Posts Tagged ‘Focus Your Mind’

Personal Growth: Forget About The Herd

Have you the guts to be different? Have the guts to stand out from the crowd, to stand apart from your own little herd? Have you got what it takes to set yourself apart from all the sad, pathetic people that you hang out with? Normal people are sad and pathetic – and most of us are normal. Years of psychological research and work in the area of personal development prove that the normal mind is out of control, preferring to take its cue from the events of our formative years rather than actually taking real action – the only kind of action that will achieve real results.

The only problem is that most of us are afraid to be different. I’ve come across many people over the years who explained to me that they couldn’t be a success because they’d be afraid of losing their friends! But the other side of that coin is that I know plenty of people who, years later, feel liberated by the fact that they no longer hang out with some of their old acquaintances! It seems that normal people hang out with other normal people as part of some bizarre support mechanism – normal people like being a member of their own little victim support groups!

Herd behaviour is bizarre and you’ll never change your life until you walk away from the herd. Herd behaviour is positively dangerous to both you and all your fellow herd members. Once the herd agrees – albeit subconsciously or by omission – that some bizarre behaviour is alright, anything goes. Some years ago this was proved in frightening detail by what has subsequently become Philip Zimbardo’s infamous Stanford prison experiment – so-called because the experiment took place at Stanford University and involved student volunteers from Stanford. The volunteers were randomly split into two groups – one group would be the prisoners, the other group the prison guards. And, even though the experiment was scheduled to take two weeks, it was stopped after six days – the prison guards had become obscenely violent, the prisoners totally submissive. The outrageous behaviour of the former group, through, was OK – everyone in that little herd agreed with it so none of the guards was behaving, in their little parallel universe, in an unacceptable manner.

All normal people behave inappropriately – because they never behave from a clear and focused state of mind that is fully acquainted with the here and now. Normal behaviour is dictated by the subconscious mind and our normal environment. Normal behaviour could not be appropriate because it has nothing to do with the reality of the present moment.

As such, even though the Stanford Prison Experiment is an extreme illustration of normal behaviour (it is one of quite a number of such experiments that all come to the same conclusion), it does point out just how dangerous it is to run with the herd. More importantly, at a more fundamental level – and one that is affecting your ability to achieve effortless success and happiness – this normal herd mentality is preventing you from doing what your heart desires.

So distance yourself from the herd – once your back is turned many of them will forget about you – and start putting your own life first. Step out of the norms of herd-like behaviour – you will be amazed at how liberating it really is.

Life’s Challenges: Riding Life’s Big Waves

I got an invoice from my lawyer a couple of days back – for what exactly I’m not, as what he’d done for me didn’t really match the bill! He told me that he was sending out invoices to various clients to “keep the wolf from the door in these challenging times”.

These are, indeed, challenging times. We’re faced with difficult economic circumstances at present, we’re regularly faced with the rollercoaster of everyday normal relationships and we are often confronted by the trials and tribulations of work and career. However the only real challenge we face is the challenge within. “How am I to react in the face of so much crap coming at me?” as one client put it to me last week. “It’s very hard to stay centred in the midst of all that’s going on around me” said another. “How in God’s name am I meant to stay focused when my personal life is crumbling around me?” another client once asked.

All these challenges are just life’s “big waves”. Life is like the Volvo Round-the-World yacht race. If you’re participating, you already know that there are going to be plenty of big waves so you prepare yourself and make sure that you’re adequately equipped to handle them. Consequently, you’re able to ride those big waves. So it is with life’s ups and downs. You know for a fact, because you see it all around you, that life is full of these big waves. So, just like the yachtsman, you need to be prepared to be sure that you’re appropriately equipped to ride those waves. Now, I’m not talking about being prepared in some vague sense – I’m not simply talking about being on your guard. I’m talking about practical personal development – about cultivating the kind of clarity of mind and mental focus that will equip you to take real action in facing up to what life throws at us – rather than crawling back into the normal cocoon of snap reactive behaviour that compounds the mess that we think we’re in.

