The Great Wide Open

In Elaine's childhood, she had felt trapped in a family situation with a mentally ill, explosive father and a mother addicted to prescription pain medications. Elaine had always been the steady, capable one in her family, doing well in school, and generally causing no one any trouble. But her younger sister was a different story. From early childhood, her sister had been an ill-tempered handful, adding more stress to a family already overwhelmed with problems. We've all been in this stressful, familiar situation, and it's something that can actually weaken our results. Environment : In your ability to focus, your personal work environment plays a large role. The more your environment is comfortable and welcoming, the easier it will likely be for you to stay there and concentrate. Be comfortable - Start by assuring that your chair and desk are at the accurate height for you to work comfortably. You will feel uncomfortable if your chair is too high or your desk is too low, and you will be tempted to use this as an excuse for getting up and walking away. View a natural scene or observing wildlife can help enhance concentration by putting up images. In your work area or office, if you can put up photographs, then select landscapes or natural photos you want. This can help your concentration, particularly if you can see the images from your desk. Sealed out distractions: As much as possible, -listening to music can help, particularly if it's instrumental music. Some people also use white noise apps - these create a constant, no distracting sound like ocean waves or falling rain. If we look at the basic physics of the energies involved and keep in mind that the Map of Consciousness is a logarithmic scale, we can see why Fear (cal. Therefore, the power of Love is represented by 10500, whereas Fear is only 10100, a very big difference. To put oneself in an energy field of Unconditional Love, at 540, is to automatically heal oneself on the deepest level. Choosing to become a loving person results in the release of endorphins by the brain, which has a profound effect on the body's health and happiness (see Brain Function and Physiology chart in the previous article). Religious/spiritual alignment with faith is capable of reducing overall levels of fear. The spiritual energy shifts brain dominance to a more benign system processing by which stress hormones are replaced by endorphins and optimized levels of serotonin and other neurotransmitters.

Spiritual alignment, however, doesn't mean total immunity from periods of emotional distress or karmic patterns. Depression, for example, affects the biochemistry of a large segment of the population. It is estimated that at least one-third of adults will have a serious or moderately severe degree of depression at some time in their lives. It may be minor, in the form of regret, or major, in the forms of mourning the loss of loved ones, financial disaster, divorce, and so forth. Elaine was always the good one, and with her natural intelligence and maturity went on to care for her parents as they became older and more infirm. Between her career and her parents, she never had the energy to marry and now she was facing middle age with an out-of-control, thirty-year-old sister who was acting like the adolescent from hell. Now her sister's problems had crossed the line from her private world into the arena of the legal system. Elaine was beside herself ever since she learned that her sister's insulting, belligerent behavior in the city lock-up had caused her to be held without bond. She also knew that her sister's mottled record of rehabilitation and relapse would impress no judge. When Elaine's efforts to get her sister released were unsuccessful, she began to feel panicky and desperate, prompting her call to me. Elaine's love for her sister went beyond mere family attachment. She was subconsciously convinced that she had been given the mission of saving her sister. When this failed - as it always did - Elaine became demoralized and guilt-stricken. Where had she gone wrong? Other sounds will block out this constant background noise, helping you concentrate more and disregard distractions. Drink water : When we work, many of us don't think about drinking water, but dehydration can make us feel tired, irritable, sluggish, or even sick. When our brains do not have sufficient fluid, it can't operate at peak performance. An effortless way to help improve your concentration during the day is to stay hydrated. Begin your day with a good breakfast by eating breakfast. When you are hungry, it is much harder to focus, so eat a well-rounded meal before going to work.

