Author: Manish Bhatia
Certified Mindfulness Trainer
The Proverb:
“An idle Man’s brain is a devil’s workshop” – Clearly, the mind is not training enough to Focus ! It is indulging in thoughts – the good ones, bad & ugly.
While training your mind to focus, the good thoughts are the ones you must keep. Bad ones, are sometimes present, may be because of past experiences but the “Ugly” thoughts are the ones that come & go, add zero value but occupy the most part of your mind. Naturally, an untrained mind gets attracted (read: distracted) & feels helpless to let go!
Image by Wokandapix from Pixabay
This is where Mindfulness or training the mind to focus or should I say Re-Training becomes critical. Once I asked in my workshop ” How many of you go to Gym?”
Many hands raised & I randomly picked a few of them to answer. Some said, cardio, some push-ups, stamina to run & all those activities directly pointing to Physical Fitness & rightly so – the word “GYM” has become synonymous with physical fitness that each time it gets a mention, the mind makes a picture of people with fitness equipment.
And the people whom I asked this question never thought of a “Mind Gym” – Why ?
a. It’s ingrained in our minds – remember the synonymous relation we spoke above.
b. They haven’t heard of a Mind Gym before. Fair Enough !
c. Last but not the least, we have taken our MIND for granted since time immemorial.
We think if we had met 5-8 people everyday & spoken to them, our mind is working. You are absolutely RIGHT!! It is working but the critical question is “IS IT STRENGTHENING?” I am afraid – a BIG NO !! This is not how it is supposed to be done.
Practice this to Train your Mind to Focus:
Think of an activity that you perform daily. Let’s say cleaning the dishes or taking a bath – Tonight or tomorrow morning, when you do any of this, try to smell the soap, feel the water on your hands or body, embrace the cold feeling or may be hear the water drops falling on the floor, I bet you wouldn’t have felt this in ages. Repeat this for the next 10 days & you can clearly see the difference.
It’s very important to connect with yourself, your surroundings & be PRESENT!
More on this later. Stay Tuned!