When it comes to concentration, you may well have a few misconceptions. You perhaps have a mental picture of someone with their face all screwed up, making an intense effort. But this is wrong. Concentration doesn’t involve any special effort, or tension.
Concentrating simply means shutting yourself off from outside influences and trying to keep your mind on a particular object or person. Concentrating is therefore purely a matter of trying to focus your attention on one single thing, for as long as possible.
This doesn’t require any great effort: every time you feel your attention slipping, just drag your thoughts back to the object you are concentrating on. And that’s all there is to it. Concentration merely consists of holding your attention on one thing in particular for as long as you have decided. It is therefore a kind of mental gymnastics, in which you exercise your “agility of mind.”
Concentration is the secret of success in many fields. It can help you to study, delve right into a subject, save time, increase efficiency, etc. It is also one of the keys which will help you to direct your willpower towards the target you are aiming at, so that you can actually reach it.
To begin with, practice concentrating quietly on an object of your choice. Choose something attractive and this will make the process more enjoyable: a flower for example. For several minutes, try to banish all thoughts that do not relate to that flower.
As soon as any extraneous thoughts creep in, allow them to drift away again without getting cross, and bring your attention back to the flower, or the object you have chosen. Try to see your object as though nothing else existed in the world. Closely observe its colours, its shape, and its texture.
You can even try to mentally project yourself into your object, and imagine that you are moving up and down inside, exploring each of its constituent parts.
Next, every time you get the opportunity, practice concentrating in public too, amidst all the noise: sitting outside a café, on a bus, on a train, in a supermarket queue.
Focus your attention on an object some distance away from you. Observe this object in minute detail as I explained to you above, in order to explore every aspect of it.
Practice for a few minutes every day, and try to gradually prolong your concentration. You will find that you make progress very quickly. This simple exercise will rapidly improve your powers of concentration quite remarkably. To your astonishment, you will constantly find that you pick up on masses of little details that others totally fail to spot …
No comments:
Post a Comment