Goal

When you are with a person, you may also be responsible for other persons, but this shouldn’t distract you too much

Why?

While you are working alone with a group of people, or when you do something with one particular person, your attention often is not just with what is happening between you and the person, but your mind is also watching whatever goes on in the space around, because you think you have to keep watch over everything. With this practice you learn to be ‘here and now’ with this one person, while you are aware of what happens elsewhere so you can respond to something when it is absolutely necessary and more important than the person you are with.

Practice

This practice is a combination of the technique of ‘finding peace in yourself’ and ‘dividing attention between yourself and the other’.  Instead of dividing the dividing the attention in 75% on the person and 25% on yourself, you now also try to have a few % awareness for what happens in the space around you.

You can do this practice everywhere where are many people, like in a shopping center.

• Go and stand in a place where you can oversee the space and the people who are walking there.
• Focus your attention on a specific point, like a shop window or a billboard.
• Also feel connected with yourself (your anchor or your breath) and divide your attention between the billboard and yourself.
• Now widen your view and also be aware of the people without wondering what they are doing.
• If you  notice that you are distracted by somebody who obviously looks remarkable, you just go back with your attention to the billboard and to yourself: 70% to the billboard, 20% to yourself and 10% global awareness for what happens around you. Unless you really find it important to look at a remarkable person.

Application in daily life

During a team meeting you can listen to what others are saying, while keeping good contact with yourself and what you think about what is said, while you on a superficial level register what others are doing: one moves his hand, another is drawing a picture, two others are chatting together, etc. just be aware of this without looking at the drawing or listening to the chatting. You don’t pay attention to it.

When you are with a person you serve (for instance in his room), you can be there with the proper awareness; without thinking of others in the living room who may need your attention too. You just register the sounds you hear and you trust your experience that you will know which specific sound is the alarm that you have to leave the person and go to the living room.

A variant of this method you can use if you have to do an activity with the person that takes some concentration. You divide your attention  70% to the activity, 20% to what is does with the person, and 10% for yourself. If you would be fully concentrated on the activity, you might not see what extra support the person needs or what you need yourself.