Key idea 1
Happiness is a way of life, not a destination.
Before the kids get up for school, Sarah is preparing coffee in her kitchen when she is only semi-awake. She is browsing through alerts on her smartphone while raking coffee grinds with the other hand. She moves over to the refrigerator to start making breakfast after seeing the time and hearing her email ping.
She realises she didn’t turn it on since she can’t smell coffee. She pokes the button in frustration before turning her attention back to her phone to see if there are any new emails.
When she reads that a colleague is ill and will be unable to give a presentation this afternoon, her heart rate quickens. Since Sarah despises delivering presentations, her attitude quickly shifts from annoyance to terror. The thought of the squad asking her to step in makes her pulse race.
She is now experiencing an emotional roller coaster and anxieties. Her children dashed down the stairs for breakfast right then. They are told to get ready quickly since she is running late. She immediately regrets her harsh comments as she watches them lose their positive attitude. How can she help? She ruminates in her head. The youngsters will comprehend that she has a lot on her mind.
Her day is already wrought with anxiety, worry, rage, and melancholy.
After years of such mornings, Sarah feels exhausted and estranged from her children. She feels upset and puzzles about how things came to be this way.
Imagine the same morning, but this time Sarah makes one change: she concentrates her thoughts.
After a restful night’s sleep, Sarah wakes up early and makes her bed to end her sleep cycle and prepare for the day. After finishing, she gives her next duty, preparing her coffee, her whole focus. then repeats the process for breakfast, and so on.
She has already made the decision to delay checking her alerts until after she gets to the workplace so she can focus entirely on her morning. The youngsters feel joyful and cherished when they see her care. She is made glad by their laughter and openness during breakfast, and they both have a good day.
By maintaining this level of concentration throughout the day, Sarah can give every client or assignment her entire attention. She leaves her encounters feeling motivated and takes that feeling back to her family at night. Sarah is content after doing this regimen for years. Her undertakings are successful, and her connections are thriving.
While getting up and starting the day was the same aim for both Sarahs, they ultimately end up quite far different. The only distinction? One practised training her awareness to concentrate via her regular activities, whereas the other did not. Why does focusing matter so much? Everything is determined by the mind.
Key idea 2
Although consciousness does, the mind does not.
Given how effective mind-focusing is, it would be wise to take a time to learn more about how the mind and consciousness function.
Initially, there are three mental states in which your mind may be found: conscious, subconscious, and superconscious. Others may define things differently, but for the sake of this discussion, let’s choose unfocused Sarah as our example.
Her conscious mind is the one engaging with the environment, guiding her around the kitchen, responding to physical cues, and being cognizant of her hunger. It responds instinctively. Her aware mind responds and withdraws if anything hot or sharp touches her flesh.
Her subconscious is more expansive. It is entangled in Sarah’s logic and thinking. Unlike her conscious mind, it keeps track of everything she does every day and chooses whether she will remember it or not. It understands what it encounters and anticipates what will happen next. It exhibits pattern recognition and works quite similarly to core programming.
The most difficult thing to express about her superconscious consciousness is because it transcends language in many ways. Both creativity and intuition come from this area of the mind. It’s what some people refer to as their higher mind, fundamental self, or spiritual mind. It has significant and transformational experiences.
Sarah just exists in her conscious and subconscious minds, and only this third mind is able to realise what is best for her in the long term. Her superconscious is mute due to the everyday deluge of information and emotions.
It is now obvious how big the mind really is. Nevertheless, identifying the mind also necessitates defining its agent, consciousness. So let’s examine this more closely.
Unfocused Sarah glides about her morning, her awareness bouncing around various parts of her head. Picture her awareness as a ball of light that can only concentrate on one region at a time and lights just a tiny area surrounding it. For instance, when Sarah pours the coffee, her awareness, that glimmering ball of light, is really illuminating the news-focused portion of her mind as she scans her phone. Her consciousness immediately shifts to the “frustration” region of the mind when she realises the coffee isn’t on. After I read the email with information on the presentation, a bright ball leaves from annoyance and flies over to “fear.”
