I hope you are well!
In one of my last blog post ( “What do you value!”), I lay out the three step plan to unlocking your full potential and finding your purposeful pursuit! Let me slightly alter these steps:
Self-driven mental attention standards falls under cultivating discipline, and I believe this attention discipline will prepare you for the rest of your journey to finding your purposeful pursuit!
I changed “Write down your values” to “Write it down,” because I want to share the real power of a daily journaling practice – No matter who you are or where you come from – carrying a personal journal for thoughts and notes is going to be a critical feature of your new lifestyle to get where you want to go!
Many people including myself will choose to ignore attention discipline until they can no longer! Let me tell you that this strategy will sabotage the rest of your pursuits!
Eventually, not caring for the governor of your life will cause you great pain and suffering that will distract you from the reason you are here!
Before diving in let me give you some steps on how to figure out your own attention and mental standards and start crafting your practice of attention discipline:
I am sure you are thinking — isn’t this the same exact blog post as “Starting from Physical Zero” — and I will say that not cultivating physical discipline is very similar to not cultivating attention discipline, but let’s dig into it so we can observe the differences and find solutions to overcoming the challenges you may face everyday.
My first rebuttal to the idea that physical discipline and attention discipline are the same would be that there are many examples of great athletes with tremendous amounts of physical discipline that have not cultivated attention discipline! I will not give examples, but you can research to find a few.
What is attention discipline?
Attention discipline is the ability to think about what you know you should be thinking about without breaking attention — it’s about controlling the most valuable resource you have — time!
If you allow all of your time to be wasted unfortunately as far as we know there is no do-over.
So we need to take care of our time – cultivate it — pay attention!
Millions of ideas compete for our time inside of our own brain everyday; and maybe right now you are being distracted. STOP IT! NOW!
See if you can really focus on a singular thought for longer then 60 seconds — think of the most serene place you have ever experienced — even that most cherished memory may come and go like a snore in the night to you. Why? It’s simple — most of us can not control our own minds.
Controlling your own mind — unlocks the ability to organize our own values and beliefs — without devoted attention to our values we will never be able to control them.
Worldviews are like apps today – once you download and accept the terms of agreement that’s it for most people.
Few people will continue to contribute meaningful ideas to the world or their own lives without cultivating a mental practice of attention discipline.
Based on your list of values — take the number 1 or 2 thing from your list, and devote 5 minutes a day for three days a week to thinking solely about that value — so if it happens to be family —- you spend 5 minutes devoted to contributing thinking power to you family. In the morning or evening — write down the 3 things you plan to do a week, what you did and how long you spent on it. Try to check this daily so you don’t forget!
Then for the next 12 weeks — add 5 minutes each week. So by week 4 — you’d be devoting 20 consecutive minutes three days a week to that value. By the end of the 12 week program — you will be built up to 60 minutes of disciplined attention towards your most cherished value three days a week!
This is a double win for you – one way its a win is that you are cultivating discipline to pay attention and you also get the benefit of paying attention to something you value!!
It may seem simple, but the honesty of writing it in your journal for yourself is the reality-check you need to know that you are getting closer to your goals, and spending your time the way you would want to do it!
Taking control of your attention can go hand in hand with physical discipline, but sometimes people think distracted physical activity is the same as attention discipline — it’s not!
You can get to the point in your physical journey where you can easily listen to a book, podcast, or lecture during a workout, but many people are not able to do this well!
Sometimes you need to focus on your foot-eye or hand-eye coordination in the gym, on the bike, or using the treadmill – sometimes it would be better if you payed attention to your body and not get distracted especially if you are a beginner (anyone with less then two years of activity experience).
So I highly recommend devoting specific time to thinking back to your values and how you wish to spend your time!
It’s fine if you can meditate and workout — do it! But what are you doing with the rest of the time you have and is it focused on fulfilling your values!!