My Mind Is Overactive. I Can’t Concentrate. What Can I Do?

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Today’s podcast episode is an answer to a question that has come in from a listener of this podcast. Welcome, or welcome back to success with Srini. Happy Friday morning to you. Friday mornings become easy when I get a question. Otherwise, I have to make up something in my mind. And I come here and I do this recording this podcast. And it doesn’t sound right doesn’t come out. Right. But if there is a question, then my focus is to ride on the question. So I know that at least one listener of the individual who’s asking this question is going to benefit from this if not everyone?

The question is this, “Hi Srini, I’ve been listening to your podcast for a while I have heard you talk about focus and the books that helped you. Lately, I started to realize that I’m not able to concentrate. I don’t know why this is happening to me. And I’m not able to carry on things that I want to do. And I’m not able to give attention to them at a level that I used to before. I have heard you talk about hypnosis, I’m considering hypnosis, what are your recommendations?”

Well, I appreciate the question, thank you for the trust. I usually do not jump in and say do this, because I believe in it. And most people have seen this which is they look at every problem as a nail. And for every nail, there is a hammer, or there’s only one hammer, and everything is a nail. So it’s not the right way to approach it. So first of all, when you are not able to focus and you’re not able to concentrate, your question was concentration, so you’re not able to concentrate, then my suggestion is that you talk to your doctor. And this could be something else. Okay. And that’s very natural. That’s the path you should take before talking and reaching out to other people. That could be something going on here. Now, assuming that that’s not the case, everything is fine, let’s say. Then, based on my understanding, there are about three things that contribute to a lack of concentration, three things. The first is ADHD. I’ve seen this consistently. The second is insomnia, the lack of sleep, and all that. And the third one is anxiety, anxiety, and depression, but anxiety. These are the three primary reasons why people have difficulty concentrating. They can’t concentrate on small tasks, they can’t concentrate on big tasks. Assuming that everything else is okay, that means you’re eating right sleeping, you know, your energy levels are good, you know, there’s nothing else going on. Physically, nothing is wrong and in all bad. So everything else is okay, these are the three things.

The good news in all this is, that concentration is an acquired skill, which means you can train the brain to concentrate. So if you make that your agenda, you make that you’re calling that I’m going to train my brain to concentrate, then you can. And initially, it’s hard, but then over a period of time, it becomes easier, and then it becomes a part of your life. So you’ve got to really take that as your calling, take that as your purpose and just keep on doing and I’m going to share a strategy with you here. That will help. Now, you can try different other techniques and hypnosis is obviously there. But then before going there, why not do something cautiously before trying other methods that will impact the unconscious. Okay. Let me go a little bit into this anxiety, ADHD insomnia part. When people have difficulty concentrating on tasks, what’s happening is they are focused inward, most of the time I can’t generalize that, but most of the time, so they have a lot of feelings. And they go in loops inside about the feelings and situations and things like there are multiple thoughts and multiple feelings that are inside of them. So they can’t focus on external tasks. Now, this is very prominent when somebody is going through some depression.

So usually, they’re mostly focused on things that they lack, and why things happen to them that way. And most of the time trying to fix those things and justify the depression through these events or through whatever the lack or whatever. So they’ll find one thing that is missing or two things they’re missing, and they want to keep on thinking about those two or three things over and over again, for hours and hours, hours and days together. And essentially, the energy is misdirected. There is no energy left to do anything else outside so it’s free. very difficult to do anything outside. So it’s difficult, it’s hard for me to generalize that and present that on a podcast like this, but you get the idea. So the brain is focused on a completely different aspect. That aspect has no relevance to what this individual has to do to move forward in life. So we need to detach that so many, many years ago, I came up with a video and talked about this, I’ll find that video, and I’ll probably send it to you. So when you go inside of you, then let’s say let’s call it as the subject, the subject is you. When you go outside of you, you’re going after an object, anything and everything outside of us is an object. So if we constantly focus inside, that means we are draining the subject. We’re draining ourselves, we need to focus on the object, which means our energy has to be focused on things outside of us to get things done.

