At the heart of leadership is self-service and it is important for leaders to “push the horizon and think long-term”, said Dandapani, a former monk, who is now an entrepreneur, coach and international speaker on self-development. It is also important to “realise our time on this planet is finite, not short”, he said. “Once we know that we take very, very different decisions. It forces you to focus on priorities. Life is just a manifestation of where we invest our energy in,” said Dandapani.
In his talk show at TEDX, Dandapani mentioned a metaphor about how awareness and mind function. Awareness resembles to a light ball. And the mind is like a vaste space gathering all of these sections representing our anxiety, happiness, jealousy, science, photography, ... Concentrating on one of these areas means to move the light ball to this section and totally devote it to it.
As a matter of fact, we are all, to some point, told to concentrate. Some of us were even teased for not being able to concentrate. But how many of us were ever taught how to concentrate? How many of us have received a formal training about how to keep ourselves focused? Barely a handful. When most parents ask the question:"How can we teach our children to concentrate?". The answer is easy: the parents themselves should first learn how to concentrate.
Most people can’t concentrate because they have never been taught to concentrate, and they never practise concentration. We have always been told to concentrate, but we have never been taught to concentrate - Dandapani
Concentration is the ability to keep one’s awareness on one thing for a prolonged period of time. It is important to control one’s mind and awareness, so that one is able to give undivided attention to whatever one is doing. When people normally can't keep focused on performing a task, what happens is that they let distractors drift away their attention and awareness to other things they shouldn't be concentrated on in that time.
A normal person sleeps 7 to 8 hours a day. The remaining 16 hours are left practicing distraction, 7 days a week. In the end, they keep asking themselves, "Why we are so good at being distracted? Why can't we keep ourselves focused?". This is the law of PRACTICE. Whatever you perform repeatedly, on regular basis, you become an expert at it. Thus we keep practicing distraction throughout the day, for several years, if not decades, until we master it!
In order to master concentration, you must be willing to practice it all day long. Whenever you are striving to keep yourself focused, and then your awareness drifts away, bring it back! YOU ARE THE MASTER OF YOUR MIND!
To become productive, it is essential to practise concentration in whatever one does. It is necessary to have focus in life to have clear priorities.
Nobody is asking you to do the million things you do. In order to focus on something, you have to take the focus off something - Dandapani
This article is inpired from the TEDX show, "Unwavering focus" by Dandapani.