Attention & Focus · “You Become What You Hold”
Sense-Attention Will Training
Strengthen the will by forcing the whole self through a single sense — gazing, listening, smelling, tasting or feeling one object exclusively and exhaustively.
Pick one sense. Choose one object. Throw your whole self into it — gaze / listen / smell / taste / feel it exclusively and exhaustively. Then, without sensing it again, recall everything in detail (write it down). Hold the mood “I resolve to will — attention!” Run daily ten days, rest two, note improvement on the tenth. Never strain.
What it is
The opening practical course of Power of Will: five chapters of graded drills (Eye, Ear, Taste, Smell, Touch) that all share one move — throw the entire self into a single sense and attend to one object exhaustively, then note what was perceived.
Haddock’s governing law is “The value of the use of any sense depends upon the amount and quality of person thrown into its exercise.” The senses are treated as the “common miners for raw material of mental life,” and disciplining them is the first rung of will-culture.
Crucially, for Haddock the object of the drill is incidental; the real target is the will itself — “But attention for what purpose? For one sole purpose — Will-power!”
The Method
Pick one sense per session and run one of his drills. Representative examples, in his own design:
- Eye — exhaustive single-object gaze (Ch. IX, Ex. 1). “Select an object for attention. a chair or a tree. Gaze at this object attentively, persistently, steadily. Do not strain the eyes; use them naturally.” Then interrogate it completely: its size, distance, shape, color, material, how it was made, its purpose, whether it could be improved. “Hold mind rigidly to its task.” Without looking again, write out everything from memory. Repeat ten days, rest two (one being Sunday), note improvement on the tenth day.
- Eye — forcing soul into the gaze (Ch. IX, Ex. 9-10). Gaze at a small spot eight or ten feet off, winking naturally, while slowly counting fifty. Hold the one thought The Direct Eye, and behind it the mood “I WILL! I AM FORCING WILL INTO THE EYE.” Add twenty counts each day.
- Ear — the faint regular sound (Ch. X, Ex. 2 & 4). “Select the faintest sound that continues coming to you. Note everything that can be said concerning it.” Or single out one regular sound, “Shut out all other sounds. Be filled with it. Become absorbed in it.”
- Ear — the receding watch-tick (Ch. X, Ex. 8). In silence, hold a watch at arm’s length from the right ear; if you can’t hear it, “Move the watch gradually nearer the ear until you hear. Note the distance at which the ticking first becomes audible,” record and date it, repeat with the left ear, then track the distance over ten days.
- Taste / Smell — discriminate and recall (Chs. XI-XII). Separate taste from touch (alum, pepper, sugar); or smell a flower, walk away, and “recall the quality and intensity of the smell.” Hunt a hidden odorous object by scent alone in a cleared room.
- Touch — read the world blind (Ch. XIII). Eyes closed, identify small objects by touch alone; judge weights of paired blocks by “feel”; trace rough vs. smooth, silk vs. linen. The constants across all of them: keep “the Mood or feeling of Will” strongly present; “Put your soul into your nose / ear / eye”; do each drill daily for ten days, then rest two; and on the tenth day note the improvement. Throughout, repeat the watchword silently: “I RESOLVE TO WILL! ATTENTION!!”
Source & Lineage
Power of Will (1907), Part II “Physical Regime,” Chapters IX (Eye), X (Ear), XI (Taste), XII (Smell), XIII (Touch). The whole sense-course rests on his Eighth-chapter “principles of practice,” especially the law that exercising one faculty “exerts a developing influence upon the function itself,” and the “Eyes and No-eyes” parable he borrows for the art of watching.
Frank Channing Haddock (1853-1915), Methodist-minister-turned-author of the Power-Book Library. → (haddock frank channing).
Common refinements
Straining the eyes. Haddock is emphatic: natural use, winking allowed, never “disagreeably distended.” Strain defeats the purpose.
- Skipping the write-up / recall. The drill is not just looking — it’s looking, then reconstructing from memory. Omitting that hollows it.
- No rest. “The rest periods must be observed” — two days off per ten.
- Dropping the Will-mood. Without the held intention “I resolve to will,” it becomes idle observation, not will-culture.
- Cramming senses. Work one sense per session; mixing them blurs the discrimination he’s after.