And, considering that life is lived moment to moment, you’re going to have to be up to the task, moment to moment. That means that, before you set sail every morning, you need to focus your mind in the here and now – not focused on the day ahead, the day ahead will present itself one moment at a time. This means that whilst you’re drinking your breakfast coffee, that’s just what you’re doing – inhaling the aroma, tasting the bitterness, feeling the warmth of the cup in your hand, looking at the steam curl off the liquid’s surface, feeling the warm liquid run down your throat, listening to the sound of you swallowing.

You need to focus your mind each morning. Otherwise, you will have decided to participate in life’s yacht race in a rubber dinghy. If you get drowned, you’ll only have yourself to blame.

The Cycle Useless Thought: How To Escape

You are being tortured by useless thought and you many not even be aware of it! Whilst the normal adult is overwhelmed by around 50,000 thoughts every day, it is also true to say that the average adult is largely unaware of anything that is going on in his or her life. Wow – that’s a big statement!. You may think it couldn’t be true, certainly it will come as news to you. That said, research that started in 1936 and which continues to be being built upon proves conclusively that normal people are only one percent aware – they are only one percent in the present moment. More than that, the most important part of your mental power, your subconscious mind, is generally paying attention to your past – a time long-gone in which you were actually aware, were actually present and were not prone by useless thought.

Of course, you are aware of the odd useless thought that flits through your head – thoughts like “I can’t stand my job” (this has nothing to do with your job, it has to do with what you think about it!) “I wish I was out on the golf course” (a thought that’s a complete waste of your energy if you’re in the middle of a client meeting!) “I feel talking to this person” (a thought related to your perceived inadequacy as a normal adult, rather than anything to do with the other person). You may well also be aware of one of the most destructive forms of useless thought – the curse of worry. Then there are the deeper, darker thoughts that skulk in your subconscious – these you take to be beliefs or hard facts. All our perceived weaknesses, all the things that we may not like about ourselves, all our shortcomings are simply thoughts based on events that made us feel a certain way about ourselves during our early years. They are dangerously toxic thoughts.

Useless thought presents us with three major headaches! First of all, it distracts us from doing what we’re supposed to be doing – to the extent that we only one percent do it! We’re not going to get much out of life if we haven’t bothered to turn up for the event!! Secondly, useless thought presents us with a familiar, habitual way of going through or, perhaps even, coping with our day. It’s a habit that we’re so used to that we’re not aware of it. Thirdly, useless thought prevents you progressing towards the life that you really want. Continue thinking useless thought and you will never change your life. We can all achieve whatever we believe in – but if our resident useless thoughts are up against us, how will we ever believe?

You’ve got to break the cycle of useless thought. This is best done by stopping yourself from entertaining simple, irrelevant useless thoughts. Example! You’re walking down the street and you see a nice car. That’s cool – you should simply walk on and observce whatever happens next. However, you might say to yourself “That car is better than mine!” That’s a useless thought – it has nothing to do with the reality of the current moment (the only time and place there is!). And it leads to other useless thoughts: “I wish I had a better car!” “I couldn’t afford a new car!” “I cannot afford to go on holidays this year either!” “What if I can’t keep making my home loan repayments!” Useless thoughts take normal adults down alleys and mug them all the time. It’s how we’re built as normal adults. However, we have to break the cycle of useless thought, if we don’t we will continue to live cyclical mundane lives. Is that what you want?

Personal Development Is No Use Unless You’ve The Results To Show For It

I talk with many people – clients and readers of my Personal Development Ezine – who enthuse that they have become far calmer, more mindful and tuned in as a consequence of the various little “mental exercises” that they practice to banish distraction and move themselves in the direction that they want their life to go. I often get feedback from some who tell me that their lives have changed and that they have seen many of their objectives being achieved almost effortlessly. But others wonder why, if they are developing calm, clarity and presence of mind, they don’t see their goals simply materializing in their lives.

