Here is the complete transcript of the podcast
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.