Learn to Forget if you want to Focus The ability to consciously forget is just...

Learn to Forget if you want to Focus

The ability to consciously forget is just as important as the ability to remember.

When I am working with a client, I need to forget about everything that is not directly related to helping them. I don’t think about my physical body, hunger, pain, boredom, relationships, what Im doing next, bills to pay, what my kids are playing, or what my wife is thinking of making for dinner.

All that “extra” is forgotten for the moment so that I can focus on the task at hand.

Learning to focus requires emptying our minds of the non-essentials to create a vacuum that pulls in the task at hand and allows our full mental potential to be brought to bear on a specific job.

It’s also very stress-reducing to be able to focus. For a moment, we forget all about what bothers us as we work on something else.

This essential life skill is something we must learn and then train for. As we train, our minds get stronger and develop greater endurance. Once we work up to blocks of 45 minutes of intense focus four to six times per day, we are doing it very well.

Access to supernormal stimuli degrades our ability to focus. This is why we keep being pulled away from the things we are trying to focus on by social media, porn, music, and random scrolling.

Going on a dopamine fast and avoiding excess stimulation for a week or so will make training focus much easier.

You can train your focus by starting small and working your way up. Use the two mindfulness exercises below from my course on building Agency. See the screen shots.

If you are feeling brave enough, comment below with your experiences doing the exercises.