In addressing this issue, I often quote what a good friend from Northern Ireland said to me at the height of the so-called “Troubles”. He said “Obviously, for some people, doing their mental exercises is a bit like the way some of my fellow-countrymen go to Mass on a Sunday, kneel down and pray and, on a Monday, go out and shoot someone!” A well made point – if your efforts at personal development don’t make an impact in the ordinary course of your everyday life, there is really no point in fooling yourself into thinking that you’re on the road to the life that you want. Personal development isn’t supposed to make you feel good for just a few minutes during the day, it’s supposed to change your life and if it isn’t doing that, then you’re doing something wrong.

As I write this, I’m expecting a client who is going to spend the next couple of days with me here in the Alps. I received an advance note from him – what he called his “agenda” – and, in that note, he asks how to bring the calm and focus that you get through meditation or mental exercising into the rough and tumble of everyday life. My answer to him will be simple. During the course of the day, especially when the going gets tough, you’ve got to regularly stop yourself, notice state of mind and compare it with the calm and clarity that you get during your personal development exercises. If you’ve drifted from your benchmark calm then you’re going to have to take a momentary step back from what’s happening, take a few deep breaths, and restore the mental calm and focus that will make the difference to your actions and personal effectiveness in the here and now.

Personal development isn’t personal development if you’re not seeing concrete results in the course of your everyday life – if your life is still all over the place, you’re simply lulling yourself into a false sense of success where you may well make decisions or taking what you think is action that may well make your life worse rather than better.

Looking Forward To Good Times? Your Self Improvement Needs Live More Now

I was chatting to a client’s Personal Assistant last Wednesday – she started the chat by saying “Bet you’re looking forward to the weekend?” When I remarked that it was only Wednesday, she replied “Ah, but the weekend’s almost here once it’s Wednesday lunchtime!” Indeed, as I write this on a Thursday afternoon, I’ve already received a few emails finishing with the line “you have a good weekend!” or a similar message.

We spend so much of our lives looking forward. First of all, there’s the negative type of looking forward – we all know and love this one as “worry” – as a matter of fact, I just received an email from a client asking me how could he stop the stupid worries that pop into his mind at all hours of the night. And another client recently said to me that he was worried because he couldn’t think of anything to worry about! Psychology indicates that we’re hard-wired for worry – that, of the 50,000 random thoughts that whizz through our heads each day, we’re more likely to pay attention to and believe the negative ones.

And, then, of course, there’s positive looking forward. “I can’t wait for my holidays”, “I’m really looking forward to the lads’ night out”, “I’m going to hire a campervan and travel the world when I retire”, “Are you looking forward to the weekend?” A few years ago, as I began to address twenty Personal Development clients on a Monday morning in Dublin, Ireland, one of the group asked me if I was looking forward to getting back to my family and the French Alps the following weekend. My answer was “I simply can’t figure out how to think that far ahead – if I was to think that far ahead, I wouldn’t be here with you now!”

Life is lived in the here and now. What you do right now has a direct and fundamental impact on your success or, more normally, abject failure compared to the success that is within your grasp. If you waste your mental energy – even a little of it – looking forward, then you’re really messing up your own life on an ongoing basis, permanently. Small wonder that normal people are “not too bad”, small wonder that university research has determined that normal people only use about one percent of their mental energy to be in the only place and time that’s real – the here and now.

The course of your life, which is defined, if you think about it, by apparently random events, will be altered for the better if you stop looking forward and start looking at what is before your very eyes. Those apparently random events happen only now – and many of them will take you to where you want to be in life, if you just open your eyes and see them. These random events are we call opportunities! – and life is full of them if you’d just be here now.

