Practice Drills for Training Your Mental Concentration.

The Singular Mental Concentration Builder - Mental Concentration Training Drill

Singular Mental Concentration is the unique, powerful ability to willfully give exclusive, absolute, singular attention to one thing or object to such an intense degree that all other environmental stimuli fades from notice and is relegated to ‘perceptual background noise.’

This skill is nothing like the involuntary form of “hyperfocus” that causes people with uncontrolled, underdeveloped attention skills such problems.In fact, the level of conscious skill required to willfully narrow your perception to a unitary point and hold it there - while being flexible enough to redirect your attention’s targeting mechanism to track targets in motion - also allows you the power to disengage your attention instantly when necessary.

Here is a Mental Concentration practice method that is THOUSANDS OF YEARS OLD and can be of tremendous benefit in acquiring Singular Mental Concentration, often bringing dramatic results in a short time frame. It can be executed to begin immediately teaching yourself the visceral, hands-on aspects of Attention Control, dismissing unwanted thoughts, and the real-time “FEEL” of consciously-driven, intensified Concentration of all mental resources.

Exercise Category:

• Sensory - Visual

Areas Of Improvement:

• Mental Concentration• Targeting Attention• Attention Control• Mental Resolve• Self Control

Perceptual Focus:

• Close Up, External Exertion Type:• Attention Directing & Controlling - Onto Object

Application Level:

• Task Concentration

What You’ll Need:

• Timer, stopwatch, or clock with an alarm
• Small Attention Target (dot on wall, candle flame, etc.)

In regards to your target, I have personally just drawn a small dot on a card and taped it to my computer monitor at eye level about arms-length from me. I have found points on the wall with small bumps in the paint and used one of those as my visual landing point. I have sat outside in the park and found a single leaf on a low-hanging branch to follow, even as it moved in the breeze. You can be as creative as you want as long as your target requires you narrow Attention to find and hold it.

For this ancient technique, you may either find a small spot on a vertical surface such as a wall near you (within 10 feet), or simply take an index card or other paper or cardboard and draw a small dot on it for use.When conducting the exercise, ensure that you can easily see the target without straining your eyes.

For your comfort, you are best to be in a relaxed, seated position with the target located in such a waythat you are looking just slightly above eye level, whether the target is on a vertical surface such as a wall, or you have arranged the index card or other paper or cardboard so that it will remain fixed and still (perhaps making use of a push-pin, tack, or adhesive tape). Blink normally as required even while keeping your target in focus.

Set your alarm notification for 15 minutes (sure, try 3, 5, 10 if you want, but come on - you can do a measley 15 can't you?),

Turn your attention to gaze exclusively at the dot (candle flame, leaf, roach on wall, whatever).

Control your gaze and your attention so that the small target is the only thing in the world that matters, and all other sensations begin to fade to background noise (barely noticed, and completely ignored).

Do not engage in self-talk.

Do not participate in or allow yourself to be carried away by any thoughts whatsoever.

Ignore all forms of distraction around you.

If you find yourself somehow distracted, bring your attention back to your target, continuing so no matter how many times you fail.

When your 15 minutes (or however long) are up, you are done.

Do it again the next day, day after day, until you can do it for 15 minutes without fail.

Personally, I'd be happy to hear you're doing it in 5-minute sessions as long as you're consistent and learning and taking careful notes. Most other trainees would end up running laps around your performance, but it's not a competition, so do what you honestly can.

THE FAST TRACK...

For faster results and more opportunities for insight and understanding into the nature of Mental Concentration and the habits of your own Mind, do the exercise twice or three times daily, on a schedule that gives you a few hours in between each session.

THE ADVANCED TRACK...

When you have acquired a confident facility for doing the 15 minute session without becoming significantly distracted - and if you’d like to boost your powers a great deal more - increase the time investment for your sessions to 30 minutes.

Take detailed notes over time on what you discover about your habits of mind and the insights that occur to you as you learn and acquireimproved skills.

The 'NO!' Thought-Stopping Drill - Mental Concentration Training Drill

Exercise Category:

• Thought Stopping

With fully alert Attention, you are to interrupt any and every thought that occurs by calmly speaking the word “NO!” combining the command (“NO!”) with a feeling of resolute determination that you have said “NO!”, and you MEAN it!

You are, at this point, giving your Mind a clear, unmistakable ORDER that declares you have no interest in its rebellious activities, and letting it know that you are commanding it to pay attention and grow quiet.