By keeping healthy snacks at your workplace, you can also support your concentration during the day. Good options include nuts, whole-grain crackers, fresh fruit, and vegetables. Get up and drive : During the day, do you walk about? You probably don't jump around often if you're like many people. Depression is accompanied by major changes in brain physiology and low levels of critical neurotransmitters, such as nor-epinephrine and serotonin. The propensity to depression includes strong genetic and karmic factors and is often familial. Clinically, depression usually necessitates professional help. Serious depression can be worked through under appropriate conditions but is really indicative of the need for psychiatric or other professional clinical help, as well as protection and support. The loss of hope and the will to live, along with the accompanying depression, frequently occurs in lonely, isolated individuals; Suicide is a leading cause of death in adolescents. All things are physical, mental, and spiritual. On the physical level, some depressives have recovered simply by avoiding sugar. The majority respond well to antidepressants. In a state of depression, there is a loss of essential neurotransmitters in certain areas of the brain. What had she overlooked? Accustomed to making things work out, Elaine could not give up on her sister. When Elaine could do nothing more to get her sister out of jail, she expressed her survivor guilt by making herself suffer along with what she imagined her sister was going through. One night, Elaine was horrified and conscience-stricken when she realized she had put her sister out of her mind for a couple of hours while out to dinner with friends. Ashamed of her disloyalty to her locked-up sibling, Elaine spent the next day holed up at home in a depressive funk. Elaine had clearly gone beyond empathy for her sister's self-induced problems and had deteriorated into attempting to take on her sister's imagined suffering.

But Why Feel Guilty? From childhood on, Elaine had always felt a kind of survivor guilt over the fact that she had created a good life while her sister's life perpetually floundered. I told Elaine I could understand her empathy for her sister, but confessed I was at a loss as to why her sister's distress should cause her feelings of guilt. Sorrow over seeing a ruined life was understandable. Research has shown that during the day, regular walking can help increase your focus. Mindset: Constant interruptions and low productivity are linked. These distractions have become so extremely common in today's offices that doctors have even given it a name: Attention Deficit Trait, or ADT. And, they admit that the entire company can suffer from it. We live in a fast-paced world where you can easily get distracted every day by a lot of stuff. You can try everything, but it is quite impossible to succeed if you lack concentration in your life. Let me explain and help you understand why concentration is important in your life. Focus can change everything, truly. Energy flows where the attention goes, as it is said. It expands when you concentrate on something. Therefore, it is possible to ameliorate the expression of this symptom by the use of antidepressants. Generally, it is safe to treat the depression of the majority of patients pharmacologically with antidepressants as long as there is close clinical supervision, especially in children and adolescents. Pharmacologically, they take the person from the bottom of the Map and lift them up to a higher level, so they are then able to respond to psychotherapy or spiritual counseling to try to alleviate the conditions that brought about the vulnerability. The risks of psychopharmacology have to be weighed against the risk of suicide, especially when an apathetic depression becomes agitated (the person now has sufficient energy to carry out suicide). Happiness arises from the willingness to let go of that which is negative and to allow love to replace it within consciousness, because the essential nature of consciousness, unless it has been impaired, is lovingness. We see in the innocence of the young child that lovingness is the expression of the essence of human nature.

It is as if the child has not yet been programmed to go into fear, doubt, or limitation. When looking at the exact mechanics, we see that what we hold in mind begins to manifest on the physical plane. Even a relatively neutral thought can have major consequences. For example, the thought I think I will go to Hawaii instantly energizes one's finances and plans over the next six months to get ready for the trip. But what was the connection between her sister's problems and Elaine's feelings of guilt? It made no logical sense. Elaine had done nothing but try to help and protect her sister all of her life, especially when their parents were out of control or incapacitated. She was actually the one in her family who was least deserving of guilty feelings. Blame Projectors I asked Elaine to explain why her sister's troubles made her feel guilty, and suddenly she hit upon the answer. Growing up in her family, it seemed like everybody was angry with everyone else all the time. If anyone was in a bad mood, it was always somebody else's fault. If an accident happened, somebody should have been more careful. Blame flew all over the place. It is important to know why focus is so critical, so you can use it to your advantage. Here are the explanations of why concentration in your life is important. It helps you change your life. Focus can dramatically change your life. When you concentrate on your life to make it better, eventually it will start to get better. As it is said, The hidden truth of change is to concentrate all of your energy on building the new, not fighting the old.