Normal Madness, Reality And Your Your Perfect Life

Forget about the news! Throw away your newspapers! The TV channels and newspapers are focused on bad news that lulls us into the false sense of security that we’re not all that crazy when compared to others. But that’s just the news. What about so-called “reality TV” – so-called “normal” people entertaining us with their bizarre behaviour?

These programs are a danger to what’s left of your mental health (I say “what’s left” because research in the fields of psychology and Personal Development proves that “normal” people are really quite mad). These programs comfort you in the mistaken belief that, at least, you’re not living live next door to the neighbour from hell, that you don’t have to jump into a vat of man-eating spiders at work today or that your girlfriend or boyfriend isn’t going to high-tail it with someone they’ve fallen for on paradise island!

Maybe things are not too bad. However, the real problem is that not only do these programs have little to do with reality – they actually confirm you in your illusion that your life is real. In fact, however, your life is as off-the-wall as those programs. Want to confirm this? – take one step back and reflect on the behaviour of some of the people that you meet every day. There are people bitching about other people, people delighting in other’s misfortunes, husbands beating wives, wives beating husbands, bosses bullying staff, staff spending half their working day on the internet – no one’s actually living the life that, in reality, they should really be living. Unfortunately, the normal mind divorces us from real reality. We think we know what’s going on and then automatically react to it. This is not a theory, it’s scientifically proven psychological fact.

Your life has precious little to do with real reality. Your reality is a figment of your imagination. It is created by “snapshots” you have in your subconscious mind – these are your beliefs about how the world works and, more importantly, about yourself. These beliefs are constantly being reinforced by the other normal crazies that you hang around with. However, if you slowed down for a moment, came to your senses (you’ve got five of them – better start using them), and experienced the moment, you could well realize that reality is this wonderful now where you can create the life that you really, really want. And that’s not some fanciful theory either, there’s plenty of evidence to prove it – think about it, your mind is creating your reality at the moment. So, if you change your mind you really can change your life.

Therefore, not only should you dump the newspapers and turn off reality TV – you need to be very careful, what you listen to and who you hang out with. You have to be permanently on your guard to ensure that you don’t let yourself be overwhelmed by the nonsense that passes for normal behaviour every day.

For Your Own Sanity You Need To Come To Your Senses – It’s The Secret To Personal Growth

Maybe your life isn’t the as great as you want it to be, perhaps or if you’re not happy with yourself – what you believe is happening has nothing to do with reality! Decades of research prove that the normal subconscious mind quite literally makes up your reality for you – far removed from the real thing, just a mish-mash of crap (what some people call baggage) mainly from our childhood years.

So, if you actually want to live the life that you really and truly want to live, if you want to really fast track your own Personal Development, you’ll have to stop paying attention to the noise in your head that’s turning your life into some kind of nightmare – you’re going to have to start paying attention to real reality. You’re going to have to come to your senses – and I mean that literally.

Your five senses are your only contact with the “outside” world. Every sound you hear – whether it’s a boiling kettle, birds singing, something nice being said to you, or bad news – is first perceived through your ear, transmitted to your brain, interpreted in conjunction with what psychologists call “stored knowledge” (the crud we discussed a moment ago) and, as a result, made sense of! Same with each sight, each smell, each taste, each tactile feeling.

The fact is, however, that so-called normal people never make sense of what they’ve perceived – they make nonsense of it! Because, rather than paying attention to their senses, they allow their stored knowledge make up their minds for them. And for most of us, that stored knowledge is way out of date – and the older you get the more out of date and irrelevant to the present moment it will become.

Research has found that as a normal adult, you are unable to focus your mind, you simply don’t know how to pay enough attention to what your body is telling you – and, yet, here is where we find real “here and now” information. Instead, an adult lifetime of automatic behaviour drowns out our sensory perception and creates a half-life of mindless living. In effect, normal people are, at best, sleepwalking their way through life, at worst, as good as dead.