So one technique that I want to share with you, and hopefully it’s going to work, hopefully, because I’ve seen this work, not for everyone, but most, which is, every time you are about to start an activity or about to start a task. You go through a cycle, you ask a question to yourself, so why am I doing this task? And what will this do to me in the long run, we call this the long-form, meaning attaching long-form meaning to anything you do, even the smallest things you do, you will wake up in the morning, you will brush your teeth, let’s say you ask a question saying, you know, what will it do to me if I do this? And usually, the answer should be positive. If I brush my teeth, then you know I’ll have good hygiene. And you know, I’m going to retain my teeth, whatever, right? So that has to be, the end outcome has to be understood by the mind. Every task, every activity. And what it does is it forces you to detach from what’s happening, what has happened to you in the past. And all the feelings that you are otherwise processing, and focus on the activity that’s happening outside of you, which is brushing of teeth. It’s very simple. So the more you deliberately focus, on tasks outside of you, let’s say you’re going for a run, let’s say you’re going for a swim. Let’s say you’re going to meet someone and you start questioning, I’m going to go meet someone, is it valuable? What will it do to me? If I made this individual, you ask the question. So now suddenly, at that moment, you’re not thinking about what happened in the past, and all the feelings that you’re processing otherwise. So the key is this, the key is every time your energy has to be focused on the object so that you are not drained. If the energy is focused on you, the subject then you are drained. So that separation has to be created.

So I usually tell people to deliberately shift between their inside and the outside. So if you’re too focused on thinking always about the past things that happened to you, and how life is not right, then you’re caught up with this thing here. Occasionally focus on the tasks outside attached with the long-form meaning and then come back and think about yourself. And you keep on doing this three, four times, 10 times a day, 20 times a day that you focus on, momentarily, focus on the task outside, attach along for meaning, and then come back to yourself. There comes a point after six months, eight months now you have effectively trained your brain to concentrate on objects outside of you. I hope I’m coming across. And that is how you kind of slowly separate yourself from this ruminative thinking of where you’re feeling this depression, anxiety, and all that.

I completely speculated the answer. Okay. This may not be applicable to you at all to the question that you asked. But if you remove the question and it’s just listening to the answer, it has its own relevance, hoping I’m hoping because there are so many things that I need to know before I could answer a question like this about you how old you are, your background and the things that led you to this point, the activity that you’re engaged in the work you do, and all that I need to know before I can tell you what specifically you have to do. But this isn’t this is a small little technique that you should try and focus on putting all your energies on the objects outside of you. And rather than trying to put things Your energy and on the subject which is you okay so that’s all for now if I say anything beyond this I’ll be repeating myself wherever you are be safe. Have a wonderful weekend and I’ll catch up with you tomorrow here thank you for your support. Bye now.

How To Keep Your Cool Under Extreme Rejection

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Today’s podcast episode is inspired by a conversation I just had with a dear friend of mine, who is a big celebrity on social media and has a huge following, and does some incredible things. We were having just an offline conversation, and suddenly he brings this question up. It says, “Srini, how do you deal with rejection? You know, lately, I have been getting a lot of pushback from my followers, I usually overlook their comments. But then I, sometimes I gave in, I gave into what they’re saying. And I go into this mode where I cannot recover for a few days. And then I come back, because, you know, this is what my life is all about. So I come back, I’m okay. And I’m okay only to a point. Again, when somebody attacks me, and then I just shut down again. So this process has been happening a lot lately. So I wanted to find out from you, how do you deal with this?”

Now, me being me, I don’t have any social media presence, and I don’t have any numbers to show or that big of a reach or influence. It was unusual for him to ask me this question. But then I have had my own share of issues. And I continue to have my own shit small, but I do, which is some people don’t like what I say. Some people do not like how I say, some people don’t like who I am at all. I’ve seen that happen. And I think all of us have gone through this, regardless, because this is the human mystery of human life itself. We being humans, is the mystery of life. Sometimes, whatever art presents itself, is not liked by some people. Sometimes people don’t like what we say or how we think, all for different reasons. And there is no reason why they think that way. That is their own understanding, there is not much anybody can do.

