Concentration is an important factor when it comes to achieve success in various spheres of life. People who are able to concentrate on their professions, relationships and other spheres may achieve much better results than the ones who are not able to do so.
Most people who have achieved a lot in various spheres of life have done so by focusing on their targets with undivided concentration. Taking an example, a successful football player starts focusing on his game from young age, he engages in regular practice and he ensures that he pays due attention to his game. Even after achieving success, he may be focused on regular practice and all other activities which help him become better as a player.
You may have seen some players who achieve success but they are not able to hold on to it for long. Among other things, their concentration levels drop. It means they lose focus on their respective games and they are distracted by various things which come along with success. As they lose focus on the games, their performances drop and they start failing. The same may apply to almost all other people who are successful in various spheres. As long as they are focused on their objectives, they may achieve and maintain success. Once they lose focus, they may start failing. It means if you wish to achieve big things and maintain them; you need concentration/focus.
Let’s now look into the problem of lack of concentration and find out what causes it. The ability to give due attention to something or someone is concentration. On the other hand, inability to give proper attention to something or someone is lack of concentration. Most people have both of them though in different ratios; like most other habits/traits lying opposite to each other. It means if your concentration level is about 90%, the factor of distraction or losing focus is 10%. Since the level of concentration is much higher than that of losing focus, you may achieve very good or great things in various spheres of life.
If this ratio is 50-50, you are stuck in the middle. It means you’re able to focus at times and you’re not able to focus at other times. In such cases, you may be able to focus on what you like a lot and you may not witness much focus on things or people you don’t like much. As a result, you may do well in life but not more than that in most cases. If this ratio is 20-80, it means you’re not able to focus on most things and people, even on the ones you like. Hence you have a serious problem of lacking concentration. As a result, you may not achieve much in most spheres of life.
Division of attention to more than one thing is the root cause of this problem. It means while engaging in one thing, you keep thinking about other things, people or situations. As you do so, your focus gets divided. Your conscious attention to anything or anyone is your concentration. More attentive you are, more is your level of concentration. When your conscious focus gets divided, you’re not able to give all of it to the primary task in question.
Taking an example, suppose you’re trying to prepare for an exam. As you start studying, your mind may start wandering in many directions. Since you have only one mind and it has limited abilities though such limits may be big or very big, the amount of focus that you can put on study is reduced. For instance, 50% of your attention is there for study and the remaining 50% may be focused on your girlfriend, football or other likewise things/people. As a result, you may not be able to prepare well and you may not achieve good results.
It means that if you can find a way to be focused on thing at a time and you can learn how not to let your attention get divided, you may get out of this problem. The reason you’re not able to give your undivided attention to most objectives is that your subconscious mind has a script of attending to more than one objective at a time. In simple words, you have a habit of attending to more than one thing at a time. Due to such script, your subconscious poses resistance whenever you wish to focus on an objective.
Let’s see how this script is written. You write it with repeated conscious acts of engaging in more than one job at a time. For example, you may watch television or do something else while you’re eating or drinking something. Let’s say you watch television when you have your major meals. Eating meals is the primary objective here, since you can do well by not watching television but not by not having meals. Hence your undivided attention should go to having and enjoying a meal while you’re having it.
However, you may pay 80% attention to the television and only 20% attention to the meal. This sends a message to your subconscious that you don’t wish to focus completely on the primary objective and you’re willing to distract yourself. As this message is sent again and again, the subconscious registers it. Hence you may start having craving for television whenever you’re having a meal.
A meal may not be important for you on conscious level, the subconscious assigns utmost importance to it. This is because it knows through thousands of years of experiences through various lives that eating food is one of the most important factors for survival. Hence when you choose to distract yourself consciously while eating meal, you may cause a lot of damage to your concentration. This is because when you don’t wish to focus on a task which is one of the most important tasks, what else may you wish to focus on.
Food keeps you alive and it nurtures your body. It means if you’re not able to pay due attention as well as respect to the act of eating; you may cause serious problems within your system. With time and repetition, your conscious mind may stop putting much effort in the act of eating food and it may put most of the effort in watching television. Hence the act of eating food may be carried out by your subconscious mind. As a reminder, your primary act is that of eating food and not that of watching television at one such time.
