Of course you know what you are thinking about right now. Maybe you are thinking about your lunch or the kids or a project you are engaged in. Or maybe you are totally focused on my words right here as you read them. The ability to focus on one train of thought to the exclusion of others is the illusive commodity of which I write.
It’s called a scotoma – a thought that blinds you to other thoughts you may be having simultaneously to this one. You are always employing a kind of scotoma. That is, you are focusing on one or two trains of thought to the exclusion of others you are having simultaneously. If you entertained every thought simultaneously, you’d go mad in a hurry. Why? Because you are always in the mode of action upon thought. Every thought in one direction is simultaneously thought of in the opposite direction – just not acted upon as much.
Your mind tends to vacillate between opposing thought trains – thinking in one direction then the opposite then back again – in microseconds. It’s like thinking in yes-no-yes-no… all the time. What gets you anywhere and why you achieve action on anything is that you spend just a microsecond longer in one direction than you do in the other – that is, you spend more time in the yes direction, for example, than in the no direction.
That means it is unnecessary to focus 100% of your energy into a single thought train in order to achieve results. In fact, it is impossible to focus 100% of your thought energy into only one thought train – because you are always in possession of the opposing thought train simultaneously.
Rather, to achieve a goal only requires that you shift your gaze – your attention – in one direction MORE than in other directions. For example, in order to tie your shoes, you only had to focus maybe .01% of your total thought energy to the task – the rest of the thoughts were probably scattered fairly evenly among a hundred other thought trains.
Your mind is not an all or nothing affair. It is capable of and engaged in multiple thought trains in hundreds if not thousands or more directions. And it is considering all these things simultaneously. Attention, however, is the ability of the mind to attend to one thing and attenuate all others – like picking out a voice in the midst of a noisy room. In this case, you would not need to have the room absolutely quiet in order to understand the words. All you would need is sufficient difference from the background noise to make out and understand the words s/he is saying. While you are viewing this computer screen, you are also seeing everything else in your field of view simultaneously – why you are not overwhelmed is that you are attending to this one task and attenuating in importance all others. We sometimes refer to this ability as paying attention.
In order to achieve a goal, all you have to do is place just a little more attention upon your goal than upon the background noise of other things – other thoughts – that vie for your attention. Pain is a wonderful example of how one thought can be attended to while others fade in importance. If you’ve ever had a pain somewhere and suddenly get hurt more in another place on your body, you know that the shift of attention can “cure” the original pain. That shift of attention was perhaps as little as 1% of your total thought processes going on at that time – but it was sufficient for you to feel and believe that you had total focus on just that one thing.
What I am suggesting here is that you are always in balance – always at null – nonexistence. What makes you believe that you exist and have volition and thought and experience – is an amazing and illusory condition called attention. This wondrous ability to shift our enormous thought energy in one direction or another presents us with the illusion of experience, the illusion of physicality, the illusion of volition or free will.
A system that is in total balance would, for every action, create an equal and opposite reaction (Newton’s first law). If I extend out 5 units in one direction, I am also simultaneously extending out in the opposite direction the same 5 units. What makes it seem like I’m moving in any direction is that I’m attending to (focusing attention on) one direction while neglecting the opposite. The truth is that I have not moved at all, but the effective experience is that I’ve moved 5 units in one direction.
I’m a pretty practical guy and this stuff starts to sound more like fiction than science of any kind. So, let me bring this down into something practical, usable, and pragmatic for you. Let’s say that you’d like to drop 20 pounds by a certain time and keep it off forever. Further, that you’d like to strengthen your body so that it looks good when it weighs 20 pounds less than it does now. These are good, perhaps achievable goals – and let’s pretend for this discussion that the goal is yours.
You already have a focus and attention that provides you with an experience of a body the way it is now. To redirect your thoughts and experience in the direction of a body 20 pounds lighter does not require a 90 degree turn – or even a major lifestyle change – rather it only requires a slight shift or nudge to one side or the other – in the direction of your goal. A tiny nudge every day is every bit as effective as a major lifestyle change – but a whole lot easier to sustain over time.
To make a “shift” rather than a turn sets the mind up for “it’s easy” to achieve my goal – because I don’t have to do anything major to achieve it – just shift my thoughts rather than change my mind or reorganize my whole belief system. Can you feel the difference between having to make a major life change and simply making a slight shift? If all you had to do was lean a little toward the left rather than push or shove or pull hard to the left, wouldn’t it seem easier to achieve?
As long as you believe that you have to make BIG changes, you will fight and struggle to achieve your goal. As long as you believe it is easily achievable, however, you will make it. When you believe that your goal is easy – as easy as tying your shoes, for example – you will achieve it quickly and easily – just as you believe.
Remember – a simple step to one side changes everything.