Now, if I go on the radio, I do shows. And I do seminars and workshops. So I’m in the center of the activity. And sometimes people don’t like what I say. Now, for people on social media, as a friend of mine. The challenge is when you are on social media, and you’re saying every day, this podcast also I do it every day, there is a possibility that I could contradict myself across multiple different podcast episodes. So you asked me a question today. And six months from now, you come back and ask the same question, I might have a different answer. And somebody who is closely listening to me can say okay, you said this, six months ago, you’re saying this now? And your answers are completely opposite? And what should I do? You know, which one should I follow? Well, it happens that if you stay too long on something, and you’re exposed at that level, or you are being exposed at that level, there is a possibility that you may contradict yourself. And we see this happening with commentators with sports commentators and critiques and all that so very naturally. Because the question is not about whether you contradict yourself. The question is more about the stance you take. So one of my messages to this trend is that as long as you hold your ground, and as long as you believe, and your convictions are strong enough, you should be okay. So, the truth of the matter is, no matter how well we do what we do, there are some who will never like us. And there are some who will like us unconditionally, my parents would like me, no matter what your parents will like you, you know, there are people in our lives, the way we are created, they want to love us, no matter what we do. And there are people no matter how hard we work to satisfy them, please them, they’re not going to like us.

Many, many years ago, I came up with this formula, I said 20% of this world population will love you, regardless of what you do. And 20% will absolutely reject you, no matter what you do, despite your best intentions. And then there is 60 person in the middle, who you want to convince or who you want to impress and move them towards the 20%. who love you. So your job is to convert the other 60 people in the middle to love you. Some people do it very effectively. And that’s why they’re successful. That’s how they’re being celebrated. And some people cannot, it’s okay, it’s perfectly fine. The goal is not to impress people. The goal is to share your thoughts and your convictions, your beliefs, and take a position as long as you take a position then you’re fine. So if you start satisfying everybody in your life today, you will end up satisfying no one. You just satisfy people who you want to satisfy. And the people who count on you who look up to you. You do whatever best you can for them and ignore the rest and That way your life is meaningful. And whatever you’re trying to do, has some impact and has some meaning at the end of the day.

So let’s talk about rejection for a second rejection and acceptance. So life is all in between these two extremes, we will reject you, people love you, and then everybody else in the middle. So if somebody is leaving you, or resenting you, or commenting on you, your job is to figure out, Is there any truth to this? It’s a big one, I get feedback all the time people send messages to me. I didn’t like what you said. And I don’t like what you know how you said it? It’s okay. But is there any truth to it? Because if there is truth to it, that means that it’s a lesson there. The person, the individual who is good, who says these things are qualified? Or the credible? Or it’s the shadow comment, or it’s an invisible comment, support? Comment, who knows? Right? We don’t know, a lot of bots all over the place? And what is their motive? Your motive, you know, why you’re doing what you’re doing? But what is their motive? These are the three things I would ask. And there is a recovery. Also, every time somebody says something to you, it’s natural, you take the hurt, but then as a professional, you know how to recover and come back. And how do you come back, there are about three or four things I’ve discovered over the years. The first and foremost is that in every interaction in life, there is a lesson. So you got to take the lesson very quickly. And you got to move, take the lesson quickly and move. If you stay on that thought, for a day, or two, or three, it’s hard to move, and you can’t move on. And now everything that you have done is being challenged. So gotta move quick. And you have to move quickly by taking the lesson, then I also have a rule, which is you got to focus on the nine, not on the one. What it means are the 10 things that you’re doing. So other 10 people you are doing it for. And there are 10 things that you’re navigating, and there is 10 life that you’re living. So there is a lot going on in your life, if one is off, don’t worry about it. Focus on the nine because those nine are going to create the value and the returns and whatever it is for you don’t focus on the one. So it’s good when it’s natural, that you cannot get all the 10, right? Sometimes it could be seven and three for you, it will be five and five for you depending, it’s different for each individual. But you get the idea, I would focus on nine, not on the one, then, obviously, sometimes, if the criticism is getting into you, in this specific case, this friend of mine who’s actually very good in dealing with all this stuff, but somehow for some reason, he asked me this question.