This is what causes damage. Drawing a comparison; suppose you’re not hungry and you decide to watch a football match. When you start watching it, your primary objective is to watch this match. For fun, you may have a packet of chips or a drink while watching television. In this case also, you may put all your conscious focus on watching television and you may eat or drink with the help of your subconscious. However, the distraction caused here may not be serious or even significant. This is because your primary objective here is watching television and eating/drinking is the secondary objective. Since you’re paying utmost conscious attention to the act of watching television, you may not create problems here, since you’re focused on your primary objective.
When you’re having a major meal, the equation reverses. Your primary objective is to have such meal and television is secondary which means distraction. Since you’re paying most of your conscious attention to distraction than paying it to your primary objective, you may create problems through this act. Though you seem to do the same thing in both cases; you’re not. In one case, you’re focusing on your primary objective whereas in the other case, you’re trying your best not to focus on your primary objective. This is what causes the problem. Hence watching television doesn’t cause this problem; watching it when you shouldn’t be, causes it.
Likewise, you may talk on cellphone while driving your car. The primary objective here is to drive the car and cellphone is secondary which means distraction. However, you let your subconscious drive the car and you put a lot of conscious effort in the act of talking to someone over phone. This is another practice which you may engage in on regular basis. Through it, your conscious mind sends repeated messages to your subconscious to the effect that you like being distracted when doing something.
Let’s look at some other activities which you may engage in regularly and which may create as well as aggravate this problem. Morning tea or coffee is an important activity if you do so. This is the first energy providing meal of your day and hence it should be given utmost importance. However, you read newspaper or you may reply to messages on your phone, while having tea or coffee. Here again, having tea/coffee is the primary activity and newspaper or messages are distractions. Hence this activity contributes towards lack of concentration.
Taking another example, you read newspaper and at the same time, you start talking to someone over phone. Reading newspaper is primary activity and talking over phone is distraction in this case, since you consciously chose to read newspaper. While you were reading it, you thought of calling someone or someone called you and you started doing both the jobs. Hence you’re contributing to the problem through this activity.
Looking at another practice, whenever you call someone to discuss something, you engage in something else. For example, you may start reading newspaper, watching television or engaging in some domestic task. Here again, calling someone is the primary task since you consciously chose to call him/her; whereas all other tasks are distractions. Hence you’re aggravating your problem.
Likewise, you talk to people while lifting weights at gym. It may be fine if you do so when you have small breaks in between. However, if you’re talking to people while you doing weight training, you’re aggravating this problem. Here again, your primary task is to engage in weight training and talking to people is distraction. Similarly, talking over phone while cooking, eating or drinking something while driving, chatting over Whatsapp while you’re in a discussion with someone or while someone is telling you something important, talking to fellow students when teacher is delivering lecture and a number of other such activities may create/aggravate the problem of lack of concentration.
You may realize that you engage in a number of such activities on daily basis. Such activities write a script of distraction or lack of concentration on your subconscious mind, through repetition and over time. Once such script is written, the subconscious starts executing it. When that happens, you may start doing all such things naturally. Hence you may not even realize that you have to watch television while eating, you have to talk to someone over phone while driving or cooking; and you have to do many other such things which are distractions. In other words, even you may not realize that you have developed a habit of engaging in more than one job at a time. The habit of engaging in more than one job at a time causes lack of concentration.
Hence you develop this habit and you may be fine with it most of the time since you may love such distractions. However every now and then, you are supposed to engage in tasks which are important and which need your undivided attention. Hence you try your best to do so but you fail. This happens because you have a habit of doing more than one thing at a time and you’re trying to go against this habit. As a result, your subconscious poses resistance since you’re going against the script written on it.
Hence you may not be able to concentrate, as your subconscious may create various types of distractions. As you lose concentration due to such distractions, the results may be compromised and you may not achieve success. If you’ve ever wondered why you were not able to give your undivided attention to some important tasks even when you tried your best to do so; now you know the reason. Hence you don’t need to try harder to focus; you need to change the script on your subconscious.
