Holding Focus—Why You Need This Awareness Skill

A major reason why behind one person’s success and not another’s isn’t usually a difference in IQ or life experience or the ability to come up with brilliant creative breakthroughs. As valuable as those things may be, there’s something more critical that applies to almost everyone: awareness skills. The term may sound strange, because society and our education system doesn’t train for it.

But your awareness skills are tested every day. Let’s look at the first one, the ability to hold focus.

Focus is about steady attention that doesn’t waver, and it has ancient roots in Vedic India, where focusing the mind (Dharana in Sanskrit) isn’t about keeping your attention on a boring textbook lesson. It’s not external at all. It’s about developing one-pointed intention. Whenever you desire something to come about - a goal, outcome, or solution - keeping focused on it comes naturally.  Getting to an external goal is the main thing society considers a success. 

But does awareness have its own power to bring about results? In other words, leaving aside the work needed to create an accomplishment, can you find a quicker, easier path by being more conscious? To find out, you must use a different kind of focus, known as “clear intention.”  

God is Pure Awareness

Courtesy of YouTube/The Chopra Well

Knowing what you want, uncomplicated by confusion, is a clear intention.  Your brain obeys clear intentions more easily than confused intentions—that’s why multi-tasking turns out to be so inefficient. Neither task receives adequate focus, and the brain is divided between competing intentions.  Every time you hesitate or feel mixed emotions, your intention is no longer clear. It’s the difference between running a marathon burning to win and running the same marathon worrying that you might collapse halfway through.  The brain is thrown off by mixed messages, even when they are subtle.  For example, if you know how to make an omelet, it will generally take less than two minutes from start to finish. But try timing yourself against the clock, setting a deadline of two minutes. You’ll find yourself fumbling over easy steps, and at the very least your mind will be divided between making the omelet and keeping your eye on the clock.

The problem of mixed motives leads to much frustration.  Think of how hard it has been to make decisions in your own life when you felt ambivalent, indecisive, or unsupported in your decision-making. These factors affect not just you but the entire situation.  Worse still are decisions that must be made where there is distrust, rivalry, and hidden agendas.  A group of people with mixed motives isn't conducive to reaching any goal smoothly, and when a bad result occurs and outsiders ask, "What were they thinking?” The answer is usually "They were thinking too many things at once."

Focused intention has long been given inexplicable power. Consider the act of prayer. People pray under many different circumstances, some of them quite desperate, when the mind is agitated, some of them quite peaceful, when the mind calmly turns to God.  There are prayers for success, rescue, redemption, forgiveness, healing, or if you happen to be ten years old, for a new bike.  People make bargains in their prayers: “God, if you give me what I want, I promise to be good” is a well-tried formula.  The fact that some prayers are answered while many go ignored leads to enormous confusion and frustration. But in terms of awareness, prayer can’t be expected to work if your intention isn’t clear.  In every area of life, intentions become murky when you

               Don’t really know what you want

               Think you don’t deserve to get what you want

               Feel skeptical that any result will come

               Have mixed motives

               Experience inner conflict

Prayer is a controversial subject, and I’m not passing judgment on whether it works or not (given a clear connection to your true self, I personally believe that prayer – or any clear intention – can come true). But the lines of communication are cut off when you send a confused message.  With clarity comes focus, and when you are focused, the power of awareness is activated.

The secret to holding focus is to make it effortless. The image of a genius with furrowed brow concentrating like mad is the wrong image.  Awareness likes to be focused when it is pleased – that’s why two people in love can’t tear their eyes off each other.  They drink each other in; there’s no effort involved. So apply your focus to the things that charm you. Put your energy on things you love but also on things that most easily hold your attention and make you feel energized and vital.

This kind of focus is effortless but not passive. It involves the following:

               You relax into a receptive state.

               You are quiet inside.

               The experience is allowed to sink in.

               You are filled with a subtle feeling of curiosity, pleasure, wonder, or love.

               You appreciate this feeling and allow it to linger.

In short, this is one of the gentlest skills in awareness, and one of the most pleasing. 

Deepak Chopra, MD is the author of more than 80 books with twenty-two New York Times bestsellers. He serves as the founder of The Chopra Foundation and co-founder of The Chopra Center for Wellbeing. His latest book is The 13th Disciple: A Spiritual Adventure.