Every single time a thought pops up, simply utter the word “NO!” with an iron insistence. The experience will be interesting as you discover that the Mind cannot effectively focus on two tasks at once and it shall inevitably shut down a mental distraction in order to pour its resources into the demands of a CONSCIOUS task, such as keeping an eye on your thoughts so that you can say the word “NO!” the moment you detect one rising up. Also, the action of your summoning the feeling of determination serves as a disruptor of mechanical thought signals in your brain. After some minutes of this, you may discover an unexpected ‘mental silence’, but if it doesn’t occur in your first session, just keep working at it over the next week - you will ‘see’ it occur.


NOTE: As an additional option for applying this technique, use it as a ‘Mental Object Retention’ exercise by picturing the word “No!” clearly in your mind as you express it, and focus your attention squarely onto the picture itself, and hold it for 30 seconds, allowing nothing to take your attention from the image.

As long as you turn your attention away from distracting thoughts in order to give your attention to the FACT that you DO NOT WISH TO ENGAGE IN THAT DISTRACTION, you will be making a form progress.

Take detailed notes of what you experience.

Basic Dual Series Count Thought-stopping Drill - Mental Concentration Training Drill

Exercise Category:

• Thought Stopping
• Brain-Conditioning Warm-Up

A guaranteed Thought Stopping tool as well as a fantastic Attention Control Training warm-up, the Dual Series Countdown is similar to the standard Countdown Technique, except that you are counting down AND counting up in the following manner:

100/01, 99/02, 98/03, 97/04, 96/05, 95/06, 94/07, 93/08, 92/09, 91/10, 90/11, 89/12, 88/13, 87/14, etc. down to 0/100.

The count would go like this:

“One hundred, one...ninety-nine, two...ninety-eight, three...ninety-seven, four...ninety-six, five...ninety-five, six, ninety-four, seven…”, ...continuing until the series is complete.

Try your best to do the exercise while seeing the numbers in your head, and the clearer you see them, the better.

If you’re not a visual learner who visualizes clearly, do not be concerned, and work in whatever way is effective for you.

The 'NO!' Thought-Stopping Drill - Mental Concentration Training Drill

Exercise Category:

• Thought Stopping

A Signal Interrupt Thought Control Approach

Relax at a time and place where you will not be disturbed. Your task objective is to bring your Attention to yourself and what you are thinking.

For the duration of the exercise, you will speak aloud each and every thing that comes to Mind, no matter what it is. Observe as though you are a Scientist (a Scientist of the Mind) looking through a microscope. Do this not as a participant in the mental dialogue (as though you are simply expressing your own desire to speak), but as a bystander watching a drama going on in the distance.

You are simply, carefully, and considerately speaking out loud every thought you notice occurring in your Mind - or DESCRIBING any visual images that occur, as though providing a Sports Announcer’s ‘Play-By-Play’ of the ongoing event, concerned with accuracy and detail.

The action will seem strange as you work to adjust your Attention so that you narrow in on the FACT that thought is
occurring. Prior to this, you may simply have taken it for granted and accepted your thoughts as merely an extension of your own self, which for the most part is not the case.

No matter how odd it may feel to do it, press on valiantly for the entire session. At the completion of each session, write down what you experienced.

Basic Mental Calculation - Mental Concentration Training Drill

Exercise Category:

• Thought Stopping

A Signal Interrupt Thought Control Approach

This pattern disruptor serves three functions. First, it is a cognitive signal disruptor that causes rapid decay of any ongoing thought.

Second, as a signal displacement by shifting mental resources from the initial signal and onto the necessity of carrying out the exercise itself.

Third, after resources have been reallocated, the original signal is replaced by a new, more intense signal that you intentionally create!

During your session, remain alert to any thought that arises in your Mind—any internal chatter, any ‘self-talk’, or any fleeting images. At the onset of any incident, your reaction should be to take the disturbance itself and
MAGNIFY its intensity! That’s correct. If there is an ongoing conversation in your head, willfully make it louder
and louder in your thought until it feels like a scream.

If it is an image, zero in on it mentally and intensify its colors and continue making it bigger while zooming in until you are staring at the smallest details and then continue narrowing in on those while making the colors obnoxiously glaring. Vague background chatter? “Pump up the volume” until it feels ridiculously noisy, and then continue build the noise. When you’ve done that, simply maintain the signal for at least fifteen seconds.

Why is that so effective? It requires pinpoint Concentration to execute. Random mental distraction ceases to be so once you lock onto it, and becomes your tool when you turn it to your purposeful use! Because you have created your own concentrated signal, you then have the capability to let it go in the way you can pick up a weight and then drop it by simply opening your fingers once your task is complete.

That’s what you should do after enough seconds have passed and you feel comfortable that the first signal has been soundly drowned out by the one that you created. When you’re ready, just stop, and breath easy, noting the effect. Is there a sense of release? Of quiet?

Make notes of what you experience.