While her thinking hasn’t changed during this, her awareness has travelled across her mind’s far-off regions at the speed of light. This morning, seeing her children, which often causes her consciousness to become joyful, was unable to do so. They were gripping it tightly out of “fear,” and she yelled at them. This abruptly brought her attention to her melancholy, and so forth.
but concentrated Each activity was completely illuminated by the ball of light, which Sarah decided to follow through on. She practised concentrated awareness in each moment using her morning routines. Breakfast is cooked and coffee is made without multitasking. They can sense her presence when she is entirely focused on her family. She is not sidetracked, and neither does her attention wander to the present or the past.
In other words, she has control over where her consciousness is located inside her mind and is not subject to outside stimuli. As we’ll see in the following section, we may all choose to do this.
Key idea 3
Give up multitasking so you may regain your attentiveness.
A shocking conclusion may be drawn from an understanding of mental states and the role that consciousness plays in navigating them. Your awareness, not your thinking, is who you are.
Let’s go back to our wild Mustang horses to see why, but let’s slightly alter our metaphor. Consider our consciousness to be one of those racing mustangs. The majority of us have huge brains filled with untrained awareness. As a consequence, until it exhausts itself, our consciousness jumps from place to place and scenario to situation. It may have travelled miles in a day while darting back and forth between the past and the future, but it wasn’t making any specific progress. It only pauses for rest when it is worn out. As a creature of habit, it keeps going back to the same sites, even when they are hazardous, even if this is bad for long-term survival. The horse travels around a large region that little changes, yet its experiences are shaped by the places it goes.
Imagine consciousness as the same horse after it has received training. This horse travels from place to place skillfully and under control, paying close attention to the rider’s instructions. It doesn’t exhaust itself after a few panicky seconds. When the rider often travels there, it has established well-traveled pathways to joyful, healthy places of the mind. More trust is built the longer awareness, or this concentrated horse, heeds the rider’s cues. No matter what happens, the horse is no longer startled and bolts towards the cliff edges of unresolved emotions or the marshes of trauma.
To do this, consciousness must follow rather than lead. Who is the rider, though? The rider is your superconscious mind, the part of you that is at the centre of your intuition and creative expression. The superconscious, the third mental level, may become active via focus. It may begin to flow to areas of the mind that are healthy and beneficial to dwell in as one with consciousness. When you use your mental energy wisely, both you and your environment prosper. Without added stress, you can maintain your attention and be totally present in whatever you do.
Any training must start gently and methodically, particularly with something as energising and potent as your awareness. We witnessed Sarah practising concentrating her awareness as she went about her morning, returning to the concentrated Sarah. She’s not flawless, and some mornings are better than others. Yet she practises paying attention via routine activities and conversations in an effort to keep her mind focused at all times.
We’ll describe how everyone can begin to do the same in the section after this.
Key idea 4
Concentration involves repetition and measurement of improvement.
Begin with a modest goal. After a long holiday weekend filled with burgers and beer, you wouldn’t get up off the sofa and run the New York City Marathon. After a few steamy kilometres, you wouldn’t go very far and perhaps stop jogging completely.
It’s important not to try to become a yogi overnight to begin practising concentration. Consider how many hours you waste on social media or how often you arrive late because you were thinking about a fight and lost sight of time. It will take time to learn attention since you’ve spent your whole life practising distraction.
Making a list of five daily activities, such as brushing your teeth or conversing with your spouse over a meal, can help you practise patience. Include an order of priority in your list-making. Knowing it is crucial to your relationships can move that final item up the list, for example, if your family often complains that you are easily distracted.
Commit to focusing only on the first job from from point on until it is finished. Whatever the task, give it your best effort, and aim to do better each time. For instance, if you find your attention straying at dinner with your partner, pull it back and focus even harder. Because you’ve been practising distraction for so long, it could be challenging at first to retain your complete present. Yet with some repetition, it becomes simpler.
Take a quiet minute each day after the practise to score yourself. This will help you stay motivated. Use a straightforward scale, such as three points for exceptional concentration, two points for a good deal of focus, one point for a passable effort, and zero points if your attention seemed to wander.
