We begin by understanding how the mind works; there are two things we need to understand;

Awareness & The Mind

Let’s define what they are let’s define awareness as a glowing ball of light, so imagine an orb, a glowing ball of light that can float around let’s call that awareness. Put that aside now let’s define the mind let’s define the mind- a vast space with many different areas within it,one area of the mind is angry, hatred and jealousy have been a whole bunch of different things. Awareness, that ball of light can actually move to any area of the mind you want it to go – so if your awareness, this glowing ball of light goes to the happy area of the mind it lights up that particular area of the mind you become conscious of being happy.

Are you happy? No, you’re in an area of the mind called happiness.

If this ball of light goes to the angry area of the mind it lights up that particular area of the mind.

Are you angry? No you’re in an area of the mind called anger and by using your willpower and your powers of concentration you can actually take your awareness, this ball of light to any area of the mind that you want to go to.

Here’s the most important part where your awareness goes, that’s where your energy is flowing. So if your awareness goes to the angry area of the mind your energy is flowing there, it’s actually strengthening that particular part of the mind; this happens all day everyday.

We allow people and things around us to dictate where our awareness goes in our mind, because they dictate where our awareness goes that’s where our energy flows as well. Where our energy flows is what manifests in our life, what we create. So really the goal in life is not really to control your mind but rather to control where your awareness is going within your mind. So don’t control your mind control where your awareness goes within your mind.

How do we do that?

Concentration

We learn the fine art of concentration. First let’s define what concentration is. I define concentration as the ability to keep your awareness from one thing for an extended period of time, being able to do that allows me to concentrate.

Most people can’t concentrate for two reasons;

One is they’ve never been taught how to concentrate.

Second is they never practice concentration.

How many of you had classes in school on concentration?

Every single day the same way you had classes on maths and science. Ask this question and nobody puts their hand up.

How many of you when you were growing up in school were told to concentrate? Quite a few I bet, isn’t that amazing you get told to concentrate but you never get taught. When I was growing up, I got told as we all where to concentrate all the time, concentrate, on doing your homework, concentrate on what you’re doing and concentrate on eating your food.

Anybody want to show me how to concentrate?

How many of you tell your kids to concentrate?

Have you ever showed them how?

Do you know the right way to concentrate?

Then if you don’t show them how to concentrate. How would they know how to?

Then if you want to be good at something you have to practice it; if you want to be really good at concentration you need to practice it all day.

People are good at distraction because that’s what they practice all day long, it’s not that they don’t have the ability to concentrate they’ve just practice distraction and become really, really, good at it.

So how do we concentrate?

We concentrate by practicing doing one thing at a time and integrating this practice into our everyday life so for me I look at my average day and I ask myself what’s a recurring event in my life, everyday I speak with my wife, everytime I speak with my spouse I give her my undivided attention. I keep my awareness on her, then it drifts away, I bring it back, it drifts away, I bring it back, I keep my awareness on her. I give her my undivided attention.

Now everyday I also speak to my colleagues, I speak with my customers, I speak with my family everytime I speak with somebody I give them my undivided attention. if I’m on the phone I give the person on the phone my undivided attention. I practice doing one thing at a time by and by the end of the day I’ve talked about maybe six to eight hours of practicing concentration.

Six months later I became good at concentration. Twelve months later I’d become really good at concentration. The best way to become good at something is to take a tool (accept it, challenge it, tackle it) and insert it into a reoccurring event in your life and this is the best way to become good at something; rather than to create another practice in your life just accept it, challenge it, tackle it and insert it into a reoccurring event in your life.

So your homework is to give someone or whatever you’re doing your undivided attention, pick one person in your life for the next month that you will give your undivided attention to every time you speak with that person. Stay completely focused on them keep, your awareness on them, give that person your undivided attention and you need to practice.

Willpower

The other thing we need to learn to develop is our willpower. Everybody is born with various levels of willpower but one thing we never get taught to do is to actually develop willpower. Willpower is like a muscle, you have to exercise it.

Willpower there are three ways to develop willpower.

1. Finish what you begin.
2. Finish it well beyond your expectations.
3. Then do a little bit more than you think.

To do these it requires effort and that effort is willpower.
So how do I develop willpower?
I take these three methods and I apply it to do things that reoccur in my life.

What’s something that reoccurs in my life everyday? Everyday I sleep, what a great opportunity to develop willpower. Before I go to sleep, I brush my teeth, I go to sleep, when I wake up in the morning I finish the process of sleep.

