 “Focused mind power is one of the strongest forces on earth.” - Mark Victor Hansen You have many tools available to you these days to help you get your mind focused on whatever task you have before you. It’s just a matter of learning and applying them to your advantage. These tools are:
Meditation Just mentioning meditation may conjure, in your mind, the image of a large Buddha in the lotus position, chanting a mantra and humming. Scientists have done studies to test the effectiveness of meditation on the body and brain of a human being. You may be astonished to learn of their findings. Meditation helps balance your bio-chemical centers, making it possible to control mood swings, and improve your ability to get the restful, rejuvenating sleep you need, for your body and your mind. It can reduce stress, anxiety, and depression; increase your mental stamina; improve your memory; and give you the ability to focus and multitask. Meditation stimulates the brain’s neural pathways and helps you develop better, more effective mental discipline. It can even be used to stem the ever-constant flow of intrusive information, thanks to today’s technology. If you are attempting to develop a wider, more flexible attention span, a healing power for your body, and greater powers of concentration, meditation might be just what the doctor ordered. While there are many types of meditative practices, the one thing in common is the focus on trying to quiet the overly busy mind. You may not be able to remove yourself from an uncomfortable scenario or event, but you can direct your thoughts into a more healing zone and learn how to cope with those events. Fill your mind with peace and quiet, keep that mind calm even in the roughest emotional storm, and worry and stress will get less of a foothold. The whole point of meditation is to keep the mind in the here and now, not allowing it to go flitting off into the past, reliving old memories, or worrying about an uncertain future. These are the two largest sources of chronic stress in our society today. We can do nothing to alter the past and tomorrow is a mystery waiting to be solved. Worrying about either one is not conducive to good health, physical or mental. Researchers have proven that meditating doesn’t just make you feel calm, it can actually make you perform better; and believe it or not, it can alter the structure of your brain. They’ve determined that meditating increases the thickness of the cortex in the areas of the brain having to do with attention and sensory processing. Dr. Sara Lazar, currently on staff at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, says of the human brain, “You are exercising it while you meditate and it gets bigger.” Studies have shown that in the brains of accomplished musicians, athletes, and linguists, you will find this same thickening in certain areas of the cortex. Dr. Lazar points out that the growth of the cortex is not due to the growth of new neurons, but results from wider blood vessels, more supporting structures such as glia and astrocytes, and increased branching and connections. And all that happens while you simply sit and ponder the universe. So how do you gain this calming, restful meditative state in today’s world? Start by turning off everything intrusive. Turn off your pager and cell phone, unplug the fax machine, and shut down your computer. Let your answering service or machine take phone messages, so you’ll have no interruptions. Meditating twenty minutes twice a day could not only give you peace of mind and a way of facing the world calmly, but it could save your life, by reducing blockages in your blood vessels, and lowering the risk of sudden heart attack or stroke. As for the methods or processes to meditation, there are many ways to go and you should choose what’s best for you. Find a comfortable place in which to meditate, free from distractions preferably. You can add music, if you wish, or a recording of soft nature sounds. Some people start by focusing on their breath, being conscious of it at all times, breathing in and out. This has an automatic calming effect, since most of us run around all day every day without breathing properly. The short, shallow breaths are indicative of the panic or stress we all live in so much of the time. By concentrating on your breath, you help yourself to calm down. While you can calm down and meditate whether your eyes are open or closed, it’s probably best to close your eyes at the very beginning of this experience. This will allow you to better focus on the inner peace you’re seeking. Now you’re focusing on your breath, listening to soft sounds of nature, such as ocean waves or rainfall, and hopefully, no other sounds or distractions are present in this quest for calm and peace. Try adding one more element to your meditation-visualization. There are many images available for you to concentrate on. Picture some place you’ve visited or read about. Fix the image clearly in your mind, with your eyes closed, then insert yourself into that image. Imagine that you’re there, wherever that is. Hear the sounds, feel the textures, be there. “All profitable correction comes from a calm and peaceful mind.”-St. Francis de Sales It may be difficult to do this exercise at first, but practice makes perfect. Finding those twenty minutes twice a day may even seem impossible to accomplish, so start with just a couple of minutes to begin with and work at it a little longer each day. It will get easier with practice. You may even begin to look forward to these tiny vacations from the outside world. Here is a helpful traditional Navajo prayer that will aid in focusing your mind.
