What Erling Haaland taught me about focus

The other night I watched Erling Haaland score the goal that knocked Brazil out of the World Cup.

He's the big blonde Norwegian who then picked up a drum and led the whole stadium in a chant, over and over, until eighty thousand people were roaring along with him.

I'm not a football follower. I couldn't explain the offside rule if you paid me.

But something he said last night really struck a chord with me.

He said, "I don't know how I do it, but that's how I do it. I just stay focused."

That's it. That's the whole secret.

I think that's why it landed so hard, because I hear a version of this from parents, and from the adults I work with, every single week.

We all know what it feels like to be "in the zone." When something matters enough to us, or we love it enough, focus seems to just show up on its own.

We need to focus when there's reading. Writing. Forms. Instructions. Anything with a lot of symbols crowded onto a page.

For everyone I work with, that's exactly when focus quietly sneaks away.

I have had just this experience this week, with Claude.

We have definitely had our share of terse words over the last couple of days.

Claude changed its format, and when I asked him to check my edits, his reply came back in one very long block of too much writing.

Well, my focus was gone in minutes. I could not concentrate with that volume of words.

It reminded me, again, how much this matters. Not just for children at school, but for teenagers, and for adults trying to get through emails, paperwork, or anything that asks the brain to sit still on a page.

Here's what I want people to understand. Being told to "focus" or "concentrate" has never once taught anyone how to actually do it.

And screwing up your face, clenching your jaw, and tensing your shoulders while you try to concentrate doesn't help either. In fact, it works against you completely.

There is a way to bring focus back on purpose, in a way that works with how you learn, not against it. That's the very first thing I teach, before we do any other work together.

This is why I love doing this work.

That little girl who walked into my office with her lips pressed tight and her shoulders already carrying the weight of believing she was the problem, she left an hour later having built something with her hands and having said things out loud that she had probably never said to anyone before. She deserves to understand her unique way of learning. So does your child.