How do I finish the process of sleep? I make the bed everyday, everyday I wake up in the morning. I make the bed.

What’s something else you do everyday? Everyday I have breakfast, you have time to make breakfast, I have time to eat breakfast then I have time to do the breakfast dishes and put it away so I finish the process that I began.

The above practices to develop willpower is an excellent way to help with depression because by concentrating on one thing at a time to completion, does not matter how small, is a small victory, an achievement. Taoism uses this approach,Simplicity, patience, compassion. These three are your greatest treasures. Simple in actions and thoughts.

I bring this into everything that I do then throughout the day I develop willpower, the more I practice the better I get. Now I have a tremendous amount of willpower. After six months, I’ve developed a lot of willpower everytime my awareness drifts away. I use that mental muscle, that willpower, to bring my awareness back. Then I use the powers of concentration that I’ve developed to hold my awareness and what I’m focused on and because I’m focusing on that where my awareness goes energy flows.

Now my energy is flowing towards what I want that starts to manifest in my life that’s why it’s so important firstly to understand there’s a separation between awareness and the mind, two completely different things.

You control where the awareness goes.

You control where your energy is flowing.

You control what’s manifesting in your life.

You use the powers of concentration and your willpower to hold your awareness on the priorities in your life.

Energy

The next thing we want to do is to learn to manage energy in our life. This is based on the premise that we only have so much energy, each day we have a finite amount of energy each day. Each day we have an amount of energy. We Take our energy and we invest it into people and things around us. We keep investing, investing, investing, until we have no more energy left. We get exhausted, we go to sleep, our energy builds up again, we go out the next day and we invest our energy into people and things again.

So we have no more energy but the one thing most people don’t do is, we never evaluate who and what we’re investing energy in. So I always tell people to treat energy the same way you treat money. It’s a finite resource that needs to be wisely managed, wisely reallocated and wisely invested. No matter how rich you are you only have so much money and before you spend money most of us think and evaluate what we’re investing our money in. If somebody asks us for £5000 or £30,000 to invest into a startup or a company we would ask questions.

You just wouldn’t hand them £30,000. We would ask;

What’s your plan with it?
What are you going to do with this money?
What’s my return on my investment?

Because it’s a finite resource.
So why don’t we do the same thing with energy before we invest energy into someone or something?

Why don’t we evaluate if that person or that thing is deserving of our energy? Because if you only have this much energy to spend.

If I gave 10% of my energy and I gave it to John. That’s 10% I could have given to my spouse, my business, the thing and people that I love.

Remember the law of Thermodynamics.

“Energy cannot be created or destroyed but it can be transformed from one thing to another.”

So I can’t create energy, if I give 10% to John I want to know he’s going to do something good with it. Because if he’s just going to squander it I’d rather take it and give it to the people and things that I love.

So why is it important to manage energy? For me the greatest impetus for managing energy is death. Death is the greatest impetus for me to manage energy. I realized that life is finite, that I only have one life and because my life is finite I want to be extremely clear where to focus my energy.

There’s no point learning to concentrate if you don’t know what to concentrate on. So along with learning concentration it’s really important to also learn what to focus on.

So what I would recommend as homework, to practice and I am personally learning this late in my forties, is to be clear what your purpose in life is.

A great Guru said, ” The purpose of life is.. life.” I personally like this and I seek knowledge on how to improve my outlook on life, both mentally and physically. This I have, if you have read my book or other blog posts, is to practice gratitude daily, continue to practice breathing techniques, exercise and improve my commitment.

One way to do this is to spend five minutes each morning reflecting on what your purpose of life is. Get to know yourself. Most people are happy to spend time with other people and things but very few people actually make time to spend time with themselves.

When you wake up in the morning, take a shower, go to a quiet place in your house, sit down and ask yourself about;

• What things are you grateful for?
• What type of day are you going to create?
• What you want in life?
• What’s my purpose in life?
• Why am I here?
• What do I love?
• What am I passionate about?

How many people can say this is my purpose in life? Very, very few people.

Once you’re clear with your purpose you know what to concentrate on. You know what to direct your finite amount of energy to. In order to do that, you need to spend time with yourself, each day to find out who and what’s important in your life. Take that finite amount of energy that you have each day.
Then focus it into those things that start to manifest in your life. The by-product of that is happiness.

Be Happy, Strong and healthy.