It just takes a few minutes to discover the world of difference between being focused and being stressed out – I’ve been enabling people to focus for nearly sixteen years and I know how it works. And each Monday and Wednesday, my personal development online subscribers are sent simple ideas and exercises on how to focus their mind – and it’s free! Every week, people all over the world sign up to my online workshops to learn exactly the same thing. So, what is focus all about?

At the outset, you need to realize that being focused doesn’t come naturally. The normal adult mind is either thinking about the past or anxious about the future. The worry you’re aware of – research shows that the majority of people are worried about their finances, worried about how their children are turning out, worried about work, worried about retirement. For every stage of life you’ll find a set of worries. And all worry is about events that didn’t happen yet – and, more bizarrely, things that we really don’t want to happen! What type of idiot would squander their energy on the things that they don’t want to happen? A normal idiot!

Whilst we’re all aware of worry, we’re generally not aware that our subconscious mind is focused on the past and it’s because of the past that we worry about what we don’t want to happen! We learned the stuff that we hate about ourselves when we were young – and our subconscious mind keeps on playing the same old cracked record. And you aren’t aware that this is happening, so you’ve never realized that you could do something about it.

The thing is, you don’t have to do anything to sort things out if you train yourself to focus your mind on the present moment. Yeah, that’s what focus is – a now thing. It’s where you live your life, this is where you could do your very best if you were focused, the here and now the only place that you can be, you’ve no choice. The choice you have, however, is whether you’ll bother to turn up to your life or not. Once you decide to turn up, everything will be transformed.

So, how do you focus? Well, this is your first training session, right here, right now. Sit down somewhere where you won’t be disturbed for five minutes. When you’re comfortable, shut your eyes and do nothing except listen. You’re thoughts will try to distract you but, when this happens, just latch onto the next sound that comes your way. When you try something as simple as this, you teach your mind to pay attention to what is actually happening now – and that’s what focus is.

Even if you just started with a few minutes of sitting and listening, you’ll experience something really important – the real world has nothing to do with the stuff in your head that you’ve been paying all your attention to.