Today’s Meditation

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“It’s very tough for me to focus. I’m like: Look, something shiny! No, focus. Oh, there goes a butterfly.” —Gabby Douglas

Our ability to focus is often distracted by the clutter in our physical and mental world. And the ability to focus, which is attributed to be one of the most important traits of success, is often the one most lacking. Boredom, the un-challenged brain, mental and physical fatigue can ruin even the most focused activities in our lives.

Can you believe that as I was writing this, I actually listened to a voicemail! Yes, so insignificant compared to this important task of writing, yet, I didn’t want to miss something. Guess who it was? The exterminator, wanting to make the appointment to take care of the termites I have munching on my house. And that just goes to show, that we are all subject to FOMO — now labeled as an actual disease: ”Fear Of Missing Out.” Seriously, though, we need to start seriously (yes, I know I just used that word twice) thinking about how to focus on ONE thing at a time. Uni-task instead of multi-task.

Do that one thing well. And then move onto the next.

And do that well.

Choose to use the first 15 minutes of your day to clarify your mind, get rid of the mental clutter and mental fatigue. The chaos affects your ability to focus. The clutter limits your brain’s power to process information. This unfocused part limits you from being the most effective teacher. Clutter can distract you to the point that even small, menial tasks can seem overwhelming.

Jack Canfield gives us a few words of wisdom about distractions: “Successful people maintain a positive focus in life no matter what is going on around them. They stay focused on their past successes rather than their past failures, and on the next action steps they need to take to get them closer to the fulfillment of their goals rather than all the other distractions that life presents to them.”

A cluttered mind can impact your mental and physical being

A cluttered mind can impact your mental and physical being. It creates anxiety and increases the procrastination we took care of yesterday. It limits the new, exciting, and powerful things from entering your day and life.

Drs. Brown and Fenske (Harvard Medical School and University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada, respectively) have come up with a “set of strategies for remaining mentally sharp even under trying circumstances.” Meditation is one of them.

They’ve studied focus, and specifically how we process information. “Preliminary research suggests that maintaining focus…might help build brain tissue. Researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital conducted MRI studies of people who regularly practice meditation, and found that compared with controls, they had more gray matter (brain cells) in areas associated with attention and sensory processing.”

“When we clear the physical clutter from our lives, we literally make way for inspiration and ‘good, orderly direction’ to enter.”           —Julia Cameron

 

The clutter that needs to be cleared includes both your work and home environment. And how fitting that is for a teacher. For which teacher does not bring home some work every now and then. Take care not to bring too much. Even though, as we agreed before, teaching is a lifestyle, it does not mean you have to be “on call” 24/7.

It took me years…

It took me years, but I finally figured out that bringing a bag full of work home was doing no one any favors. The bag sat there, staring at me (yes, I believe it had eyes!) begging to be opened, scolding me when I wasn’t eagerly tackling the essays that needed correction, or the grades that needed to be entered into the “Power Teacher” software.

On the rare, I did read through a stack of essays, and if I was so crunched for time that I “had to” correct and enter grades, I did do it. But more often than not, the same bag went back to school, unopened. Now disappointingly sighing at me as I laid it next to my desk the next morning.

Find a way to focus

I found a way to focus, though, at school. It took a while, but anyone can do it. I decided that instead of drudging the bag back and forth, I would finish all my work at school. I became laser-focused on this task. So, now, instead of wasting my time wandering around my planning hour, frantically trying to make copies, finishing lesson plans for the next day, leisurely using my cluttered mind to make excuses to do anything but grading and entering (the things I despised most) I did that first.

And my reward was that I started bringing less and less work home. Some days, no bag was carried out. It was all done. I used my planning time with laser-like focus. I made a plan, put Pandora on, listened to relaxing music and just did it. Whatever needed to be done. And I laid all of this out the day before, so I knew what I would be doing the next day during my planning hour; I didn’t waste half of it thinking about what I needed to do. I already knew.

And then I uni-tasked. I kept on grading, reading essays, until the hour was gone. I made so much progress, that most days, I could leave “early,” exactly when I was “allowed to” according to the contract.

I also didn’t leave on Friday until my lesson plans were done and in the principal’s inbox. This took a few months of hard work, and planning, but it could be done. Just work on them a few minutes every day. Have a template, if you don’t have one, here’s one I used. Most of it was just filling in that week’s standards and then figuring out what needed to be added. Now, your school might not need such an extensive form, or they might need more detail, or not even require you to hand in lesson plans. But even after ten years of teaching, I found it very helpful to write down exactly what I was doing.

TRY IT! 5 DAYS of FREE MEDITATION! Just click here, enter your name & email to get started!

Feel happier today — Order the full guide to listen to words of inspiration

Psychology and the art of meditation go hand in hand in showing us that our thoughts and the items in our mind are often thought of as just occurring naturally. However, we can control our thoughts and the items we let in.

Order now and Listen to Day 6 as we take the journey together to a laser-focused teaching day, where the ability to focus is engaged, and the laser-focused teacher can emerge.

TRY IT! 5 DAYS of FREE MEDITATION! Just click here, enter your name & email to get started!

or KEEP READING: Day 7 Lesson plans Re-energized

©2017 Taru Nieminen — The Happy Teacher Solution