Improve Your Concentration - Five Exercises to Keep Your Attitude Positive

Improve Your Concentration - Five Exercises to Keep Your Attitude Positive

What can you do with a typical light bulb? Light your house, give a slide show, read in bed, or party all night? Now, think about what happens to light after it's been focused? Think about what happens to diffused light when it's been focused and concentrated onto one tiny spot?

Focused light becomes a laser, and lasers can cut through metal, save eyesight and operate on the human heart. We suddenly have all that extra power just because we've concentrated and focused simple light.

A light bulb is diffused energy.

A laser is that same energy after it has been focused.

Our minds have the same power to focus. But in most of us, our thoughts are jumping around like monkeys from tree to tree. The average, undeveloped, human attention span is about twenty-seconds. Unless we consciously practice extending our attention span, we'll always lack focus, and we'll never be able to take advantage of our laser thinking. We'll simply become the victims of our own diffused, and often negative, thoughts.

How can you use the power of focus to build a worthwhile journey? You'll need to incorporate five exercises into your weekly practice: meditation, silence, non-judgment, discipline, and listening.

Practicing meditation means that you should actually spend some time learning to quiet your mind. Dr. Deepak Chopra explains meditation as going into the gaps between our thoughts, becoming a silent witness to those gaps, and allowing those gaps to deepen and expand until we realize that we exist independently from our thoughts. He says that our true nature does not lie within our thoughts but within the gaps between our thoughts; and that it is within those gaps that we can sometimes glimpse the depths of our divine nature. Now, most meditation experts suggest that you find someone to teach you meditation, and who am I to disagree. But I have had some success just sitting quietly, noticing the gaps between my thoughts and watching those gaps expand.

You will find as many meditation techniques as you will find people who meditate. Here's a technique that a Buddhist friend of mine taught me. He calls it Zen 101. Sit comfortably for ten minutes and simply count your breaths. Whenever you reach eleven, go back to the number one and begin your count again. You'll find that one of two things will tend to happen. You will either pass eleven without even realizing it, or you will lose track of your count somewhere between one and eleven. To be successful, this technique requires that you focus on accomplishing two tasks at once. Practice it ten minutes everyday, and watch your focus grow.

Practicing silence means that you should actively practice focusing on, and getting comfortable with, silence. I know many people who can't stand being silent for more than a few minutes. Silence makes them so uncomfortable that they talk endlessly without hearing what they say. They repeat themselves and don't even notice. The words in their minds have become habits without meaning because they never let themselves be silent.

You need to develop the habit of silence so that you can actually tell the difference between words and insight. You should try to get comfortable with silence. Practice silence. Focus on silence. Find a place to sit and watch as the world goes by, to just watch and observe.

Don't think about anything for an hour. Don't say anything for an afternoon. If you can, don't say anything for a day, and just see how peaceful and focused you begin to feel.

Practicing non-judgment means that you should actually resist the urge to constantly categorize everything under the sun. Judge not, least yea be judged is a very practical piece of advice. When you place everything into categories and judge them as either good or bad, you create turbulence in your inner dialogue and a need in yourself to prove things right or wrong. That turbulence steals your ability to focus.

When you practice non-judgment, you learn to quiet those turbulent thoughts in your mind. Practicing non-judgment means that you practice not seeing things as either good or bad, and you stop needing to assign blame. Once you begin to practice non-judgment, you will begin to find non-judgment easier. So, start small. Start by asking yourself to not judge anything, especially yourself, for one hour. And be easy on yourself with this exercise. Remember that this type of practice takes focus, and focus only improves with practice.

Practicing discipline means that you should actively study a discipline. All disciplines improve your focus. So pick a discipline that you are passionate about-dance, martial arts, athletics, yoga, music, science, gardening, writing, philosophy, sculpting, painting, etc.-and spend some time mastering it.

And finally, practicing listening means that you should actually try to improve your listening skills. Whenever you practice listening, you build your ability to focus and you make yourself the most popular person in town. Two very good reasons to practice listening.

In my experience, people do not listen very well. A lot of people mistake hearing for listening, and then they wonder why people accuse them of not understanding. Depending on the circumstance, people often ignore what they hear, or pretend to be listening, or listen selectively-as most of us do whenever we disagree with someone. But even when people do listen actively, they still tend to listen autobiographically; meaning they try to advise, evaluate, probe and explain someone else's thoughts based upon their own experiences.

Autobiographical listening occurs whenever we listen to people while still focused on what we think. If we want to listen effectively, we need to consciously switch our focus towards discovering what other people think.

After all, shouldn't listening to you, help me to discover what you think, rather than help me to decide what I think of you? Shouldn't listening to you, open my mind to your thoughts, rather than determine whether or not, I agree with your thoughts? Shouldn't listening to you, help me to understand you, rather than help me to advise you?

Very few people have developed a knack for listening well. Few people can really focus on what you're trying to communicate. Instead, they focus on how your words affect them. Few people can really listen to your intentions, especially if they disagree with you, or are bored by you. Even fewer people can actually incorporate your definitions into their understanding.

Effective listening is extremely rare and very precious.

We explore all the tools and principles of effective listening in rule twelve on the Navigating Life website; but for now, just concentrate on exercising the quality of your focus. Practice listening to people without advising, questioning, probing, evaluating, explaining, defending, interrupting, or judging. Just listen to them. Whenever you catch yourself considering what you think, gently pull your attention back to understanding what they think. Focus your attention on understanding what's going on inside the head and heart of another human being.

The better you get at listening, the better your relationships will become. The better you get at listening, the better your focus will become-two very nice benefits for the price of one.

So now you have five exercises that can help you to improve your focus. Practice them all, and watch your focus grow.

What's the bottom line on focus?

William James once wrote that the greatest day in your life and mine is the day we take total responsibility for our attitudes. That is the day we truly grow up.

Your attitude is the result of your focus.

Do you want more fear in your life? Then focus on what you fear. Do you want more emptiness in your life? Then spend all of your time reminding yourself how empty you are. Do you want to feel helplessness? Then focus your thoughts on everything that you're helpless to change. Whatever you focus upon, you'll find. Want more gratitude? Then notice what makes you grateful. Want everyone to seem wonderful? Then pay attention to what makes people wonderful. Want a sense of joy in your life? Then cultivate what brings you joy; take a trek through the woods; play with some kids; lose yourself in a museum; sail down a river.

The power of focus says that whatever you focus your attention upon will grow and expand in your consciousness until it becomes your reality and affects your behavior. So spend more time focused on what you want, and you'll start seeing more of what you want.

Change your focus, and you will change how you experience life's river.

Lynn Marie Sager has toured over two-dozen countries and worked on three continents. Author of A River Worth Riding: Fourteen Rules for Navigating Life, Lynn currently lives in California; where she fills her time with private coaching, public speaking, and teaching for the LACCD and Pierce College. She runs the Navigating Life website, where she offers free assistance to readers who wish to incorporate the rules of worthwhile living into their lives. To read more about how you can use focus to improve your life, visit Lynn's website at http://www.navigatinglife.org and drop by boarding.

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