Mental Focus: When Visualization Becomes a Mental Distraction

Visualizing Victory at the Sacrifice of the Process is NOT Mental Focus but Misdirected Daydreaming.

Until your level of Attention Control, Mental Concentration, and Mental Focus allows you the ability to succeed without the need for exciting desire, you have little choice but to rely on 'wanting things' in order to, hopefully, move forward and stay on course. So, go ahead and desire the objective, but with one caviat.

Mental Focus Training Drills - Turn Your 'Fantasy' into Real Goal Visualization.

When you see and feel yourself at the top of your heap of treasure, celebrating your rewards - when that motivating idea comes up, freeze frame. Stop it there.

Then, start to run it backward in your mind.

...but be real about it. You know full well what it's like to get up outta bed as yourself, and what it takes to get yourself together - don't fool yourself because mental focus visualization is not a joke, and falsehoods lead to inner conflict as the vain idea fails to materialize in your ACTUAL character. 

So, be honest. Mornings may suck for you now. Leaping into the fray may not be your thing, as you are now. Don't lie. The truth of who you are and how you are is a blessing, because there, in Mental Focus Training Drills, you can work on the flaw to correct it. That's mental conditioning - rewiring your own brain.

Keep rolling the imagery backward...

...until that victorious you is NOT YET victorious. Roll the fantasy in reverse, through the many days of toil, back quickly until you find yourself in bed, in the early morning, maybe before the sun comes up, and the alarm is going off.

When you reach to shut off the alarm, you KNOW that you have not yet truly begun to climb the mountain that desire sees as already conquered in your imagination. You're at the point where the prospect of the grind begins.

There, in your mind, experience the reality of you tossing off the covers to get to the top of the mountain that you've yet to climb. What's it like?

In your mind, experiencing yourself there…how do you feel, immersed in that moment, where the thing has not been done, but is about to be, by you? Be honest with yourself. That's how you really feel.

That feeling will find you when next the alarm rings, and it's time to toss off the covers.

That's self-honesty. The fastest route forward. 

If you cherish the idea of the yourself bathed in victory, but not the idea of the REALITY of the sacrifice of time, effort, changing your habits, learning go the extra mile, always improving your skills to stay ahead in an AI-speed world…if you feel great about winning but have to slap yourself around to even get started on the daily grind…then your Mental Focus is all wrong...

...and arranged so that Homeostasis - your brain's 'Status Quo Enforcer,' - keeps you exactly where you are, no matter how frustrated you feel. The frustration is part of the enforcement.

With Attention Control, you don't need motivational daydreams to fire yourself up over and over and over again. You simply decide, know that it is good, right, true, and would harm no one and benefit others, and proceed knowing that you can learn your way out of, into, through, and astride anything…and you don't need to wait to feel like a winner, because you're not chasing a feeling.

Feelings will fail you, all the time. Attention will not.

For now, though, until you have a better grip on Attention, you need to use what Attention Skills you have to deal with your desire.

If you loathe the idea of you grinding - in real time, when it needs to go down, if in reality your mind resists you on it, then your desire and its imagery is misdirected. Too narrow. Too focused on the wrong thing, leading you to daily disappointment and frustration...

...because the daily grind is not the victory celebration, so your central nervous system reacts negatively to the prospect of grinding, and probably punishes you during many moments while you coax yourself through the hours of making the effort.

So, guide your Attention to the practice of engaging in mental rehearsal (intentional, creative visualization) wherein you rehearse yourself going through the grind. And there, through a process of visual engineering, create your grind, based entirely on reality, and doing proper research, networking productively, daily learning and required practices on the subject for mastery, daily alarm with covers tossed, commuting, all of it.

Start training yourself to enjoy what there is to enjoy, mentally.

If you truly desire in your heart to do the thing, then the doing of it should be pleasant in your mind. If not, then you do not want to DO the thing…you just want the thing, which is not goalsetting, nor is it Mental Focus.

You must enjoy the journey, the getting of the thing, genuinely and truly, or getting the thing will become a self-punishing rut.

Yes that's a lot of work. Which is why I practice Attention Control so that I'm no longer addicted to the chemical cocktails pumped into my central nervous system when I think about victory.

The joy needs to be in every step of the walk up the mountain, or it's just gonna suck. With Goals Visualization for Burning Desire as your motivator, you can lure yourself down the path. With Attention Control, you can calmly walk the path without playing imaginary games every day.

Re-engineer Your Visualizations to Include Joy in the Daily Grind.

1) Until your Attention is weened off of fantasy visualizations for motivation, work to visualize correctly until you can move ahead with good habits at a pleasant pace.

You will need to do this, possibly, for years in order to remain motivated and hopefully find satisfaction on the way up the mountain. If not, you can always visualize yourself finding happiness. Sigh. That's a hard row to hoe right there. Tiring. Repetitive. Did it for years. Lotsa people do. They even create imagery where they tell themselves that they are happy, and experience that pleasantness, in order to stay motivated. Scary, but it keeps a body moving forward. Anway, you gotta craft your viz to enjoy the grind. Tricking yourself the whole way.

2) Train your Attention, meanwhile, so that, eventually, you can stop wasting time dreaming of being the boss of yourself. Over time, you'll become more and more the boss of yourself, and you won't need your imagintion to convince yourself.

3) If you're dreaming of being the boss of others, there's nothing I can do for you. You're on your own. Good luck.