From my own work’s perspective, I find that the majority of people are completely unable to pay attention for even five minutes – sometimes when I’ve asked a group to simply sit still for five minutes, the mere suggestion of staying put in the one place resulted in some people almost hitting the ceiling such was their inability to simply appreciate the moment. You need to sit still for a few minutes each day – let it be an exercise in tuning in your mind to pay attention to what you simply see, feel, here, smell and taste. Avoid the normal temptation to analyse what’s going on, don’t add your own interpretation based on the crap we’ve already mentioned. Simply observe – because it is in really see what’s actually going on that the next idea that will change your life will simply become obvious.

Self Improvement – It’s Time To Take Responsibility

I’m forever going on about the way so-called “normal” people are mad and that it is up to each of us to “stop the madness”. Having recently spent a couple of days chatting with a number of long-standing personal development clients with regard to how quantum physics succinctly describes how our universe, our world and our little bit of it – our daily life – really works. What we put in – in energy – we get back out. If, like so-called normal people, you put almost nothing in (bear in mind that research estimates that the normal person only puts 1% of their mental energy into the here and now), don’t be surprised if you, as a normal person, get almost nothing in return.

Energy is only present – so, thinking of the future or worrying about the past has no impact on energy. The universe only is now. And you can only invest your mental energy in the here and now, if you focus your mind or take control of your current state of mind. And you can only take control of your present state of mind if you’re prepared to take responsibility for yourself. And, for some, that’s a bridge too far. It seems to me that normal people are not big enough for that task.

Just listen to political “leaders” talk about the ongoing need to “rescue” the economy from the disaster that has befallen it. What they’re saying is “Hey, it’s not our fault, it’s the fault of an unprecedented ‘fracture in the international financial system’” – that’s an actual quote, by the way – as if the financial system had a mind and will of its own! And, then, spare a thought for the poor bankers, who won’t own up to their part in all this mess either. A few (very few) bankers have actually apologised for the mess – though they’re not sorry enough to return their large salaries, bonuses, pension top-ups or golden handshakes. Pretty much all the bankers that I’ve heard have blamed the catastrophe that has befallen their noble institutions… on the credit crunch.

Reality check: Is the “fracture in the financial system” some self-created beast in which no one had a hand, act or part? Is the “credit crunch” some monster from the deep with a mind of its own that surfaced to consume all up-standing bankers (and everyone else with them)? Is no one to blame? Will nobody take responsibility? We expect our kids to own up to breaking a cup or having a few beers – but these so-called adults don’t really lead by example, do they?

And are you responsible? Are your disasters someone else’s fault? Sure, crap happens – often it’s beyond our control – but we can control how we react or, more to the point, act when stuff happens. Time to own up. Time to be responsible for yourself – for your mind. If you don’t universal energy will give you precious little in return (I’ve edited what I really wanted to say or no one would publish this post!) well, pretty much nothing, for your “efforts” – you’ll have got what you deserved. What goes around, comes around – it’s the Law of Attraction, it’s how our energetic universe works.

Striving For Success – Are You Driven To Distraction?

A couple of months ago, the New York Times ran a series of articles entitled “Driven to Distraction” – all about how road accidents are mostly the result of not paying attention. And then, Loughborough University in the UK has just released research that shows how we are distracted from what we’re supposed to be doing by texts and emails. The research says that most are replied to immediately – often within 6 seconds.

What were you supposed to be doing when you saw the text or email? Is the email or text important? Does it directly relate to what you’re supposed to be doing? Has it got anything to do with your top priorities in life? Do you even have a clue as to what they are? This is the muddle-headed behaviour that has normal people wandering aimlessly from one day to the next – wondering why life isn’t absolutely great. I’ve news for you, life will never be great until you do something about it – and completely ignore the distractions that are getting in your way. You’re wasting your time, throwing your life away. But hey, no worries, it’s normal, everybody’s doing it.

More breaking news! – everybody’s mad. Research that proves it – more than seven decades of it proves that people are unable to focus on what they’re doing, are unable to pay attention to what is actually going on, do their routine tasks habitually and mindlessly and go through the motions when it comes to living – that’s not living, it just about qualifies as existing.

