Meditation is a highly effective technique for focusing the mind – and for keeping it focused. With patience and practice, it is possible to apply a similar discipline to everyday activities at home and work. The resulting state of ‘mindfulness’ can improve memory and help us to operate more effectively across a range of situations.
You put your keys down, and moments later, you cannot remember where they are. You get to the bottom of the page in a book without registering a single word you have read. These scenarios probably sound very familiar. But the reason for these failures of attention – which nearly all of us experience from time to time – is not so much memory loss as mental chaos.
Our minds wander away, sparked by thoughts or feelings that are at a tangent to what we are engaged in doing. Surprisingly, the more stimulating the activity, the more likely we are to be distracted; studies have shown that college students actually remember more of a lecture they find boring than they do of an interesting one because the latter secures them thinking instead of attending.
There is, however, a very effective way of training the mind to pay attention – mindfulness. It is similar to meditation, but instead of focusing on breathing, you allow your focus to rest on the things that you are doing, seeing, or hearing. Almost like a camera, you turn to each experience without dwelling on the previous one and without becoming distracted by the inner world of unproductive thinking.
Open minds
Mindfulness is not the same as concentration, which demands concerted effort and can only be sustained for relatively short periods. Rather, it involves a natural openness to experience – an openness that we all have as young children but which we lose in the ever-growing torrent of demands, pressures, and distractions.
Practicing mindfulness brings many benefits. You will probably be far less tired at the end of the day because chaotic thinking often summons up emotions – anger, fear, or anxiety – that are energy-drinking and that remain with you long after you have started to think about something else. Mindfulness allows you to let go and so helps you to conserve emotional energy. But far from discouraging thinking, mindfulness helps you to remain alert. Fresh and creative, so when productive thinking is required, ideas typically come with a surprising clarity. This is because the practice of mindfulness gives voice to precisely those unconscious thought processes that are the source of creativity. All too often, the conscious mind is too busy with its affairs to remain open to new creative ideas, and like someone failing to be heard above the noise of the room, the unconscious eventually gives up on its unequal task.
There is nothing esoteric or ‘way out’ about mindfulness. It is simply a way of allowing yourself to remain in the present, where you can be fully engaged with your experiences rather than losing yourself in thoughts about your experiences. Many sports professionals practice mindfulness; allowing the mind to wander during a game of tennis or dwelling too long on the last missed shot can spell disaster. Many sports psychologists acknowledge that the difference between an excellent player and a good one resides more in an ability to remain mindful throughout an arduous match than it does in differences in coordination or athleticism.
The Source Of Enlightenment
Many years ago, a Japanese Zen master was asked for the secret of enlightenment. In reply, he picked up his brush and wrote the symbol for ‘attention.’ ‘Surely there must be more to it than that?’ persisted his questioner. The master picked up his brush again and wrote the symbol three times – attention, attention, attention.
Mindful Attention
In a well-known psychological experiment, participants are shown a short clip of a film without being told the purpose and then asked to answer specific factual questions relating to the content. What color was the shirt of one of the actors? What did A say to B? What was on the table? Did C have long or short hair? What could be seen through the window? And so on. Not only do many people get the details wrong, they often disagree vehemently with each other over these details.
One of the reasons for the mistakes and disagreements is selective attention. People tend to focus on the things in which they are interested and ignore everything else. With the practice of mindfulness, selective attention broadens so that the conscious mind takes in more of the information being fed to it by the senses. One outcome of this is that our range of interests also widens, and we make better use of our eyes and ears.
