How to make sure that Focusing is awesome and amazing for you.

Melissa writes: “I took a Focusing class or two some years ago, and I never practiced enough to make Focusing a routine and then it fell off of my screen of things to do. I would like to get back into it, but feel hesitation about doing so because of my failure to be successful with it last time. After reading so much of your writing in these emails, I believe that Focusing would be an awesome way to connect to myself and I would like a little guidance on how to handle this situation so that I will succeed. Any suggestions?”

Dear Melissa,
You’re absolutely right: Focusing is one of those things that, however awesome and amazing it might be, needs for us to do it, to actually put it into practice. And we can rightly worry that it could fall into the sad list of the other things that would be good for us if we only practiced them: exercise, yoga, meditation…

But there is something that makes Focusing easy to practice, easy to stick with… and it’s the one thing that I always say, I myself would NEVER have stuck with Focusing if it weren’t for… Focusing partnership!

With Focusing partnership, you have an appointment every week, and you show up for it. It’s an appointment with a person like you, and you will trade the time. You don’t have to be an expert to be helpful; you learn in the Focusing training how to give and receive the kind of simple listening presence that supports Focusing in the other person.

How Focusing practice becomes easy.

When I first learned Focusing in 1972, Gene Gendlin was my teacher. Gene was (and still is) passionate about the idea that people can support each other through trading time in partnerships, and letting the Focuser be in charge of the Focuser’s time.

(I teach the Companion to ask the Focuser: “What would you like from me as your Companion?”)

It’s a radical model, and completely consistent with the idea that the inner process knows which way to go, if it is given the space. Forty years later I still teach Focusing in partnership. Most teachers do.

For the last 40 years I have always been in a Focusing partnership. Right now I have two of them. Sometimes when the appointment time comes I feel like I don’t have anything to work on. But I have learned to do Focusing anyway — and there is always something there.

If I had to depend on myself, alone, to take time to do Focusing, I’d be in trouble.

So take another training, and this time grab one or two people and propose being Focusing partners. It works fine on the phone. It’s a learning environment. You’ll get better, stronger, clearer, and Focusing will be awesome and amazing for you.