This is October 29th of my book: ‘How To Change Your Life One Day At ATime‘.
Take the opportunity today to be mindful – stare at something for 10 minutes.
Today’s exercise is all about how to stay focused on your goals using Mindfulness.
Mindfulness is a mental strategy that allows you to be aware of your ‘state‘ of mind at any given time and a tactic to control that state.
The idea is that when you feel a bit down or demotivated or confused etc. you can spiral downwards into those negative thoughts if you’re not careful. By observing that you’re in a negative state you can then decide to choose a positive state instead. One of inspiration, motivation and focus.
If you’re able to do this at will you can spiral upwards instead of downwards and therefore remain on track more easily.
Using Mindfulness you can learn to stay more positive for much longer and get much more done.
So, here’s the simplest way of being Mindful that I’ve experienced and it can be done anywhere, anytime:
1. Sit down somewhere reasonably quiet
2. Choose something to focus your attention on (anything in a fixed position will do) – your vision board if you’ve done one, if you’re at home at the time
3. Focus all of your attention on that thing for 10 minutes
4. Notice everything about that thing, wonder about how big it is ‘exactly’, wonder how it was made, notice it’s colours and textures – put ALL of your attention on THAT thing!
5. As your attention drifts to other objects or thoughts, gently bring yourself back to that object you are focusing on.
This exercise repeated as often as you can will train your mind to focus on what YOU want to focus on. Remember what you focus on becomes what you attract, so your vision board is a good place to start. It will help you tune out distractions on the outside and on the inside.
When you do it for the first few times you’ll find yourself easily distracted and 10 minutes will feel like an hour! KEEP PRACTISING!
This is powerful so I urge you to take the time to do it – I started with watching a candle flame just before bedtime. Trouble is if you want to do it during the day that becomes a bit difficult.
Enjoy this process.
NOTE: As you become more proficient at this you’ll start to notice some of the thoughts that are distracting you are actually making a lot of sense. They might be answering questions you have about projects on the go or relationship issues etc. Start to notice these and take notes about them before getting back to your Mindfulness. These are Golden Nuggets of wisdom coming through your subcon- scious.
Not every distraction is junk! 🙂
Enjoy
Stu

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