This morning during mediation, the instructor asked me to pay attention to the thoughts that break my concentration and to categorize the distractions. Whenever I'm doing yoga or meditating, I try to acknowledge my thoughts and let them go, but this was the first time I considered the source of my distractions.
My first distraction is within my physical environment and it's usually my pets. They either need out or in, want water or food, or simply want to participate in my practice with me...welcome or not. I often cannot do anything about my pets other than learn to tune them out. Even locking myself in a room just creates whining and scratching. My pets and I simply need to accept that yoga and mediation time is meant to be quiet. If I ignore you for a bit, I will make up for it later.
My second category of distraction is, of course, planning. If there is ever anything that distracts me from being fully present in the moment, its my forward rushing brain, always flitting about from life domain to life domain in a feeble attempt to do what? I'm not sure. Sometimes, I think about work, which is more about guilt over not having completed something or guilt about not always putting work first.
Sometimes, it's planning how to expand my yoga and meditation practice and how I can get more of it in. Funny thing that one. Here I am trying to get the benefit of my yoga and meditation and I'm thinking about why I don't do it more and how I could do it more in the future. This might possibly be my worst distraction. I wonder how many others get distracted by the future possibilities of the very thing they are trying to focus on doing. Might be a symptom of insanity...who knows.
Then there's simply the, "What is my plan for the day?" distracting line of thought. That one is pesky and sneaks in when I try to practice in the morning. Occasionally a memory or two sneak in and send my mind wandering around in the past as well.
I'm working on it.
Guilt and judgement play a big part in my inability to focus. I've never been able to control my anxiety over opportunity cost and the desire to minimize it as much as possible. Part of this equation involves ruminating over the expectations of others which often conflict with what I really want to spend my time doing.
But, I'm getting better than I used to be. I'm learning and growing and accepting my mistakes and missteps as opportunities to learn rather than berating myself and stressing out to the point of complete withdrawal.
There's nothing simple about learning to focus. Time, practice, commitment, patience and priority. Simple, right?
