The Power of Concentration

That’s “Lesson 1.”

If you haven’t noticed, we have two natures within us—one that’s pushing us to actualize, to express the highest version of ourselves, and one that’s pulling us back and getting us to do things we’re not quite so proud of.

All the great teachers and traditions come back to this truth again and again.

I love how Alan Cohen puts it in Why Your Life Sucks (see Notes) where he tells us: “Imagine two lawyers in a courtroom inside your head. One is arguing for your possibilities and you achieving your goals. The other is arguing for your limits and why you don’t deserve what you want. Who will win? The lawyer whom you pay the most. The way you pay these lawyers, however, is not with money; it is with your attention.”

Love it.

Two lawyers in a courtroom inside your head.

One arguing for possibilities. The other for limitations.

Who wins?

The one you pay the most.

Remember: We pay them in attention.

The one who wins is the one we CONCENTRATE on.

Let’s put our attention/concentration on the good stuff!! :)

Concentration = strength of mind.

Can you put your attention where you want, when you want? That’s the primary question.

The happiest among us have that power. The unhappiest do not. It really is that simple.

If that little drunk, crazy monkey in our mind is given free reign to swing from thought to thought to thought to thought to thought to thought to endless thought, we will be miserable. Period.

Good news (as we know by now): We can train our minds. And we must.

How? You guessed it. Meditation! As we discuss again and again, it’s anaerobic training for the mind. Weightlifting for your concentration muscles.

Here’s how Baumeister puts it in his classic book Willpower (see Notes): “Religious meditations often involve explicit and effortful regulation of attention. The beginner’s exercise in Zen meditation is to count one’s breaths up to ten and then do it again, over and over. The mind wanders quite naturally, so bringing it back to focus narrowly on one’s breathing builds mental discipline. So does saying the rosary, chanting Hebrew psalms, repeating Hindu mantras. When neuroscientists observe people praying or meditating, they see strong activity in two parts of the brain that are also important for self-regulation and control of attention… prayers and meditation rituals are “a kind of anaerobic workout for self-control.””

Jon Kabat-Zinn gives us this mojo in Wherever You Go There You Are (see Notes): “You can think of concentration as the capacity of the mind to sustain an unwavering attention on one object of observation. It is cultivated by attending to one thing, such as the breath, and just limiting one’s focus to that. In Sanskrit, concentration is called samadhi, or “onepointedness.” Samadhi is developed and deepened by continually bringing the attention back to the breath every time it wanders. When practicing strictly concentrative forms of meditation, we purposefully refrain from any efforts to inquire into areas such as where the mind went when it wandered off, or that the quality of the breath fluctuates. Our energy is directed solely toward experiencing this breath coming in, this breath going out, or some other single object of attention. With extended practice, the mind tends to become better and better at staying on the breath, or noticing even the earliest impulse to become distracted by something else, and either resisting its pull in the first place and staying on the breath, or quickly returning to it.”

Well, there ya go. Let’s his the mind gym.

We know meditation is a fantastic way to build our concentration muscles.

Another great way?

Use every little moment as an opportunity to build our mind muscles.

Practice with the small stuff. That’s how we get the strength to deal with the big things.

And KNOW that, as Gary Keller says in The ONE Thing (see Notes): “Multitasking doesn’t save time—it wastes time.”

Practice focusing your attention on whatever you’re doing.

Turn off all the distractions and just do what’s in front of you. Concentrate!!!

Master your mind with the small, unimportant things and it won’t get into mischief and drive you nuts with the big, important things. :)

Love that.

First, sticktoitiveness.

As Josh Billings tell us: “Be like a postage stamp— stick to one thing until you get there.”

And, reminds me of David Schwartz’s “stickability” from The Magic of Thinking Big (see Notes) where he tells us that “stickability is 95 percent of ability.”

Plus: “Just enough sense to stick with something—a chore, task, project, until it’s completed pays off much better than idle intelligence, even if idle intelligence be of genius caliber.”

And, if you’re diffusing your efforts, remember this wisdom from The Message of a Master (see Notes):“People who have no set objectives are tuning in to everything and getting nothing. They are unfortunate indeed, for they are at the mercy of millions of conflicting thoughts, and their lives are full of confusion and distress.

People who have definite objectives, on the other hand, deliberately tune in to one thing: If it is money, they get it. If it is position, they get it. Nothing that such people tune in to can be withheld…

So you can see that if you direct that force at several objectives, it becomes divided, and each objective receives a fairly weak stimulus, which results in a slow reaction, or no reaction at all. Do you have a great, ultimate goal to reach that acquires attaining lesser objectives along the way? Well then, let the many lie inactive and direct your force at the nearest or first; once you accomplish that, take up the next, and so on.”

We can’t explore a book on concentration without reminding ourselves of the power of the sun’s rays when brought to a focus.

And, Mr. Alexander Graham Bell captures this power better than anyone so let’s reflect on it again (I want to BURN this into our minds :): “Concentrate all your thoughts upon the work at hand. The sun’s rays do not burn until brought to a focus.”

Have you ever actually tried to burn something with the sun’s rays?

I think I’d done it as a kid, but I recently got a simple magnifying glass and had fun with this.

Try it out!

You’ll see that you need to make the sun’s rays form a VERY fine point. Once you reach that point, BAM! You can burn a hole right through a leaf.

Even if you keep it just a little diffused it won’t work. It needs to be LASER focused.

Same with us.

That’s awesome.

Do you often say, “I can’t”?

Check in on that.

And look a little deeper and see if what you’re REALLY saying is, “I won’t try.”

There’s a *huge* difference between those phrases.

“I can’t.”

vs.

“I won’t try.”

The fact is you CAN do a whole heck of a lot more than you may think. You just need to try.

P.S. Shakespeare comes to mind: “Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we oft might win, by fearing to attempt.”

P.P.S. Let’s be willing to try!!

Amen to all of that.

Ton of goodness in there.

Let’s start with this gem: “There is only one way to accomplish anything and that is to go ahead and do it.”

That might sound painfully obvious but it’s so true. (Laughing.)

We CAN’T just wish upon a star and see our dreams come true. We need to decide what we want and then GO DO THAT WHICH MUST BE DONE TO BRING IT TO LIFE.

Period.

—> “Everyone really wants to do something, but there are few who will put forward the needed effort to make the necessary sacrifice to secure it.”

Let’s be among the small group willing to do what it takes!

That’s Part 1.

Part 2: The bigger the problem appearsto be, the smaller YOU are being!

T Harv Eker puts it this way in Secrets of the Millionaire Mind (see Notes): “If you have a big problem in your life, all that means is that you are being a small person!”

Let’s do a quick inventory: You have “big” problems in your life? Can you see how those problems will shrink when YOU grow? (Get on that!)

And, Part 3: Let’s not expect that it’ll always be easy sailing.

We’re on a hero’s journey. We’re battling big ol’ dragons, not sidestepping little lizards.

Speaking of hero’s sailing, remember Homer’s Odyssey? His hero Odysseus spent TWENTY years on his wild adventure. SEVEN (!!!) of those were in prison and years were spent sailing and sailing and sailing.

Let’s embrace the challenges and keep on our journey! :)

The MOMENT you have a negative thought, cast it aside. Replace it with a positive thought.

Neuroscientists tell us we need to “prune” the old, less empowering neural pathways and “sprout” new, optimal patterns.

We do that by NOT ALLOWING the negative thoughts (and behaviors) to continue running the show.

We need to be fierce in our resolve. The more we practice swapping out the negative for the positive, the more skilled we’ll get at doing it.

So let’s practice, practice, practice.