I have always battled with attention issues.
At times, I will hyper focus to the point where the rest of the world disappears. Timed correctly, it’s almost like a super power and allows me to 10X my work output or my ability to learn anything. But when this happens at the wrong time, it means that everything else in my world can fall apart because other important things in life just get left undone.
The other side of the coin is when my mind wants to be in 27 different places all at once. Despite my best intentions, in these moments, completing any single task is almost impossible. In this state, I just cannot stay on any one thing long enough to fully complete it.
So for the last couple of years, I’ve been utilizing meditation and mindfulness practices in an attempt to retrain the mechanisms of my brain to shift into the optimal mode of attention at the appropriate time. It’s an ongoing process but day-by-day, I’m slowing winning this battle with myself.
In this video clip, Dr. Amishi Jha does a great job of explaining how attention works and how these mental practices can begin rewiring the brain & improving your life.