Simple Mind Management

Copyright (c) 2011 Willie Horton

As I was getting my Personal Development Ezine ready to send out to the couple of thousand people around the world who get it every week, it occurred to me, with just a few weeks to go to Christmas, that perhaps I should start recommending what might be described as 'stocking fillers'. Tony de Mello's awareness was what sprung to mind - a little book that packs a very big punch. Made up of extracts from some of his acclaimed seminars, 'Awareness' explains how normal crazy people sleepwalk their way through life without ever realizing that, in order to live life to the full, all they had to do was wake up! And 'wake up' is a phrase that's used many times in the first couple of paragraphs alone!

I have recently been criticized for calling my latest self-help book 'Normal Crazy People' - some reviewers have told me that putting the words 'normal' and 'crazy' together like that is simply wrong. However, all you have to do is look around you (and possibly take a long hard look at your own behaviour) to realize that our behaviour is off the wall. Tony de Mello arrived at the same place that many psychologists have done over the last seventy years. The scientific discipline of psychology has probably never once published a research paper using the word 'crazy' but, if you cast your eye over the key areas of research back to the 1930s, you will inevitably come to the conclusion that normal people are, indeed, crazy. Why? Because research from very many different psychological perspectives - behavioural, social, neurological, cognitive and developmental - all confirms the same conclusion: that, as adults, our minds control us, not the other way around. And that, to my mind, is a concise definition of madness.

The normal mind does not focus on the here and now - the time and place that you are! The normal mind's cognitive functions ensure that you pay little or no attention to the here and now - the time and place that you've got to turn up to to get anything worth talking about from your life. The normal mind's capabilities that allow us to repeatedly perform routine functions mindlessly result in us doing pretty much everything mindlessly. And, all the while, the normal subconscious mind is indulging in its obsession with the key events of our formative years - the conditioning that has made us who we think we are. Quite obviously, this way of using your mind simply leads to what de Mello describes as the 'nightmare' than the normal mind sleepwalks through.

The obvious conclusion is that, in order to get anything much out of life, you're going to have to start taking control of your mind. You're going to have to start managing how your mind focuses and, in the process, ensure that your mind focuses on the key things that you need to get done to get you to where you want to be in life.

Managing your mind is no big deal. It doesn't require that you transform your way of thinking. All that is required is that you start to re-train your mind to focus on the present moment - the only place and time where you can actually do what needs to be done to the very best of your ability. And, although your mind is conditioned to pay no attention to the present moment, training your mindn to do just that is amazingly simple. Like all great journeys, you start with the first steps - you start small. You consciously decide that some of your routine, habitual chores will act as training sessions for your mind. You deliberately decide that, in doing these chores, you will pay an extra-ordinary amount of attention to what you're doing. After all, that's how we train ourselves to live our ordinary lives extra-ordinarily.

What am I talking about? Well, think of three or four things that you're going to have to do today. Like eating your dinner, like shaving, brushing your teeth or dressing yourself. The simplest way to pay an extra-ordinary amount of attention to things as mundane as these is to do them differently. In this way you involve more of your mind in the task in hand - you relearn how to focus. Not just that, you experience the difference between being focused and sleepwalking. When you start experiencing the difference in small everyday things, you start developing the kind of mental focus that is a prerequisite to for you to get the very best out of life.

You cannot over-estimate the importance of focus and attention. Focus is the hallmark of all extra-ordinarily successful people. Little wonder really - because neuro-psychology tells us that your ability to be happy and successful depends on your ability to pay attention.

Comments? Questions? Email Here

© HowtoAdvice.com

How to Advice .com