The Power of Shifting Focus: How Attention Shapes Our Reality

Not a day goes by without me thinking, This is it. I can’t do this anymore.

The constant battle in the classroom, the few students who won’t stop talking, shouting, or making silly noises—it wears me down. By the time I walk out at the end of the day, I tell myself, I’m done. I just can’t do this anymore.

Maybe I’m too old for this.

Maybe I come from a generation that no longer fits into this new way of teaching—a world where boundaries are pushed, respect isn’t a given, and discipline feels like it’s fading into history.

And then, I hear it—that voice in my head.

"I should know how to deal with this better! For goodness’ sake, I am a mindfulness practitioner! I’ve worked with people at the end of their lives! I am a Buddhist with a decade of mind training!"

And worse, I feel the silent judgement of those around me. How can she proclaim to be a trained mindfulness teacher, a practising Buddhist, and still be losing it in the classroom?

I know what they’d think, because I think it too.

But even with all my training, all my understanding of the mind and its tricks, I still struggle. I still break. I still find myself falling into frustration, resentment, and exhaustion.

But then, after a good night’s sleep and some deep reflection, I go back.

I tell myself I won’t give up—not yet, anyway.

And so, the rollercoaster begins again. One moment, I think I’ve had a breakthrough; the next, it feels like a breakdown.

Then, there are the particularly bad days—the ones that push me to the edge. The ones where I feel like I might actually walk out, career be damned. But I breathe through it. And before I know it—Friday arrives. The weekend. A temporary reprieve.

The Body Keeps the Score

If you’ve heard of The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk, you’ll know that stress, anxiety, and trauma don’t just disappear—they find a place to live in the body.

For me, it has always been my lower back.

It started when I was around twelve years old, probably from the sheer terror of sitting through another one of my parents’ fights. I remember the feeling—my whole body tensing up, bracing for impact, waiting for the yelling to stop. Over time, the fear had nowhere else to go, so it settled into my muscles, locking me up from the inside.

And now, decades later, it’s still there.

Every time I feel powerless or on the verge of losing control, the tension creeps in, my back tightens, and suddenly I’m that twelve-year-old again—silent, bracing, frozen.

In the classroom, when the noise becomes unbearable, when I feel like I’m drowning in a job I once loved, the pain returns, my back freezing up like it always has.

This time, it wasn’t just a twinge. My body refused to move.

I had hit my limit, and my body was screaming at me in the only way it knew how.

So, I did something unlike myself—I took time off.

I gave in to the strong painkillers.

I spent days in silence, meditating, crying a little, and simply being still.

I didn’t want to talk. I didn’t want to listen. I didn’t want to hear anything.

Slowly, my body began to loosen, and I returned to school.

Day one: not so bad.

Day two: a couple of near-eruptions.

Day three: another one of those days—the kind where I promised myself I was done.

A Shift in Perspective

But this time, instead of spiralling into frustration, I did something different.

I started researching behaviour management—something I hadn’t done in years. Teaching had become just a job, something I thought I knew well. But maybe I needed a reset. Maybe I needed a new perspective.

That’s when I rediscovered Bill Rogers, a name I vaguely remembered from two decades ago, back when I was fresh into teaching, eager to make a difference—before reality hit me in the face.

At this point, I was desperate.

I needed something—anything—that might help.

And then, I stumbled upon a simple image.

A white square with a single black dot in the middle.

I stared at it. And suddenly, it made perfect sense.

The Black Dot Effect

The image reminded me of a Buddhist teaching on the power of attention—the idea that wherever we place our focus, we shape our reality.

Or, as Tony Robbins puts it:

"Where focus goes, energy flows."

I realised that every day, I was putting all my energy into the three, four, or five disruptive students—the black dot—while completely overlooking the twenty or so students who were eager to learn - the white space.

So the next day, I walked into the classroom, picked up a marker, and drew a square on the board. I placed a black dot in the middle.

And I promised myself:

Every time I felt my frustration building, every time I found myself giving all my energy to the students causing chaos, I would look at the black dot—and then shift my focus to the rest of the space.

Did It Work?

Not completely.

No magic fix. No perfect lessons.

But I didn’t lose my cool.

And for the first time in a long time, I found myself connecting with the students who wanted to learn.

Beyond the Noise

This small exercise changed something in me. It reminded me that where I direct my energy is a choice.

It also reinforced one of Buddhism’s most fundamental truths:

Cause and effect.

If I expect things to go wrong, if I assume my students will be disruptive, I create the very conditions for that reality to manifest.

In other words, we create what we think.

So maybe—just maybe—if I start expecting miracles, one day, I’ll walk into my classroom and find all thirty students ready to learn.

One can only hope, right?

And I guess the lesson here is that the obstacle is the path.

Because this struggle, this challenge, this frustration—it’s not blocking the way. It is the way.