Never before have so many different things been competing for our attention. Smart devices are designed to capture an ever-larger proportion of our waking hours. New apps and services are developed to increase convenience and bombard us with near-instantaneous ways to delight, sate or otherwise entertain us. This push towards always-on and always-now is exciting, and in many ways wonderful. But consider for a moment… Can you imagine a whole day with no devices, notifications or calls? Do you find it hard to concentrate and reach for your phone when a quiet or awkward moment rolls around? You are not alone.
Picture a car peedometer, it starts at zero then has a wide normal range, and a red-zone where you candrive only for a short while before your engine breaks down. Your mind is the same. When in use, it can move you forward with amazing speed. Overloading it, or running it days, weeks and months on end without a rest pushes you into the red zone. Low level-anxiety, burn-out, inability to focus, these are all typical of a mind in the red-zone. After a while, this can become ingrained into mindset. We slowly train ourselves to believe that we are anxious by nature. On the flip-side, when the mind is rested and fresh, focus, planning and learning become much easier. Mindset around those corresponding topics also therefore becomes easier to shape.
Although it may sound strange, your mind is nothing more than a tool. Granted, it’s an integrated, highly complex tool capable of amazing things. Just like a hammer though, the mind needs a care and maintenance (and also isn’t the best solution for every task). What’s more, when the hammer needs repair, you don’t try to fix it with itself—that seems obvious, but this is essentially what we try to do with the mind. Trying to “think positive” or “think differently”, is exactly like trying to fix the hammer with itself...it doesn’t work very well. A different approach is required—building awareness and learning the take the mind less seriously are two keys to success.
Awareness (or mindfulness, which I use interchangeably) has certainly become a fad topic. Social media and pop culture is littered with near infinite permutations of yoga, meditation and other mindfulness routines. Many even claim to cure anything from anxiety and depression to cancer. Before you get caught up in what awareness can do for you, stay focused on what it is. Awareness is the skill of seeing yourself and the outside world more objectively. That’s it. Yoga and meditation are certainly well-established methods that work for some people (if that’s you—I encourage you to focus your practice to intentionally disconnect from your mind). If not—don’t worry. Awareness goes well beyond yoga and meditation.
Consider for a minute the last time you felt completely absorbed in an activity. Perhaps it was a walk in the woods, while doodling absently in a notebook, cooking, or playing sports. Next time you do that activity—take the first 5 minutes to focus completely on it. Try to make it something you do (or can do) on a regular basis. No background music, or chatting, or multi-tasking—just absorb yourself for a short while into the experience. Make it into a habit—each time you do that activity, take the first 5 minutes just for yourself. (Tip: make a reminder note or other marker in the room or space where you do the activity.) Focus on taking these 5 minutes regularly instead of trying to increase the amount of time you spend. Only once you have your routine down, then consider lengthening the time to 10 or 15 minutes. Whatever you do, try something, have fun with it, and stick to it!
