“Mental preoccupation is the greatest time consumer.”

Whenever I wanted to study or do some work that required me to concentrate and focus, my thoughts would not let me concentrate, and digression would happen consistently. The more I tried to avoid it, the more powerfully the thoughts returned. It used to be, at times, very frustrating and tiring at the same time to complete the tasks.

I was at my wits’ end to find a solution to this. One day, as I was discussing with my friend, he said, “Why don’t you try to find out the reasons for these thoughts?” This was an interesting input, and I started to think about it carefully.

I started to think deeper about the thoughts that I was getting, I realized that I was getting impacted because of the emotions that the thought used to ignite and tag along with the thought. It was not the thought but the emotions that distracted me. The stronger the emotion, the higher the distraction.

I started to dwell deeper into this and realized that the source of these was anything starting from my principles, values, experiences, image, and many more. As and when I could connect to the source of the emotion, the intensity started to reduce, and at times, I reached a stage wherein thoughts stopped distracting me, and this helped me to concentrate better.

Chetlur S Prasad

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