The successful warrior is the average man with laser-like focus
- Bruce Lee
Meditation helps increase focus. It is not a way to practice and attain something related to the higher being. It is just a tool that helps us create a habit of returning to the present moment. There are different types of meditation, but the most commonly done is the one where you practice breathing in and out.
It seems easy, but we start noticing something we are unaware of as we go deeper. We realize how difficult it is to concentrate just on the breath. In a few seconds, your mind will jump to a thought. It can be any thought which might be already present in your mind due to your current circumstances. It might be a newly made thought which is irrelevant to the mind.
You will return to the breath, but it will go stray again. It will frustrate you to see how fragile your concentration is and how easily you can get distracted by your mind, even if you are sitting alone in a dark room without distractions.
At first, I left it for a while because it worsened my life. The thoughts that were coming were annoying and sometimes decreased my self-worth also. I had no choice but to return to meditation because I wanted to learn it. I habitually returned to the breath more frequently with time and got less frustrated. To me, it was a moment of astonishment that the lesson is to learn how not to get frustrated.
The more you do it, the more your thoughts run away. Slowly you start taking it as a funny game because you cannot stop your thoughts from originating, as it distracts you from focusing on the breath. I started enjoying it. When something annoyed me, I began to take my attention away from it and toward the task. Thus, it helped decrease my frustration with life also. It did help me. Slowly my concentration grew, and I could focus more on my daily activities.
I learned different forms of meditation, which increase your compassion towards the other people around you. I learned to meditate while washing dishes and walking. Later, I realized I did it unintentionally during my surgeries since I am a working doctor and saw what many people missed.
I do not practice sitting meditation anymore, but it has been ingrained in my personality to leave things I cannot control and focus more on what I can.
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