Focus Your Gaze
Our 2021 Vision is dedicated to our dear friend, Fran Operchuck, who passed away on January 1. Fran was a FORCE - despite of (and inspired by) her 20-year battle with Parkinson’s disease, she lived every day with purpose, determination, compassion and humor. Fran profoundly impacted my life, this company, and our work, and in this blog I share the many valuable lessons she taught me about life and training…
Like many people living with Parkinson’s disease, my friend and client Fran often struggled with keeping her balance, especially when transitioning from one place or position to another. Standing up after sitting for awhile, transitioning in/out of the car, and stepping over her granddaughter’s toys on the floor gave her a healthy fear of falling. But this was not something she was going to let get in her way, so we worked on balance strategies a LOT in our training, to make her daily life a little easier and less stressful.
One of the most successful tools we used in Fran’s training was her eye focus. It’s very common, when we are in a situation where we fear we might fall, to look off in the distance with a soft eye focus, and just sort of hope we make it to where we are going, unharmed. Pair that with rushing our movements (I call it “trying to out-run the fall”), and it’s almost always a recipe for disaster: without really looking where we are going and rushing to get there, we are almost sure to lose our balance and potentially fall.
So Fran and I practiced using her eye focus in a variety of situations to help direct her movement, and she was so much more successful! Focusing on where she wanted to go was a game changer: she was more balanced, she moved more freely and with intention, and she was able to navigate obstacles much more successfully.
It occurred to me, that this is not an issue just for people with Parkinson’s: many of us have a tendency to rush blindly when we are fearful of the path ahead. I did the same when I started building my business; I put my head down and started running as fast as I could, barely looking up to see if I was still going in the right direction. We do this with weight loss (run to the gym without looking in the fridge first), and even relationships (hurry to the alter without really looking inward). This lack of focus makes us use up a lot of energy, and often spend it in counterproductive ways.
To be clear, when Fran focused her eyes on the path ahead, her gaze was not unwavering. She had to look around to take in her surroundings, navigate obstacles, and adjust her path accordingly. But by training her eyes to really focus on where she wanted to go, it also allowed her to truly see what challenges lay ahead, and even create new paths and detours as needed.
I think about this lesson I learned from my time with Fran: What if we slowed down, refocused our gaze towards what we REALLY want, and let that guide our path? What could we accomplish if we took the time to clearly SEE where we are going?