In old times; a specific place for eating major meals was chosen in every house. All members went to that specific place at the time of eating their meals. No one watched anything and no one was supposed to talk to anyone while eating. Many families thanked God for blessing them with food. This entire practice was in place to make sure that when you engage in one of the most important activities of your life; you give it your undivided attention. Hence every member was consciously aware that he’s engaging in an important task and he needs to focus on it completely.
This small but important activity sent messages that when engaging in important activities; distractions are not welcome. Likewise, people used to implement this method in most other spheres of their lives and they didn’t engage in more than one job at a time. As a result, they had better focus and they were more peaceful.
Distraction will almost always disturb peace since peace is the quality of being completely present at one place as well as being in complete harmony with one place or situation. When distraction arrives, this condition is violated, since you’re present at more than one place or situation at a time. Hence you not only lose focus, you start losing peace of mind also.
This is one of the reasons that with the introduction of more and more means of distraction like televisions, internet and cellphones; people are becoming more and more restless with time. When you have many things to attend to; you may be anything but peaceful. Since you’re divided between many things, people and situations; you violate the primary condition of being peaceful.
Now that we’ve understood the root cause of this problem; let’s look at ways to fix it. There are broadly two reasons due to which you may lack focus. The first one is that you may be trying to do something which you don’t like at all or you dislike it. When you do so, your subconscious opposes you even if your concentration level is otherwise good. This is because almost everyone has written strong script of ‘stay away from things/people you don’t like’ on his/her subconscious.
Hence when you engage in such tasks, your subconscious may send you strong feelings of repulsion and it may try to distract you in various ways. As a result, you may not perform well. An effective way to get rid of lack of concentration in this case is to stay away from things/people you don’t like at all or dislike. Try to engage in tasks which you like and this problem should go away. If at times, you have to engage in such tasks or with such people who you don’t like; you may be able to focus more if your concentration in general is very good. In addition to that, good level of determination may help a lot in such cases.
Looking at the second and major reason, you have a script of ‘engage in more than one thing at a time’, on your subconscious mind. Hence you need to rewrite this script to ‘one thing at a time’ in order to get rid of this problem. As you engage in more and more conscious acts of doing one thing at a time; the script may change and you may achieve higher levels of concentration.
To start with, make sure that you don’t do anything else when you eat. Don’t watch television and don’t talk to anyone. At the first level, try to focus on food as much as you can, while eating it. For instance, put conscious focus on the acts of taking food from your plate, putting it in your mouth, feeling its texture and enjoying its taste. Try to engage yourself as much as you can and try to feel your food as much as you can. With time and efforts, you may start enjoying your food much more than before.
Along with this, make sure that you stop all other such activities where you engage in more than one task at a time. Some of these activities have already been mentioned before. Be consciously aware that whenever you engage in a task; you don’t do anything else. For instance, don’t talk over phone while cooking and don’t read newspaper while having tea/coffee. Likewise, don’t reply to text messages while talking to someone.
While driving car, don’t talk over phone. If you have to receive an important phone call, park your car on the side of road, receive the call and then resume driving. In case you don’t have the option of parking your car and you have to receive an important call, carry handsfree Bluetooth device or another likewise device which may reduce the distraction a lot. At the same time, make the call as short as you can and always go for the option of parking your vehicle on the side, whenever this option is available. Talking through handsfree devices should be a reserved option and it should be used in case of emergencies only, when no other option is available.
Though you’re distracted when you talk through handsfree devices; such distraction may be less or much less compared to when you hold your phone against your ear and talk. You’re driving car, you’re holding phone and you’re talking. It means you’re engaging in three activities at a time. In addition to that, holding the phone with your hand can restrict one hand and you need both hands to drive effectively. Hence handsfree devices are better if you have to take important calls while driving.
As you engage in all such activities with conscious effort to do one thing at a time; such efforts send messages to your subconscious. With time, these messages start replacing the existing script on the subconscious with the new script. As the new script starts taking effect, you may feel that your concentration levels are increasing. You can build up more and more from here.
You don’t need to work to fix bigger things and all you need to do is to make sure that you take care of the small day to day activities. Once you’ve mastered the art of doing one thing at a time in your day to day activities; you may find that you’re able to focus naturally/subconsciously when it comes to important tasks. It means the script on your subconscious has been replaced and you now have good levels of concentration instead of having lack of concentration.
Himanshu Shangari