How Focus Beats Frustration

by Willie Horton
Gurdy.Net

If you're feeling frustrated, you're normal - but that doesn't justify your feelings because, as we will discover, normal people are crazy. In addition, the things that are frustrating you - from a difficult boss to a difficult relationship, from your business that you think is going nowhere fast to your apparent lack of ability to lose weight - are no excuse for your frustration either. The key thing that you've got to understand is that your frustration is a figment of your imagination, the product of useless thought. And, as normal people, we're really good at thinking useless thoughts. Most important of all, if you give in to your frustration, you'll probably give up on what you think is a lost cause and prove to yourself that you were right to feel frustrated in the first place! After all, given the way our minds work, life is a string of self-fulfilling prophecies.

The normal mind is plagued by fifty thousand thoughts each day. Many of them are harmless, some of them give rise to stupid distraction but some of them are toxic. All these self-limiting beliefs spring from the depths of our subconscious - and, remember, it is our subconscious that creates our view of the world and our own self-image. As a consequence, our subconscious dictates how we bahave. In doing so, our subconscious quite literally creates your life. The subconscious is home to all your perceived inadequacies and it is these that command the greater part of its focus. And our seriously dangerous useless thoughts rise to the surface from these depths. In other words, it is not outside events or people that frustrate you - you frustrate yourself. This is the key problem that I want to address.

The consequences of this way of thinking are, however, self-destructive. Because we get frustrated so very easily, we tend to give up on the idea that our lives can get any better. A classic twenty-first century example of this - one that I read of regularly - is the extent to which people, having set up and internet business, give up on the idea after only weeks, frustrated that their efforts haven't borne immediate fruit. People will advise anyone in this situation that they must persevere - and it's this same advice that I constantly offer my personal development clients with regard to whatever project they may have in hand. Research from the Business School at Madrid's university suggests that the most successful business people are the ones who persevered - even when they keep experiencing failure. To paraphrase US President Calvin Coolidge, perseverance is the only thing that guarantees success.

Perseverance comes naturally to a focused mind. And it is focus that will enable you banish your feelings of frustration. Many people, however, misunderstand the concept of focus - thinking that it relates to keeping your mind on whatever target you have set for yourself. Even though we've all got to have some kind of idea of what we want from life, this is not the kind of future-based focus that I want to talk about. Focus, at its most basic and most powerful, means paying attention to the here and now, to the task is hand, to the reality of the moment. This is the kind of focus that not only develops your ability to persevere. More importantly, this type of focus will completely rid your life of all feelings of frustration.

As I already said, frustration is a trick of the mind - it is the all-too-obvious result of the fact that you've paid attention to the toxic thoughts that create your frustration. The useless thoughts that we all guard jealously in our subconscious mind are the product of the things that we learned about life in general and ourselves in particular during our formative years. As such, these useless thoughts are never likely to simply vanish into thin are - they are part and parcel of the human condition. However, as a responsible adult, you can choose whether or not to pay attention to these thoughts - in other words, it's time for you to take responsibility for your own state of mind.

By honing your innate ability to focus, you will no longer have any attention left to dwell on the thoughts that have been giving rise to your frustration - although they will still be present, they will no longer wield any power over you. Therefore, your goal should be to cultivate your innate ability to focus. Being focused simply means paying attention - but, in this case, we're talking about paying attention to the reality of the present moment rather than paying attention to the imaginary scenarios that our subconscious thoughts conjure up for us.

As a child, you were expert at focusing on the present moment. If you have or know young children you will understand the extent to which they can easily become fully absorbed in whatever it is that they're doing. A three-year-old opening his or her Christmas gifts uses all of their senses to fully experience the moment - the gift is stuck in places it wasn't designed for(!), it's rattled, it's viewed from every angle, it's tasted, it's smelled - the way in which they're immersed in the experience means that there's no attention left for anything else. You must regain your childlike ability to see, feel, hear, smell and taste the reality of the moment, even if your apparent reality is one that annoys you of frustrates you. Remember, those feelings have been added to the real reality of the moment by your otherwise preoccupied mind.

The sooner you start your 'focus training' the better. So, make a little time - a few minutes will do - to sit down and close your eyes. For those few minutes just hear the sounds - all the sounds of the reality of the here and now. Each morning you should take a few minutes to pay attention to what each of your five senses, in turn, are telling you. If you start the day in this way, you set yourself up for a completely different experience from the normal day that the normal crazy person creates for themselves.

Copyright (c) 2011 Willie Horton

Willie Horton launched his now acclaimed Personal Development Seminars in 1996. His clients include Pfizer, Deloitte, Nestle, KPMG, G4S & Allergan. An Irishman, he lives in the French Alps and travels the world as a much sought after speaker and mentor. In 2008 he launched Gurdy.Net home to his Online Personal Development Seminars, Change Your Life & No More Stress

Article submitted Sunday, May 29, 2011 & read 11 times.

Willie Horton has been a personal and business development consultant to business leaders in US, UK, Ireland and Europe since 1996 - enabling some of the world's largest businesses achieve exceptional success. He also works with individuals in sports and entertainment.

He runs a two-day intensive personal development workshop in various European cities and an online personal development website www.gurdy.net

Born in Dublin, Ireland, he is a former senior banker and accountant. He now lives in the tiny French alpine ski resort of Les Contamines Montjoie

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