Basic Mental Object Retention - Mental Concentration Drill

Exercise Category:

• Thought-Oriented Warm-Up
• Intellectual

Areas Of Improvement:

• Creative Visualization
• Visual Working Memory
• Thought Control
• Attention Control
• Mental Concentration
• Mental Focus

Perceptual Focus:

• Close-Up
• Onto Thought

Exertion Type:

• Attention Direct Onto Thought
• Thought Formation

Application Level:

• Task Concentration

What You’ll Need:

• Stopwatch Or Timer
• Pen Or Pencil
• Paper To Write On
• Privacy

On the path to better Mental Concentration and stronger Mental Focus, one of the foundational cognitive development objectives is to augment Visual Working Memory - which is the power to hold one or more objects on the stage of your Attention for as long as necessary to complete your task, without being distracted by something outside yourself, or your own thoughts and feelings.

Anyone who can maintain an image in thought for as long as they wish in defiance of any onslaught internal and external distractions has the dynamic mental power to accomplish anything they put their mind to.

Utilizing a stopwatch or timer with a beeping alarm to notify you when a session time is up, and a piece of paper and pencil or pen to jot down notes, sit quietly in a place and at a time where you will not be disturbed.

Form a simple image of something uncomplicated in your thought, perhaps of a circle, or a triangle, but nothing really more complex than the crisp, clear image of some form or shape. Your task is to hold that image in your thought as long as you can without it ‘warping’ or changing its clarity, shape, or color in your imagination.

Also, you are not to allow any competing thought or external noise to distract you. You are to keep your Attention firmly and resolutely on that image and hold it there in your Mind, at the expense of anything else going on, because this is to be your priority in life for the allotted time.

If during the exercise the image shifts significantly in color or form or is replaced by another thought or your Attention is stolen away by some distraction, you are to stop then and there and jot down how long you were able to hold the image. Then, begin again, with the determination to go even longer without distraction. Continue to repeat the process for the 30, 45, or 60 minutes you’ve set aside for the full session of mental fitness exercise.

Basic Mental Calculation - Mental Concentration Training Drill

Exercise Category:

• Thought-Oriented Warm-Up

Areas Of Improvement:

• Creative Visualization
• Visual Working Memory
• Thought Control
• Attention Control

Perceptual Focus:

• Close-Up
• Onto Thought

Exertion Type:

• Attention Direct Onto Thought
• Thought Formation
• Thought Manipulation

Application Level:

• Task Concentration

What You’ll Need:

• Privacy
• Math Worksheets - easily obtained for free from your local library, various internet websites, or at low cost in many math workbooks available through book sellers.

NOTE: Do NOT emply any form of mnemonic or memory strategy for these. Do it the hard way. Shortcuts will short change you in this effort. If you struggle, then you're doing well.

One of the main obstacles to Mental Concentration you will encounter during your training sessions is mental chatter or self-talk that seems to occur even when you don’t want it to. Because it is a habitual mental phenomenon that you’ve grown accustomed to, it’s distracting pull on your attention is bound to happen at some point.

By becoming competent at ‘Thought- Stopping’ exercises such as The Mental Calculation Technique, you will have a handy method at the ready to help redirect your attention when you find your mind wandering away from an exercise session. The skill you develop will prove very useful for application in the rest of your daily life in that...

♦ It interrupts any ongoing irrelevant thought and emotions
♦ Brings your attention quickly back under your management by way of a control task
♦ Improves your visualization and planning ability
♦ Sets the stage, psychologically, for increased personal productivity, and...
♦ Physically conditions your brain for better Mental Concentration and Focus

Have a list of two-digit or three-digit addition, subtraction, multiplication or division math problems ready to use for solving, mentally, as many math problems as you wish, as long as they are enough to occupy the entirety of your session. 

Look briefly at any one of the multi-digit math problems and then turn your eyes away once you’ve got it in memory so that you can solve it, mentally. In your imagination, do all the necessary math work to solve the problem fully, holding each necessary operation on the stage of your imagination so that you avoid making errors.

When you have successfully solved the problem, move on to the next and repeat, continuing the process until your alarm notifies you that the session is ended. Let comfort determine whether you move on to more complicated efforts.

MOVING FROM BASIC TO INTERMEDIATE AND ADVANCED.

Feel free to make this as complex as your patience will allow in the following ways:

• Gradually increase the number of problems you do per session
• Increase the digit count (move from 2-digit to 3, 4 or more)
• Deepen the calculation by making longer vertially or horizontally. For example, instead of adding two or three different numbers, add five or or more of them. Good luck and have fun.
• Make the problems themselves more complex, and try higher-level math and equations to perform them memory for a massive workout to your working memory, and perhaps even impress your friends.