Focus is the ability to maintain your attention in a chosen direction, on a selected task.
Whatever distracts you takes your attention off that on which you decided to focus.
To the degree that you can control your thoughts and maintain your focus, you are in control.
To the degree that you cannot control your attention, you are not in control, you are at effect.
I want you to be maximally in control of your thoughts and focus.
This maximises your chances of attaining your goals nad helping others.
There are three ways to increase your cause level.
The basis of these strategies is the recognition that there are different parts of your mind. The mind is not your brain, it is function rather than a structure. In this article I will very briefly touch on two of the major functions of the mind.
The first is that part of the mind with which you are reading this and calculating, that with which your decide your goals in life, that is intelligent, kind, creative, logical, ethical, communicative, in fact, anything good.
The other part of the mind is the accummulation of everything bad that has ever happened to you. Every physical and emotional pain, loss, betrayal, invalidation and failure.
Because it is a function, not a structure, you cannot see it. You only feel its effect. It is what causes you to feel ‘down’, to feel distracted and to lack focus.
When you feel ‘up’ it is because the gears from the sum of your pain are disengaged from your thinking. Your mood is good, you feel happy, you do not invalidate yourself and others, you think well of others, you contemplate goals, you think positively.
You are happier and more successful the more ‘up’ you feel.
The three non-exclusive ways to increase your cause level are:
1. Is to eradicate the source of the distractions to your focus. That is optimum but it is not a quick and easy solution. It takes education, time and commitment. The discussion of it is too large for an article. It is a whole book. If you want to pursue the path to the highest possible cause level, get in touch with me.
2. Is to learn to disengage that part of the mind from which the distractions emanate so it has less effect on your thinking. One of these techniques is to go for a walk and look at things until you feel better. This is so therapeutic it has been called a near cure-all.
3. Is to learn and apply administrative and organisational techniques that increase your cause level over the source of distractions.
Because:
-they are able to be immediately implemented,
-cost nothing but a bit of effort,
-you will benefit from them while doing 1 and 2,
the administrative and organisational technique is the easist to implement. Let’s start there.
The first step is to have a very clear idea of what you are trying to accomplish, the product of your efforts. Bit hard to maintain focus on a vague concept.
So formulate a clean, concise statement of whatever it is you want to accomplish.
The next step is to identify why you want to accomplish it, your motivating desire.
Now you know what you want to accomplish and why, the next action is to work out the sequence of actions that will lead to its accomplishment. This is called a sub-product list.
You can practice doing this by making a list of the resources and sequence of actions you need to make a cup of tea or coffee.
Now you know the what, why and how of accomplishing your target. This gives you exactly on what you need to focus.
This has not addressed that part of the mind from which resistance to you being successful emanates. So counter-intention (intention counter to your intention) can still manifest.
When you are concentrating on the task at hand you may receive a distracting thought. If at that point you allow yourself to think on that, you become distracted and lose focus on what you want to accomplish.
So whenever you are wanting to remain focused yet start to think of something else, the technique to apply is to revert your attention, to deliberately resume focusing again on the task immediately in front of you.
You do not need to spread your attention over all the future actions you need to take to accomplish your overall objective, just the action you are doing.
Often times the distractive thought comes back. In which case you just think again on the task immediately in front of you.
You may have to do this multiple times. Sometimes dozens of times. But as you continue to apply this, the distracting thoughts reduce.
For many people, this will seem strange.
When we are practicing a physical skill we are used to the idea of doing the action time and again, practicing doing it until we are competent at that brushstroke, musical chord, or footwork technique.
Rarely does someone explain to us that mental techniques also require practice to acquire competence.
Think of this technique like building a focus muscle, the more your practice it, the stonger it gets.
Unfortunately the opposite is also true. The more you allow yourself to be distrcted, the weaker the focus muscle gets.
I hope you choose to build that focus muscle.
I hope this helps.
To your health, fitness and happiness.
Tom Grimshaw
tom@tomgrimshaw.com
Further ‘Living Your Best Life’ resources:
How To Work Out Your Basic Purpose In Life:
https://www.tomgrimshaw.com/tomsblog/?p=37862
Boosting Your Confidence:
https://www.tomgrimshaw.com/tomsblog/?p=67246
On Bringing Order:
https://www.bringorder.info/English.html
Cultivating Life: Growing Food Sustainably:
https://www.seedtotable.com.au
How To Handle Depression – 7 Step Mini Program And Additional Steps
https://www.tomgrimshaw.com/tomsblog/?p=14412
My book ‘How To Live The Healthiest Life’:
https://howtolivethehealthiestlife.com/
Patience & Compassion:
https://www.tomgrimshaw.com/tomsblog/?p=67462
On Finding your Perfect Match:
https://www.tomgrimshaw.com/tomsblog/?p=39010
Addressing Procrastination:
https://www.tomgrimshaw.com/tomsblog/?p=67238
How To Boost Self-Discipline:
https://www.tomgrimshaw.com/tomsblog/?p=67086
A 4 Tier “Systems Health Triage” Model:
https://www.tomgrimshaw.com/tomsblog/?p=65233
Effective Time Managment:
https://www.tomgrimshaw.com/tomsblog/?p=67285
Vaccination Data and References:
https://www.tomgrimshaw.com/tomsblog/?p=3835
Return to Wellness Protocol – Your A-Z Guide to A Complete Mind and Body Reset:
https://www.tomgrimshaw.com/tomsblog/?p=64583