Scientist, writer and meditation teacher, Jon Kabat-Zinn, tells us that “Meditation is neither shutting things out nor off. It is seeing clearly and deliberately positioning yourself differently in relationship to them.” Yoga In performing the many yoga exercises, you are slowing your brain’s activity from the Beta stage to the Alpha stage to allow it to become calm, so you are able to concentrate on the poses and breathing. Yoga allows you to find that positive inner self, become calm and focused and gain some control over the chaos that surrounds you. It teaches you balance, both emotional and physical, and gives you a sense of your own strength. A benefit of doing yoga, even for the beginner, is increased focus and concentration, not just for the exercises, but also for everything in life. You’ll find you’re able to withstand the storms of everyday life, as well as the occasional traumas that come your way. It’s a domino effect actually; you learn to maintain balance in your life, and how to remain calm and focused. Being focused allows you to concentrate on what you desire to learn. And when you’re calm and focused, concentrating on the lessons needed, you soak it up like a sponge. Yoga is too complex to learn in one small report, but you can find teachers and help almost anywhere. Check online and in your local yellow pages phone book for qualified teachers. Hypnosis You’re probably picturing a little man waving a pocket watch in front of the subject, telling him he’s going into a deep sleep and giving him instructions which he is then compelled to obey. This couldn’t be further from the truth. The person being hypnotized is not under anyone’s control; they have total free will. They are not in a deep sleep. In fact, it’s not even a semi-sleep state at all. The subject is actually hyper-attentive when under hypnosis. While in this trance-like state, the subject will react to suggestions as if they’re indeed reality. If the hypnotist suggests that they are hungry or thirsty, they will actually feel hunger pangs or express a desire for water. If a suggestion is made that the subject is feeling fear, they will react with panic and even begin to sweat. Hypnosis has been described as a trance-like state where the subject shows heightened imagination and relaxation. It’s been compared to normal daydreaming, something we all do on occasions. You may have experienced the feeling of losing yourself in a sensation, a movie, or a great book; you simply lost all track of time, while you were engrossed in what you were doing or watching. This is a form of self-hypnosis and according to Milton Erikson, the premier hypnotism expert of the 20th century, people do it on a daily basis. A lot of what we do every day is automatic; we don’t really think consciously of every single thing. Your conscious mind processes information and relays it to your subconscious, which works on it while you’re asleep. Hypnotism works much the same way. While under hypnosis, your conscious mind is relaxed and out of the way, and your subconscious takes over. Since the subconscious is the area of imagination and impulse, you feel more free and creative. When you’re awake, your conscious mind feels the need to filter all the information that flows through and inhibits your subconscious. When you’re asleep or under hypnosis, that inhibition is removed; you react automatically. So self-hypnosis, that ability we all have to simply lose ourselves in whatever we’re doing, will come in handy when you need to concentrate on the task at hand. Let yourself go, lose yourself in the task. When you’ve learned to quell the distractions around you and just lose yourself in the moment, you’ll find the task goes easier, faster, and your mind is open to more learning and experience. Self-Talk “First say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do.” - Epictetus Self-talk is the ongoing dialogue you have with yourself about everything from day to day occurrences to the challenges life occasionally throws at all of us. You may not even be aware of it at first; it’s simply a part of you. Once you become aware of this inner dialogue, you may be surprised at how you talk to yourself. Sadly, there’s no getting rid of this self-talk, it will always be with you. However, you can do something about the direction the self-talk takes; you can control whether it’s positive or negative talk. It often starts early in life, with our minds reacting to what others say to us. “You’ll never amount to anything,” “You can’t do that,” “Who do you think you are?” Comments like these have a negative impact on the rest of our lives, unless we do something to offset them. The trouble is we often pick up where that other person or persons left off, unconsciously continuing the negative dialogue, this time with ourselves. It’s time to begin a new dialogue, a positive dialogue with ourselves. The negative comments are unnecessary and damaging to our psyche. How do we do that? We can start by recognizing those negative tapes as they roll through our brains. You’ll be amazed at how often those negative tapes play over and over in our brains, reinforcing the damaging, negative emotions. As soon as a negative thought intrudes itself into your brain, stop right there and flip it around. Let’s say you’ve made a mistake in a job you’re doing. Your first impulse might be to say, “Well, that was stupid! I can never get this right. Why do I even try?” Stop yourself right there and amend that dialogue. Try saying, “Oops, that was a mistake, but I’ll get it right the next time. Nobody’s perfect.” In other words, give yourself a break. Others may have been hard on you in the past, but it’s no reason to continue being hard on yourself now. Now use this lesson to learn to concentrate better and focus on what’s important to you. Stop chastising yourself for not being more focused. You may be tempted to say, “What’s wrong with you? Why can’t you concentrate on this problem?” Instead, acknowledge that you may have been a little unfocused, but you’re learning how to do better. Be nice to yourself. Be less critical and more uplifting with yourself. You deserve it! You most likely wouldn’t put up with someone else talking to you like that. Why would you put up with it from yourself? Keep in mind that the more negative self-talk you give yourself, the more stressed and helpless you feel. In order to empower yourself and reduce the stress, it’s essential that you begin to use more positive self-talk. Build yourself up. Don’t limit yourself. You may have, on occasions, muttered, “I can’t handle any more of this!” Remember, your subconscious absolutely believes whatever it hears; if you constantly feed it negativity, that’s what it will believe about you. Whatever you think you can or cannot do, you’re right. So, let’s make it a positive experience. Concentration Exercises Learning the art of concentration requires practice every day. Your mind probably doesn’t really want to be disciplined, and it will try to talk you out of mental exercise the same way it talks you out of physical exercise. “Stay in bed,” it says, “Go ahead and daydream, why not?” “It’s okay to be lazy!” Don’t listen to this nonsense. You’re stronger than that; don’t be a slave to the whims of your mind. It’s time to train that brain in the way it should go. You begin the training with a little meditation time. Find a comfortable chair to sit in and get relaxed. Close your eyes and picture numbers or letters, one at a time. When you can see the letter or number in your head, say it. Then picture the next in the sequence, and so on, until you reach the end of the alphabet or up to about 100. This may seem overly simplified, but it’s a great way to train your brain to do what you want it to do and not what it wants to do. Another simple concentration exercise is to sit comfortably, facing a blank wall. Stare at the blank wall and count your breaths. Focus on staring at that wall and counting your breaths, and let nothing else enter your mind. If your mind starts to wander, bring it gently back to the blank wall and the breathing. You can also pick an object in the room, focus on it, and study it carefully. Notice the size, the shape, what it’s made of, everything about it. Now, close your eyes and try to imagine the object in your mind’s eye. If your mind wanders, open your eyes and focus on the object again, then repeat the process. These exercises can be done each day for a few minutes, until you are able to control your concentration and successfully focus on whatever you’ve chosen. Show your brain who’s boss! |
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