Daniel Goleman’s latest brilliant book is on Focus.  He explains that attention is the muscle of the mind – your mind gets strengthened by attention and weakened by mind wandering. We’ve got three types of focus:

• Inner focus attunes us to our emotions, intuitions, and decisions—a form of self-awareness and self-regulation.
• Other focus connects us with others through forms of empathy—Cognitive Empathy (I see how you view the world); Emotional Empathy (I have a sense of how you feel); Empathic Concern (I want to do something to soothe or help you).
• Outer focus keeps our eye on the larger environment we live in—a systems approach works well to keep us safe and sound.

We need all three to be successful – so we should use tools like mindfulness, meditation, focused preparation and recovery, positive emotions and connections, improved habits, new skills, etc.