Hi everybody welcome back, I am your thought strategist and life coach bharat katyayan, and the topic for today is “art of being focused” focus is something for which everybody is concerned, I can’t focus on my work I cant focus on my studies, question is if you are not focused on your work then what are you focused on, and why don’t you choose something on which you are already focused, this reminds me of a boy who failed in 10th grade his father started scolding him “see, LOOK AT Seema of your class SHE topped and you failed, boy instantly said “ that exactly what I was doing whole year papa” So, if he was busy looking at the girl how do you expect him to do two things at the same time. So , we need to first prioritizes that on what we have to focus, we need to understand that our brain is a big maze, it is really hard to find the right way, our brain creates mirage which leads us to the wrong side of the path, so before doing anything we need to examine the situation, ask your self are you doing what you should be doing right now, are you doing what is on your time line ( you get up from your study to go to wash, while you cross your mother’s room you see she is watching your favorite movie, it is coming on tv, suddenly your inner voice says to you “I MUST watch it first, god knows when this movie will come again on tv, although we have yearly subscription of amazon, Netflix and every OTT platform but today I have to watch it on tv no matter what happens, right, with how many people have happened this? I guess everyone. While we are utilizing our time watching movie, our conscious mind is constantly asking us, what about work? When will I do that and the devil in our brain is responding to it spontaneously, I have whole day to work and then what happens!, after whole day is wasted we sit and cry, I am not focused in my life, I have wasted doing things which were not important) How come you are not focused? You are focused. You watched whole movie you were focused in killing your time, so you are focused on the wrong side of the life. What we must learn is not “how to be focused “rather “where to focus” is the right question.
BHAGAVAD GITA: CHAPTER 6, VERSE 26
”YATO YATO NISHCHARATI MANAH-SCHANCHALAM ASTHIRAM |
TATAS TATO NIYAMY-ETAD AATMANYEVA VASHAM NAAYET||”
In Geeta it is said: whenever and wherever the restless and unsteady mind wanders, one should bring it back and continually focus it on god.
So, thousands of years ago people realized that the mind is restless, and it keeps on running from one place to another and we need to bring it back on track. Geeta says bring it back to god, focus on god, so what god refer to in our generation, it is our duty our karma is god, if we our student then studying is our god and we should focus on that, if we our in job then the job is our god we need to focus on that.
We are always told to be focused on our studies when we are kids when we are students, whole day parents keep on telling us “study! study else you will fail, study hard we will buy you a new phone, (they start bribing us, they try to make us do things by creating a new set of deviations in our brain )study to be successful, and many more such dialogues are bombarded to us, but what happens when we are forced to sit and study? With so many instructions do we start studying like a machine, NO, We end up thinking that “if we will study, we will get a new phone, now instead of focusing on studying we are thinking about the latest phones, instead of a math’s formula I am planning ways crafting dreams of being a successful man, in reality, we are still the same boy sitting and gazing in the sky “ papa said I will be successful “ how will you be successful? When you were not doing what you had to do, at the time of studying you are stuck in a mirage that is created by the mind, and it was created because some external force gave you a second thought. Our brain is very smart, he knows his job very well, and he defeats you every time when you do something else rather than doing what you ought to. Your father told things to so that you can be motivated, but our brain listens and uses only that part of the conversation that leads us to dream.
When we start to do something what we should be doing, heaven falls, we don’t find things( I kept my pen here, where is my laptop charger, where are the notes, internet stops working, some relative comes home and thousand natural calamity struck us) is it truly happening or it is our brain? Now think when you had to go for a movie (simply, you bought the tickets, planned with others, went successfully) had popcorn, or went out for clubbing with friends nothing could stop us. Now no relatives coming no problem in searching your party shoes, party clothes are not ironed, not an issue, it all works when we wish to do it, we will do it.
Have you guys ever had corn (sweet corn), sometimes it stuck somewhere in our mouth and our tongue keeps on going to that part again and again until that small piece of corn does not come out, we all are just like our tongue, we have many other things but we have nature to just go on one negative thing that is in our lives, this is the attitude is the reason of our distractions, the moment we sit to do our work our brain starts finding that one stuck issue and leads us towards it. It’s right we have to take out whatever is stuck, we have to deal with it, but at the same time we need to understand that we should use positive things in our life to achieve our goal, and with a positive mind frame we have to deal with all the negative things, if we let negative things or things which are not relevant to the time to consume our energy, then we will end up wasting our time and later we will again blame our self that we are not focused in our lives.
The truth is we all are focused and deeply focused in our lives but the problem is that we focus on wrong things on things we don’t have or things that we want to have, but in reality to achieve what we need to focus on, is what we have and what we have to do?
STORY: ONCE A SAGE WAS TEACHING HIS STUDENTS ART OF ARCHERY, ONE DAY SAGE WANTED TO TEST THE SKILLS OF STUDENT IN ARCHERY, SO HE CALLED ALL OF THEM. HE PUT A WOODEN BIRD AS THE TARGET AND ASKED THEM TO AIM AT THE EYE OF THE BIRD, THE FIRST STUDENT CAME AND HE WAS ASKED TO DESCRIBE WHAT HE SAW, HE SAID I SEE TREE, BRANCHES LEAVES, BIRD AND EYE OF THE BIRD. SAGE ASKED HIM TO WAIT AND ASKED THE SECOND STUDENT TO AIM AND DESCRIBE WHAT HE SAW, SECOND STUDENT CAME AND TOOK HIS AIM AND SAID, I SEE EYE OF THE BIRD, NOW SAGE COMMANDED THEM TO SHOOT THE ARROW, FIRST STUDENT MISSED THE EYE, BUT SECOND STUDENT GOT THE BULLSEYE, EVERYONE QUESTIONED THE SAGE, THAT WHY DID THIS HAPPEN, FIRST STUDENT WHO WAS AWARE OF EVERYTHING IN THE SURROUNDING WHY DID HE MISS THE SHOT AND THE SECOND WHO JUST SAW THE EYE GOT A BULLSEYE, SAGE SMILED AND SAID, ONE WHO WORRIES FOR THE SURROUNDINGS GETS DISTRACTED BUT ONE WHO JUST DO WHAT IS TO BE DONE, WITHOUT GETTING AFFECTED BY THE SURROUNDINGS GETS WHAT HE AIMS AT.
Once we start doing things that are relevant, we will automatically find that we are focused. To be focused we need to do things that are right. We have to direct our brain towards the positive because just like water, it is very easy for us also to flow downwards, but to achieve something we have to flow against the natural flow of life, we have to just do what is right and we will find that we are eventually focused.