On any average day, thousands of thoughts flow through our mind. Each of these thoughts can flow away in a split second or it can persist in our mind for hours. The thoughts can be just about anything; previous day’s experiences, concerns for tomorrow, events that happened years ago, dreams for the years to come, something in the news and so on.At any time your energy and focus are influenced by multiple factors such as mood, type of thoughts, physical health, fatigue, and many more. One of the important influences is the number of thoughts that are persisting in your mind at that time. We normally start our day fully energized and with no persisting thoughts. As we progress through the day more and more thoughts start accumulating in our mind affecting both our energy and focus. On some days you are flooded with thoughts within a few minutes of waking up, on others you have a calm morning and the thoughts build up slowly. In any case, on most days your mind is full of thoughts by afternoon.
Short breaks, to clear your mind of all persisting thoughts, can work wonders on re-energizing you and renewing your focus. These breaks can be in the form of a 20 minute nap, or a 10 minute walk, or even a 10 minute break while sitting in your chair. If you take a walk, preferably in a park, try to notice the people, the trees and the beauty around you. Make conscious efforts to ignore all thoughts that pass through your mind, just focus on everything around you without any reactions and judgments. If you take your break in your chair, put your phone off the hook, sit straight with your eyes closed, and focus your thoughts on any one thing such as your own breathing, or a vacation you had on a lovely beach, or anything else that brings back pleasant memories. You will feel your mind getting cleared of persisting thoughts, it would feel like a huge load coming off your shoulders, and you would be ready to get back to your regular life.
Try to take at least one such break every day. Take more breaks on days when you are more stressed. These breaks are guaranteed to bring down your persistent thoughts to a bare minimum and to enable you to get back to whatever you were doing with lots more energy and focus.
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4 comments:
Good post. I just woke up from a 30 minute nap. It helps. This also reminds me of a humorous saying by the Dali Lama I think. He says, " Meditate for 30 minutes a day except when you are very busy, then an hour is needed!"
Thanks Aseem.
Debi McSwain
beautifully explained the importance of revitalizing. Yes, we do need these short breaks to bring our focus back to the now.
While taking short breaks are good, dont prolong it. The problem is most ppl tend to overdo it, and finally nothing gets done.
As usual Aseem you are right on the mark. Everyone of us has a "special place" in our memory when we were our happiest. Mine was over 50 years ago on a cool morning in Northern Minnesota as a young lad walking out on a dock listening to the deafening silence and the beauty all around. That is where I go when I want to unwind. Great article, Rick
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