The Home of Inner Peace

Focus and control is remaining fixed on a particular point without losing concentration and being able to return to it when your mind wanders. This is achieved through practice and patience.

We were born with no instruction on how our mind works and have been taught nothing, if not very little, since.

It is where your personality is formed and grows. It is where you experience your emotions, desires, hopes and dreams in life. It is singly the most important aspect of our existence and yet compared with the world outside, very little has been done to master it. Your emotions are a prime example of lack of control. I am not suggesting that you should be able to switch them on or off, but I am saying that they should not rule your existence. In some cases emotions have controlled you to the point that you neglect basic needs like food and appearance.

With this in mind it becomes important to gain focus and control to achieve more enjoyment and less stress. As we are normally resistant to change, setting aside a regular daily meditation usually does not last. Meditating when you are inspired to do so is more likely to last long term. A reminder on a mirror or the fridge door will create this inspiration.

Start with a simple medititation of stilling your mind. Stilling your mind is not necessarily emptying your mind of thoughts. In most cases it is being able to focus on a single point in your mind. It is likely you will only do this for a few seconds at a time. That suits this method perfectly. Meditation is usually associated with a relaxing atmosphere, but we dont live in relaxing world. Learning to meditate in any situation will benefit you when you most need it.

There are many times a day when you have small pockets of time to yourself. It may be doing the dishes, in the shower, on the toilet, at traffic lights, waiting for the phone to be answered, during a pregnant pause, at the doctors or mowing the lawn to name just a few. When these small pockets of time coincide with you remembering to meditate, we have a winner. The goal is the stilling of your mind for a few seconds. You may do this a hundred times or not at all in one day. The idea is to integrate it into normal life which means little or no effort to make the time to meditate. On occasion, larger pockets of time will arise when you will be free to meditate in a peaceful environment. When this is added to the brief meditations the benefits are significant.

As this method is not intrusive in your life like a ritual can be, you are less inclined to have the resistant side of you niggling to finish. This means you are less likely to give up which will lead to the results that consistant effort achieves.