So my suggestion to him was that you need to physically come out like physically come out of this feeling. And one of the best ways to come out of any negative feeling is to do some breath work. And maybe a little bit of hypnosis, or yoga, or meditation, or all of that stuff. So breathing helps to methodically interrupt the feeling like literally interrupting the feeling, and disassociate yourself from what’s coming at you. So there are some techniques I shared here before also on how to breathe, like you hold your count at three, breathe and hold it for five. And when exhibit for three different techniques are there 5-5-5, 3-5-3, and 5-7-5 different ways you can do it, and different counts, you can use. But the idea is to as you’re breathing, you’re going inward, so you’re focused, all your attention is focused inward. So you’re not really focusing on the things that others have done to you or are saying to you. So your attention, your concentration, all that is focused inward, so which disassociates you from everything happening outside. And that’s how you recover quickly from this. And then one other thing, which is you got to improve the course of action. If somebody is saying something to you, and they’re credible, there is some truth to it and they don’t have any ulterior motives, then you need to improve the course of action, whatever it is. So if you set something a second way you can change it. Sometimes, as in the broadcasting world, I’m in sometimes due to time constraints, and there could be many things happening in the studio. I somehow cannot convey the real intent using the right words and English is not my first language. And even on this podcast, too.

Sometimes I cannot convey sometimes I repeat myself I keep on going over and over again. But at some point, somehow, I can’t do it. And that is a lack of capability right there, which by the way could be improved. And I keep trying to improve it, and I struggle with it. But you get the idea. So, something has to change, because something did not sound right. And that is in education in itself. And that is something that has to be worked on, provided, the person who gave you the criticism or commented on you, or rejected you is credible. So, these are some pots, these are some ideas. But the biggest thing I told my friend is that the bigger you become, like right now, with his million followers, whatever, they could become 10 million, and they could become 100 million, and which he should, anyway, he should get that success. The thing is, if the positive scales, the negative also scales. So if you’re getting only one attack today, per day, you will get 10 attacks a day. So that is also going to become bigger. And, you know, it’s life. That’s how it works. And I start to appreciate this now knowing what I know about life, which is if somebody criticizes you on your face, it’s a welcome sign, then people who do not and keep it inside of them, and become weird. They deal with you, but this is weird, you know, just not right. So it’s good that they’re expressing what they’re saying. And that way you also take a lesson from this and you also move on and you become stronger along the way. That’s the bigger one.

Okay. That’s all for now. Wherever you are, be safe, and I’ll catch up with you as early as tomorrow. Stay tuned.

Action Despite of Fear Is The Ultimate Key To Success

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Today on the podcast, I’m highlighting something that I have been seeing lately. Now, ever since everything started opening up, I have been meeting a lot of people, I’ve been part of multiple different cultural events, and meeting a lot of my old friends and things have started to open up. So there’s a lot of in-person interaction that’s happening. Now, one thing that has started to see that is now becoming very obvious is that as a community, as a humanity, we have gotten out of the fear of COVID-19. And we are slowly entering into another fear, which is this economy, the markets going down the stock market behaving the way it’s behaving. And as professionals, we thought that we have a 20, 30 year of trajectory.

Now, certainly, the job market taking some kind of a hit, but not a bad hit yet. But things have started to slow down. So this fear of what’s going to happen to me, is slowly coming in. So I wanted to take a few moments today on the podcast, I want to highlight this, because this may be you, you might be now starting to feel some kind of fear within you about your career, about your finances, about the things that you need to decide upon. What do you need to do? What acts do you need to be engaged in today, so that you can secure yourself and deal with this feeling? Because here’s what’s going to happen. The media, everything around you is going to people with half knowledge, with no knowledge with some kind of influences acting upon them, they are going to act upon you, you will need to keep yourself intact, you need to bring in your strengths, your core values, and you need to preserve them so that you can deal with this. Hopefully, today’s podcast is going to give you some ideas. So here’s my message to your act, despite your fear. Whatever you are acting upon act, do what you have to do, doesn’t matter what kind of fear is going to come into you or is already existing within you. Here’s the truth. You cannot stop fear from coming in. It doesn’t matter. You do hypnosis, you do meditation, you do yoga, and I talk about all those things on this podcast, doesn’t matter. Fear is going to come in, you will be caught off guard, it doesn’t matter how informed you are, what all you read what all you listen to, nobody can become infinitely enlightened, it doesn’t work, you could be enlightened in one area of your life. Because you have other areas that are demanding you to be enlightened, there is going to be information that will come in, you are not going to be prepared. And hence there is a possibility that you will experience some kind of appearance. It’s natural as a human to experience fear. The idea is this. Every time you get you become fearful, you have some fear.

