Your Monday Focus Check
Father’s Day was yesterday. My kids put money under my pillow and treated me like a king all day. It was honestly one of the best days I’ve had in a while.
And still. At some point during the day, one of them wanted to show me something. A drawing, I think. And I caught myself looking at it while also thinking about something else. Half there, half somewhere else.
I do this constantly. My kid is right there, trying to share something with me, and part of my brain is running through the week ahead or replaying a conversation from last Tuesday. Then later I feel guilty about it, which helps exactly no one.
The doorway reset
Here’s something I’ve been trying. Stupid simple but it actually works.
Every time I walk through a doorway at home, I use it as a reset. One breath. Drop whatever I was just thinking about. Arrive in this room, with whoever is in it.
That’s it. Doorway equals reset.
The idea comes from research on something called the “doorway effect.” Scientists found that walking through a doorway causes your brain to create an “event boundary,” a natural break between what came before and what comes next. Your brain actually segments experiences around physical transitions. Researchers at Notre Dame, led by Gabriel Radvansky, ran studies on this in the early 2010s and found that people forget what they were doing after walking through a door because the brain treats it as the end of one mental episode and the beginning of another.
Most of the time, that’s annoying. You walk into the kitchen and forget why you went there.
But you can use it on purpose. The doorway is already creating a break in your attention. You’re just adding an intention to it.
Walk through the door into your kid’s room. Reset. Be here now.
Walk through the door back into the house after work. Reset. The work day is over.
Walk through the door into the living room where your family is watching TV. Reset. This is where you are.
One word, one transition
If you want to take it further, pick one word before you walk through the doorway. Just one. The word you want to carry into the next room.
Present. Patient. Calm. Curious.
You don’t have to announce it. You don’t have to meditate on it. Just think the word as you cross the threshold.
Dan Siegel, the neuropsychiatrist, talks about how intentions “prime” the neural system to be in a certain mode. You’re gearing up your brain to receive, to sense, to focus in a particular way. One word is enough to do that.
The so what
Your kids don’t need more stuff from you. They need you to actually be there when you’re there.
And I’m not saying this like I’ve got it figured out. I’m saying it because I don’t. My kids gave me an incredible day yesterday and I still caught myself drifting. That’s the work. It’s always the work.
The doorway reset is one small way to get better at it.
Try it this week
Pick one doorway in your house. The one into the kitchen, maybe, or the one into the room where your kids usually are. Every time you walk through it, take one breath and think one word.
See what shifts.
A few things that might help
We built a free self-assessment that takes about five minutes. Tells you where you are with awareness, presence, stress response. Good baseline if you’re curious.
Take the Awareness to Action Self-Assessment here.
We also have a free app with guided practices and breathing exercises. Some of the tools from the course, available whenever you need them.
And if you want to go deeper, you can a part of the Awareness to Action course for free. Use the code FREE at checkout.
Or if you want to see everything that’s in it before you jump in:
What’s your doorway going to be? Reply and tell me.
Jon and Will