Tag Archives: thought

To Recognize Distractions

Is one of the most revelating moments on the path towards clear thought. This is without a doubt necessary to step forward from a clouded mess of motivations [plural] to a aligned thought of motivation [singular].

Removing clutter from a desktop.

Identifying what ‘things’ you haven’t used in years, months, days, and having them begone.

Identifying what toys you use that you divert attention to when the going gets tough.

Habits, after all, are what wake you up in the morning and what tie your shoes as you get going on your day.

It’s not just at what we call critical times in our lives where we should be concerned with distractions, it’s at every moment.

Even now.

Is this a distraction?

Your call.

Passion

free_spirit

Passion is what life is. No two people have exact same passions, but many people can have similar passions, which provides some sort of connection for us with other beings in this world; some sort of grounds to communicate on and relate.

The secret is to understand what your passions are, study them, learn from them and grow with them in a positive environment.

For myself, to find what my passion is, I need to really understand what my goals are, and what I am trying to do with my life. In reality, the goals and passions kind of sit hand in hand. When I start thinking about these things, my mind naturally flows into the areas of my most passion. Curiously, there are always ideas and thoughts that my passion digs up that are out of this world, while others are logical, standard, and perhaps even productive with any luck!

Without that main effort though, the initial thought: “What is it that I want to do? Where does my mind lead me when I think of tomorrow?” there is no chance at even understanding your true passion.

Passions aren’t just a girlfriend, or love, passion involves hobbies, quests, goals, and accomplishments often summed up in a personal mission statement. They involve anything that when thought about, all other troubles in the world seem to fade away. One believes that to just follow this journey along the passion quest to the end, the world will be complete and fulfilling.

Me? Yes, I truly believe this. An example for me is when I think about photography. Initially it started with a wanting a digital SLR (DSLR) camera, picking out which kind I wanted most, and then having to keep using my old point and shoot camera until I could gather up enough money to get my DSLR. Then it turned into going places to get spectacular photographs that would blow the doors off of National Geographic Magazine. After this, my passion soon turned to how to edit these photos, which format I should be capturing the images in (RAW, JPG, TIFF, etc.) and how to edit them. Learning Photoshop and testing out Paint Shop Pro and all the various builds of each of them was also involving, learning layers and levels and brightness and contrast all turned into one big giant passion soup, something which I enjoy immensely.

For me, it’s easy to identify a passion; it’s something that consumes all of my time. I naturally fall into searching out new ways to do what I’m passionate about, how to become successful; how to grow.

I firmly believe that to be inwardly happy; to be proud and supportive and attentive in every day of your life, one needs to pursue their passions. Once the passions have been categorized or identified then is when the real work starts with brainstorming ideas on how to actively grow and build and master that passion. This takes a lot of focus and positivity to stay aligned with your goals that come with it. One thing to definitely not be afraid of, is when you learn more about your passion, when you grow with your passion you may find that your goals tend to change slightly to align more effectively with your new path, or train of thoughts.

Mahatma_Gandhi

A quote I will leave you with from Gandhi is: “No matter what it is, I make judgment based on the best of my knowledge. If that knowledge shall change and my stance also changes as a result, I will be the first to admit my mistake, and proceed aligned with the new knowledge.”

Exercising the Mind

The mind, in all matters concerning it, must be exercised in order to keep it healthy and growing strong. It is as a muscle, requiring constant and consistent activity to stay healthy. Sports players, cards players, computer programmers, engineers, and on and on all continually and relentlessly practice their profession; going over and over selected scenarios, developing new ideas, or reaching new depths of creativity are all ways to exercise the mind.

Einstein

Starting at birth, new parents are encouraged to challenge their child with new responsibilities, play memory exercising games, or teach them multiple languages. This makes headway into the starting of the child’s academic career, where it is quite obvious it is demanded that they do indeed use their brain for scholarly purposes: calculating formulas, creative writing, memorizing biological systems, etc.

It is easy to sit back and let the exercising be demanded of a person and let it grow in a passive pushing mode, but the real character comes when graduation is upon the student.

At this conjuncture in life, the student is now free from all prescribed and demanded learning. This is where personal motivation comes into the equation. The new graduate is only looking for fun adventures and to explore the limits of their newly found freedom; which by all means is necessary in the growth of the person, but there is a certain tipping point, or balancing that needs to be acquired. After all, balance is the key to life.

Scanning of a human brain by X-rays

The exciting part is now that the graduate is indeed graduated, it is upon them to decide which path they wish to explore.

No longer is the learning prescribed, but rather opened up for interpretation where the mind is the school master cracking the whip, and the conscience is the poor school boy waiting eagerly with big wide eyes for what is to come next; open to be influenced.

Activities like reading and writing are great ways to keep the thought process active and firing on all cylinders, which incidentally can also be used to keep the mind focused (this is a good thing). You’ve heard it before, and you’ll hear it again; in this day and age of the internet and instant communication, it’s hard for people to stay focused on one topic for any length of time.

Writing down ideas can help keep the thought process aligned straight towards success, in all essence of the word.

mind

The main point, however, is that without activities that keep the mind thinking, keeping all those neurons sparking like luminescence in the midnight waters, the brain will not keep the doors open to creative thought.

Before you know it, you will be a machine working at a dead end job wondering how you got there, feeling sorry for yourself the whole time.

SO! I encourage you, don’t let it happen to you! Exercise your mind!

Do you have any other ideas or games that will help keep the mind active?