Now that you have the skill, knowledge, information, experience, and everything that you have, you are an entity, as an entity, you have a lot of things going for you. Your job is to examine the fear. The idea is not to eliminate fear. The idea is to minimize fear. To minimize any fear. You need to examine the fear. And you examine that by educating yourself by seeking information, analyzing collecting data, and then making some decisions, a decision would be your action. See, every time you consume information, there is a possibility that you like the idea of this podcast, and all the information I’m sharing here and many other people with through their podcasts. Any educator, any informer, every time somebody consumes information from an educator from an informer, there is a possibility that eventually that individual is going to act on that information. It doesn’t matter how structurally you’re going to act, but you will act on that information. The brain cannot stop itself from acting. If I talk to you about going exercising every day, I’ll keep on telling you to exercise and if you keep on listening to me on that message that goes exercise, there is a possibility that you will exercise. So information that is collected, that is thought upon, that is researched, the brain will act on it. So there is an action that’s going to happen. The action is to minimize that fear.

So as long as you are aware that every action that you’re taking is to minimize the fear. That’s what’s happening. You are cautiously preparing yourself. You know there is fear, and you respect fear, it’s okay. See, in every goal, you have in life, those goals there is an element of fear in goal if you have a goal that has no element of fear, that means that goal is incorrectly structured. And I have done numerous podcasts here talking about goals and how to structure goals. There is an element of fear. There is an element of fear right now in whatever you’re doing or whatever you are not doing. You are static Right now listening to this podcast or driving right now, there is an element of risk. And there is an element of risk as I’m recording this podcast because this podcast could stop, and my computer may run out of the hard drive, memory, and all that. And then this podcast may not ever be available to you because it failed. I don’t risk, there is a fear in me. And because it has happened, I’m still doing this. Knowing that, okay, I know it could happen, but then I got to do this. So no goal is ever free of fear. And no achievement is free of a change.

Every achievement always involves some level of change. And change means there is apprehension, so you can’t avoid this. So in order for you to become successful in anything that you have to do, you have to deal with the feeling of fear. And as long as the feeling of fear is not outweighing the positive feeling you have towards the outcome, you’re good, your mind is progressing, and you are changing. But if you’re feeling overwrites the feeling of fear overwrites the feeling of success and the joy and fulfillment you’re going to have, that means you must still have progress, but the progress is going to be slow and daunting. So as long as I’m examining, that means I’m collecting information, I’m thinking through what I’m doing, I’m researching. That means my brain will act, if it acts, all I have to make sure is that it’s acting towards minimizing, I don’t need to make it I don’t need to think about it. Automatically, every action is to minimize the fear anyway. So I go along with it.

Now, every action, every consecutive action is going to cumulatively create what we call freedom. We create freedom, the ultimate goal, the end goal is freedom. The ultimate goal is to enjoy the autonomy that life is giving us. So every action that you take consciously is going to address the fear that is in your unconscious. Fear is in the unconscious part of the mind. Unconscious means there’s no awareness. Because it is an unconscious part of the mind, it’s going to feel as if it is the dominant part of your life, it will control you because it’s an unconscious mind unconscious. Anything in the unconscious is going to take you in the direction that it wants you to go. It doesn’t matter how much you want it to go where you want it to go. So with your conscious mind, you can achieve much with the unconscious mind you will achieve everything. But most of the information in the unconscious mind is incorrect. That’s how we have been programmed. And again, I go back and say this, and I’ll say this one more time, which is the only way to address anything in the unconscious. And the most effective way to do that is through hypnosis. And there are many other ways to do it. But I am a proponent of hypnosis. And I, it’s very easy to make the unconscious mind become conscious witnesses. Yes, you can overcome the fear of hypnosis. And there are numerous recordings I’ve done talking about it. But the key is, you don’t need to go there. You could cautiously do the research, do the education, collect the information, do an analysis and then act upon that information. So that you can slowly overcome the fear. And you do that by because everything you do, you’re educating them conscious mind to become conscious.

So go take action, despite any fear you have got going now because you know what? Everybody around us. They are incorrect. We know what we want. You know what you want, act on it. And I don’t know that I have gotten anything in my life within which I never experienced some kind of a change and some kind of apprehension. I haven’t. So everything you want anything you want is on the other side of fear. Go act now.