The bad news is that we’re built to be distracted. We play host to up to 50,000 random thoughts each day, some just stupid distraction, some seriously self-destructive. Mindless and distracted are our default settings. The normal mind is like a virus-ridden disk drive. The bugs infected our system when we were young and impressionable, when we lapped up all manner of nonsense that was foisted upon us – work hard to be a success (rubbish), you need to improve yourself (no you don’t, the inner you is powerful perfect energy), life is full of ups and downs (yes, but there’s no need for you to go up or down with them). And now, years later, not only are you still subconsciously focusing on all that crap – now you’re being inundated with texts and emails too!

For your own wellbeing, you’re going to have to learn how to focus your mind, how to pay attention – not in a general sense but in a very specific way. You’ve got to focus on the present moment – it’s the time and place where the real world is, the only time and place where life is lived. Start training your mind to focus – and that simply means seeing, feeling, hearing, smelling and tasting what’s going on – recognizing a distraction for what it is, recognizing the important stuff that needs to be done and just doing it, recognizing that you are the only one who can take real action to change your life. Your personal effectiveness, your success, your life are in down to your state of mind – grab a hold.

Self-Awareness And An End To Stress

A while back, I spoke with a friend who told me that he was plagued by useless thought – distractions, negative thoughts, worries, all the way to fear. First of all, I said to him was that, as someone who had worked on his own Personal Development, he could count himself among the horribly small minority who are aware they’re thinking useless thoughts. Because psychology proves that the so-called normal mind is zombie-like, running on auto-pilot, totally unaware – unaware of pretty much everything, from the fact that it is actually in a particular and unique time and place (called Now!), to the fact that it is being attacked by useless thought. So my friend was at least one step ahead of the posse!

But what do you do when you find yourself being mugged by your own thoughts? Do you fight back or do you try to run away? Who can you call for help? Who you gonna call? There’s no such people as the Thoughtbusters! Unfortunately you’re on your own – after all, you’re the only person on this planet thinking those thoughts. You can’t run away – there’s no hiding place from your own thoughts and there’s little point in fighting back. Thoughts are like a big bully – all they’re looking for is your undivided attention – fight back and you’re giving them your energy, just what they’re looking for!

What you’ll have to do is come to your senses and simply ignore the thoughts – they’ll never go away but a thought minus your energy is a nothing. Thought is meaningless until you pay it attention – direct your attention somewhere else and the thought simply isn’t. Direct your attention to Now – it’s where life is actually lived, where opportunity abounds (if you’d stop focusing on your useless thoughts) ,it’s the place where dreams come true.

Being aware of the here and now is awareness. And, if you’re aware of Now, you’re aware of yourself in Now. Now that’s self-awareness! Being aware simply means paying attention – paying attention to Now. To what your eyes are really seeing, to what your ears are really hearing, to the smell in your nose, to the taste in your mouth, to what you are feeling. Feeling what your own body is telling you connects you with Now. Feeling your feet hit the ground each time you put one foot in front of the other is a powerful connection to Now. Feeling how your chair supports you is a valuable piece of “now data”. Noticing the way your legs are crossed, the touch of your clothes on your skin, the way your legs support you as you stand still, the list is as long as you want to make it.

However, here’s how it works. My friend said to me “Now I’ve got it, when you’re walking you’re aware that you’re putting one foot in front of the other.” “Got it in one!” I replied. “And, when you’re thinking a useless thought, you’re aware that you’re thinking a useless thought!” “No! – When you’re thinking a useless thought, you’re aware that you’re putting one foot in front of the other as you walk!” The walking is real, the thought is not. The walking is your connection to Now, the thought is your one-way ticket to pain and suffering.

Paying attention to Now is your passport to success and happiness and the fantastic thing is that the whole adventure is entirely in your own hands.