Training attention

Image by John Hain from Pixabay

After a workshop, one participant shared that she could not sustain her attention when attending an event and kept scribbling a few pages even though the topic was interesting. She also said she frequently experienced this and wanted a remedy to handle the attention deficit. The remedy is to train our attention skills to stabilise our attention. We are continuously distracted by checking mobile phones, messages, emails, discursive thoughts, and other temptations that get our attention carried away. We don't practice systematically training our minds to be steady and stabilise attention. And this is now no more a luxury. It's a necessity because a distracted mind also gets exhausted. It's not easy to gain focus with constant distractions. A distracted mind cannot be efficient and cannot produce quality work.

Therefore, regularly training the mind to stabilise attention is essential. Mindfulness training is where we learn to recover our distracted mind and return to the present moment, where we start building our capacity to stabilise our attention.