One Simple Technique to Let Your Mind Wander to Success
By: Neha Dsharma
Tags: Success, Mindfulness At Work, Growth, Competition, Digital

The world is in a competition for your attention. Are you selling it away for cheap?

Ever found yourself thinking the most random of things on the most random of moments, maybe it’s that dream vacation you’ll have one day, or the conversations you had or might likely not have, or daydreams of possible interactions with your ‘crush’ etc. The mind doesn’t stop. And the pandemic has only made it worse.

The digital world has become almost palpable now, closer, more real, and 100 times more addictive than ever before. Every time you sit to do something crucial, your mind easily diverts your attention to the viral trends, streams of notifications, celeb stories that you just don’t want to miss; because that’s the type of influence digital has on you. And no matter how much you try, the urge takes over you and you scroll; you become a puppet in the puppet show.

While a wandering mind can lead you to creative ideas, but again it really depends on the content. Is your content leading you to your goal?

According to a study done by Microsoft, humans now have an average focus span of 8 seconds coming down from the 12 seconds in the year 2000, continuously graphing downwards as the years go by.

What does this mean for you?

While you are fantasizing about your making plans or your crush during an important meeting, you are getting no closer to your goals and dreams, but are definitely evolving backward to our ape ancestors.

Mind-wandering leads to

- Increased time to complete a task

- Low level of work quality and performance dropping you down the food chain in the competition

- Decreased brain processing of the outer environment

- High dissatisfaction, unhappiness, and stress

- High Confusion and disorientation

Getting rid of the mental diarrhea

A mind that can make unbelievable possibilities happen, when wanders out of control is a liability. Are these distractions worth your peace of mind and goals?

If not, here is one trick you can use that is guaranteed to help you get out of the vicious circles of diversion and achieve almost anything!

There is a lot of unconscious diarrhea cooped up in the mind, the only thing that keeps us away from focus. To clear out this path for a healthy mind, one thing that has helped (me and) a million people around the world is the simple 5 minutes conscious breathing exercise. It does total traffic control.

Now don’t tell me that you are too busy and you can’t spare 5 minutes for this. You already waste enough time with your wandering mind, doing things you shouldn’t be doing. It’s only fair if you spend just 5 minutes doing something that will help you breeze through the day!

Breathing can heal your mind, your body, and your heart. You need to be consciously engaging your breath to get the benefits.

Here is how you can do it-

Wherever you are, sit or lie down comfortably and close your eyes Breathe normally and start to take notice of your breath Count backward while taking 10 normal breaths Followed by 10 deep breaths- 5 sec to breathe in and 5 sec to breathe out Again, take 5 normal breaths and 5 deep breaths in the same pattern

As you inhale, say, ‘I inhale peace and positivity.’ As you exhale, say, ‘I exhale negativity and chaos.’

And as you do so, let the air carry away all the things that push and pull you. Take a moment to smile to be in this wonderful moment of existence. And then, open your eyes.

This will surely clear the clutter and strengthen your will-power to do the intended tasks. Trust me, it works like magic.

You will find yourself to be happier and more at peace with the present!

Here is a Ted-Talk video that you can watch as guidance while you are doing it.