By: Willie Horton
I am well aware that, of the thousands of people around
the world who receive my free Personal Development Ezine every week, many will
not be celebrating Christmas this year. Nevertheless, I have started
recommending little Christmas gifts “ that my readers can buy for
themselves... because they are worth it! This week âs recommendation was Tony
de Mello âs classic book, Awareness. Not written as a book at all it
is composed of excerpts taken from some of his acclaimed seminars Awareness is a hard-hitting book that says it like it is. As the title suggests, the book
explores just how unaware so-called normal people really are. To quote de
Mello, we sleepwalk our way through life without ever realizing that, in order
to live life to the full, all we have to do is wake up.
Some people have recently criticised me for the title of my own new book, 'Normal Crazy People', suggesting that I am in error when I juxtapose the words normal and crazy. However, all you have to do is look around you (and possibly take a long hard look at your own behaviour) to realize that our behaviour is off the wall. Tony de Mello arrived at the same place that many psychologists have done over the last seventy years. The scientific discipline of psychology has probably never once published a research paper using the word 'crazy' but, if you cast your eye over the key areas of research back to the 1930s, you will inevitably come to the conclusion that normal people are, indeed, crazy. Why? Because research from very many different psychological perspectives - behavioural, social, neurological, cognitive and developmental - all confirms the same conclusion: that, as adults, our minds control us, not the other way around. And that, to my mind, is a concise definition of madness.
The normal mind does not focus on the here and now - the time and place that you are! The normal mind's cognitive functions ensure that you pay little or no attention to the here and now - the time and place that you've got to turn up to to get anything worth talking about from your life. The normal mind's capabilities that allow us to repeatedly perform routine functions mindlessly result in us doing pretty much everything mindlessly. And, all the while, the normal subconscious mind is indulging in its obsession with the key events of our formative years - the conditioning that has made us who we think we are. Quite obviously, this way of using your mind simply leads to what de Mello describes as the 'nightmare' than the normal mind sleepwalks through.
The obvious conclusion is that, in order to get anything much out of life, you're going to have to start taking control of your mind. You're going to have to start managing how your mind focuses and, in the process, ensure that your mind focuses on the key things that you need to get done to get you to where you want to be in life.
Managing your mind is no big deal. It doesn't require that you transform your way of thinking. All that is required is that you start to re-train your mind to focus on the present moment - the only place and time where you can actually do what needs to be done to the very best of your ability. And, even though your adult mind is hard-wired to not pay attention to the here and now, retraining your mind to do just that couldn't be simpler. Like all great journeys, you start with the first steps - you start small. You deliberately decide to use some of your mundane, repetitive, routine chores as a training ground for your mind. You deliberately decide that, in doing these chores, you will pay an extra-ordinary amount of attention to what you're doing. After all, that's how we train ourselves to live our ordinary lives extra-ordinarily.
What am I talking about? Well, think of three or four things that you're going to have to do today. Like eating your dinner, like shaving, brushing your teeth or dressing yourself. The simplest way to pay an extra-ordinary amount of attention to things as mundane as these is to do them differently. In this way you involve more of your mind in the task in hand - you relearn how to focus. Not just that, you experience the difference between being focused and sleepwalking. And the moment you begin to experience this difference in small mundane things, you begin to develop the focus that is required to be the very best you that you can be in the bigger things that you have to do in life.
You cannot over-estimate the importance of focus and attention. Focus is the hallmark of all extra-ordinarily successful people. Little wonder really - because neuro-psychology tells us that your ability to be happy and successful depends on your ability to pay attention.
Copyright (c) 2011 Willie Horton
Some people have recently criticised me for the title of my own new book, 'Normal Crazy People', suggesting that I am in error when I juxtapose the words normal and crazy. However, all you have to do is look around you (and possibly take a long hard look at your own behaviour) to realize that our behaviour is off the wall. Tony de Mello arrived at the same place that many psychologists have done over the last seventy years. The scientific discipline of psychology has probably never once published a research paper using the word 'crazy' but, if you cast your eye over the key areas of research back to the 1930s, you will inevitably come to the conclusion that normal people are, indeed, crazy. Why? Because research from very many different psychological perspectives - behavioural, social, neurological, cognitive and developmental - all confirms the same conclusion: that, as adults, our minds control us, not the other way around. And that, to my mind, is a concise definition of madness.
The normal mind does not focus on the here and now - the time and place that you are! The normal mind's cognitive functions ensure that you pay little or no attention to the here and now - the time and place that you've got to turn up to to get anything worth talking about from your life. The normal mind's capabilities that allow us to repeatedly perform routine functions mindlessly result in us doing pretty much everything mindlessly. And, all the while, the normal subconscious mind is indulging in its obsession with the key events of our formative years - the conditioning that has made us who we think we are. Quite obviously, this way of using your mind simply leads to what de Mello describes as the 'nightmare' than the normal mind sleepwalks through.
The obvious conclusion is that, in order to get anything much out of life, you're going to have to start taking control of your mind. You're going to have to start managing how your mind focuses and, in the process, ensure that your mind focuses on the key things that you need to get done to get you to where you want to be in life.
Managing your mind is no big deal. It doesn't require that you transform your way of thinking. All that is required is that you start to re-train your mind to focus on the present moment - the only place and time where you can actually do what needs to be done to the very best of your ability. And, even though your adult mind is hard-wired to not pay attention to the here and now, retraining your mind to do just that couldn't be simpler. Like all great journeys, you start with the first steps - you start small. You deliberately decide to use some of your mundane, repetitive, routine chores as a training ground for your mind. You deliberately decide that, in doing these chores, you will pay an extra-ordinary amount of attention to what you're doing. After all, that's how we train ourselves to live our ordinary lives extra-ordinarily.
What am I talking about? Well, think of three or four things that you're going to have to do today. Like eating your dinner, like shaving, brushing your teeth or dressing yourself. The simplest way to pay an extra-ordinary amount of attention to things as mundane as these is to do them differently. In this way you involve more of your mind in the task in hand - you relearn how to focus. Not just that, you experience the difference between being focused and sleepwalking. And the moment you begin to experience this difference in small mundane things, you begin to develop the focus that is required to be the very best you that you can be in the bigger things that you have to do in life.
You cannot over-estimate the importance of focus and attention. Focus is the hallmark of all extra-ordinarily successful people. Little wonder really - because neuro-psychology tells us that your ability to be happy and successful depends on your ability to pay attention.
Copyright (c) 2011 Willie Horton
Willie Horton is author of 'Normal Crazy People',
the 'radically different' self-help book and 'To Succeed... Just Let Go', his
acclaimed personal development book. He is creator of Gurdy.Net, the Personal Development
Website and works with clients like Pfizer, Allergan, ESB, G4S, Deloitte and
KPMG. He lives in the French Alps.
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