RESTORING YOUR FOCUS AND CONCENTRATION

Procrastination is a very talked about term at the moment and it’s become a multi million industry in the same way that fitness and weight loss has. 

If you go into any of these the onus is put onto you. That it’s your fault and so you can control it. I wonder… I think in fact this is just treating the symptom and not the cause.

In myself I’ve noticed that the main trouble is that I get side tracked and work or bettering yourself seems impossible whereas ‘lazy’ options feel good, much easier to just pick up the mobile phone and go onto things like Facebook and start cruising through videos and philosophic messages.

There seems to be something wrong with the usual theory that it’s all about being social, I mean just because it’s called social media, which is what the marketing bods came up with doesn’t mean it’s social. Messaging people is one thing but most just look through posts by loads of people they don’t care much about or put a piccie of themselves doing something that no one else cares much about.

Things like Facebook are programmed to give you what you like, they constantly spy on you and see what you do, then they flash those items at you. You find you can’t resist going to them because like cocaine you subconsciously say that’s where I’m happy, that’s where I’m relaxed, that’s where I feel at home.

To give an idea what’s going on go to your YouTube page. You’ll see on the right hand side a whole load of videos that your interested in – your recommendations. Try a search, say “great songs” you’ll get a list, many of which you’ll love and won’t know which one to choose from, they’re all so good! Moreover on the right hand side there’ll be a whole load of very tempting videos that you’d like to watch, even if you are a very focussed person you’re bound to just click one.

Now (and only do this if you’d like to start from scratch) go to history on the left hand side, click on it and a box will appear the right centre at the top of it is clear watch history. Click on it and reperform the search for “great songs” now you’ll see a whole load of great songs, true, but now there will be many that you’re not interested in, also there’ll be none of those tempting videos on the right!

What videos you watch and search for will start to be recorded again (ie. the spying on you). You can pause the history recording if you’d like by going to manage history. This is what I do as I found that if it was on I would constantly end up spending hours on YouTube when I just happened to go there and this was causing stress leading to procrastination. I was going to YouTube subconsciously to be tempted away from my work.

YouTube is not alone in doing this, Facebook for example is another noted example. You can clear the history by going into your settings and clearing meta activities. The scary thing about this is you’ll also notice another option which clear business activities which is stuff that has been sent to Facebook by companies to recommend what you watch! – Very brain control stuff!

This sort of side lining and luring away from what you want to do, to the point that you eventually give up doing anything, including things like getting up in the morning leading on to procrastination are the hallmarks of this sort of mind programming and the trouble with using will power and self control to combat it seems to me to be doomed to failure as these are the very things you are lacking. Sure there are loads of ads online offering courses to cure procrastination, but they’re just like all the ads saying you’ll lose weight or gain a body builder’s physique – it’s like aerobics instructors telling you how to lose weight when it’s quite obvious they’ve never been flat in their lives.

Your lack of concentration and procrastination is because of your addiction to the net. When you think you can’t stop playing a game because it’s so addictive, it’s actually because you can’t stop the urge to watch the adverts which pander to your interests, your lusts, your desires, your ambitions – in fact everything you want in life. They’re revealed by the adverts that appear in front of you all the time. Look at your news feed it’s all about things you’ve shown interest in in the past, the catch is that because they’re the things you then watch you’ll become more interested in the them and then they’ll send you more and more of the things you wanted to see and your addiction is fuelled. In the end you cannot do anything but want to watch those channels again or play the games that provide you with the dopamine buzz but do not sate the desire produced and so lead to stress.

So what to do?

Well it’s like any addiction. So treat as such. Going on the sites does not help the addiction all it does is fuel the desire and add to the torture because the desire cannot be sated. This is what addiction is and it is as real to an addiction to alcohol or heroin. The brain with all it’s complexities reacts with a chemical reaction to stimulus. Take the classic example of this is from the 1890 when the scientist Pavlova experimented with dogs ringing a dinner bell, and found that after a short period there was no need to produce food to make the dogs salivate just ringing the bell would do so. These experiments are considered to be the foundation of classical conditioning theory, also known as Pavlovian conditioning.

The first thing to realise is that you are not immune to it. Though there is no outward chemical injection you will feel physical effects just as much as if you were an alcoholic denied a drink or a smoker denied a cigarette. Also do not believe you ignore adverts and they have no effect on you, they do. It may be slight but it’ll add up over a period of time and remember that as your defences crumble Big Brother Facebook/YouTube/Instagram/TikTok is watching you and will start to lean what you watch towards what you desire.

Thing is what your conscious mind notices and what the subconscious notices (EVERYTHING!) are two very different things. Ask not just an Arsenal fan but just about anybody who are the sponsors of the club are and they will say Emirates, many don’t even know what that is but they know the name because of thousands of times their subconscious has seen it.

So…. Shut down your social media sites. Turn off your phone, get rid of your YouTube history, get rid of the games that show you masses of adverts. That’ll be a start. You will start to notice a reduction in your procrastination, feel less depressed, feel more positive less stressed and depressed without the toys that are fueling those pains.

That’s a start. I’m putting together a self hypnosis to counter the problem that will major and it will be free, so it carries a money back guarantee if it doesn’t work for you! It’ll appear on my YouExist.co.uk site and will be up in time for Christmas.

Remember your natural state is full of joy and love. It is only the people trying to sell you things that causes all the pain to persuade you to buy their products. Shut them down. All you have to do is relax and listen to the self help recordings to relax and become your natural state.