Add up the score once a month and divide by the total number of days you kept track of. Don’t add on the second job until you are regularly rating yourself outstanding in attention on the first. It can take a few months for your score to improve for only this first task. The timing of taking on the next is entirely up to you, but exercise patience. With time, practise increases strength much like a muscle. Your ability to concentrate will increase as you engage in more of these simple daily practises.
Your awareness is trained to remain steadfast even in the midst of external turmoil by daily practise and measuring your development. In a discussion with your spouse, for example, maintaining awareness might prevent you from reacting furiously in the heat of the moment after a misunderstanding and instead prompt you to seek explanation. This improves your connection over time. Giving your teeth the utmost care will pay off at the dentist as well.
Thus, keep trying to practise attention even on the days when you fail since it will benefit you in many ways at once. Similar to physical exercise, being honest and patient with yourself will be helpful on difficult days. You’ll be prepared to combat the enemies of attention, such as worry and anxiety, as your practise progresses and you maintain focus more and more of the time. In the part after this, we’ll see how.
Key idea 5
Concern, anxiety, and stress may be managed via focus.
Let’s utilise Sarah’s awareness, who is once again unfocused, to identify some typical focus-destroying foes.
Her attention shifts from making breakfast to the area of her mind where she plans for the future when she reads the work email. She envisions herself tense, perspiring, and stuttering in front of the customer. Her memory may have flashed back to a previous time in her life when she had been timid in front of a crowd. She is overcome with unresolved feelings from the past as soon as her focus shifts to this area of her mind, and she projects those feelings into the future.
In a matter of seconds, her perception shifts from the present to the far future to a traumatic past. She thus experiences overwhelming tension and worry.
When focused Sarah avoids checking emails until she is prepared to concentrate on her task. If she is given the presenting work at the last minute, she could realise that her mind is attempting to conjure up horrible scenarios or sad memories, but she keeps her attention on the task at hand until it is finished. She makes sensible judgements in the present because of her trained attention, which prevents her consciousness from straying. She is ecstatic after the presentation since it goes well.
The more intense a traumatic memory or unresolved emotion is, the more attention may be attracted to it when fresh circumstances appear. Certain traumatic events have established pathways in our minds because our consciousness returns to them often, consuming mental energy without bringing about any change. There are several effective techniques to assist in resolving issues over time, including counselling and treatment. Focus exercises might also be helpful.
For instance, you could discover that when you wash your teeth, your attention begins to stray into unresolved feelings or painful memories. That’s OK, but try to gently return to brushing. Tell yourself that everything is OK right now and keep your attention on the here and now. You’ll gain confidence in your capacity to bring your attention back to the present moment and away from negative thinking patterns over time.
Similar to this, when you start worrying, you’ll realise that you’re picturing the future rather than paying attention to the present, you’re extrapolating potential futures based on your previous experiences—oftentimes unpleasant ones—and that you’re using up all of your mental energy. This process may be stopped and your energy can be directed back onto the work at hand by gently returning your attention to the present. assisting you in making good decisions in response to what is occurring right now.
You don’t have to alter your life to get the advantages of practise; they may be astounding. Over time, changing how you concentrate your awareness on the activities you currently do might alter how you experience a lot of life. You may become more connected to yourself, your relationships, and your life’s path the more present your concentration is. assisting you in making the most of the most finite and priceless resource of all—the time in your life.
Final summary
While your mind is large and contains numerous parts, your awareness is limited. Focus may be used to govern awareness in positive ways as opposed to negative ones. Start off cautiously by giving your best to simple everyday practises. Extend this over time to offer you control over how and where your mental energy is invested. The practise may help you get rid of concern, deal with ongoing stress, build your relationships, and alter how you see life as your concentration grows.
Here is some helpful guidance as you go through your process:
Keep going!
If it takes a while, keep trying until you can fully concentrate on each of the five everyday activities you’ve selected. Create a second list and decide on five more daily routines to adopt. Like the previous, add them gradually and one at a time. Keep an eye on your development and reflect often as well. You’ll start to discover that the more concentrated you are each day, the easier it will be to prioritise your tasks and free up mental energy for the things that are really important in your life.
