Invest Joyfully in Mental Muscles: Concentration & Will power

“Practice makes a Man Perfect”

We can practice to build Focus and Will Power in our daily lives. Concentration means to give undivided attention to a particular task or activity. This can be achieved in incremental steps, by using tools to seize the wandering mind to bring it back to the current activity. We can pick a few simple tasks in our everyday lives and apply this method of checking the mind when it drifts away. For example, talking to our parents or children and giving them complete attention, eating food with total involvement, reading a book without talking etc. Soon we will observe that the distractions will start to lessen, as the mind gets trained to maintain concentration and focus.

Will-Power is an essential mental muscle, which develops our strength to stick to a discipline. Will-Power allows us to explore our innate strength. A few tips to blend this in our daily lives:

1. Once we start any task, the endeavor should be to finish it. For example, eating a meal and then clearing up the table and the dishes. Any task we start we need to finish it instead of procrastinating and leaving it open ended.
2. Put in extra effort into the task at hand, more than what you would normally do.
3. Don’t underestimate your potential. Push yourself to do more than your capability. Don’t narrow your horizons with self- imposed mental limitations.

The endeavor should be to allow these principles to seep into our daily activities like going to the gym or doing yoga with time bound targets, reading books with a goal of finishing the book in a specific period of time. Thus, we observe that we use our Will-Power muscle to maintain a self-discipline, which in turn aids in achieving our goals. Once we develop these mental muscles and practice it for a couple of months, it becomes a habit.

The Will Power enables us to keep our awareness in the present moment, and keep it from drift away from the current task. Then we can use our power of concentration to hold our “Awareness” on whatever we are trying to “focus on”. Athletes avoid distractions in the game with their will power, creating the awareness to keep their entire focus in the match. Listening skills become sharp when the person uses these tools to keep their attention on the subject of discussion.

Thus, these mental muscles are responsible for directing the energy flow towards our task or object of focus. There is no dissipation of energy as its streamlined in one direction, with no diversion or confusion. Conserving energy keeps our system in peace and harmony, eliminating fatigue and exhaustion.

Remember, one must allow the evolvement of mental muscles, which will be instrumental in strengthening your abs, biceps, triceps and other physical muscles in your body!