscious and rationality are critical to our lives. Most people ignore their subconscious, and then get trapped in fixed logical thinking patterns. The first principle means we need to figure out the root source of our desire.