Mental Concentration Vs. Mental Focus Training – Which To Start First?

Your Skill At Mental Concentration Greatly Affects Your Mental Focus Ability

Normally, the first question I get after a long, detailed explanation to brain training & fitness enthusiasts as to why Mental Concentration and Mental Focus are NOT the same thing is, “Well, if I need Mental Focus Training AND I need Mental Concentration training, which do I start first and why?”   The answer is very logical and gets to the root of how getting good at one virtually guarantees improvement in the other.  Oh, and folks, please forgive the ‘ALL CAPS’ on certain concepts, it’s just that I want you to really THINK about them as you read, because the distinctions are vital for progress.

If your Mental Concentration skills are not sufficiently strong enough to meet the constant, time-critical demands of the life level you’re looking to achieve in the immediate and long-term future, your level of Mental Focus will not be strong enough to ensure a consistent upward and forward momentum (nor quality of productivity and achievement) necessary to solidify your chances of success.

The entire point of Concentration Training is to prepare you to boost your MENTAL FOCUS.   Mental Focus is NOT the same as Mental Concentration. Visualize a piece of paper on which, at one end, you draw a target symbol. On the opposite end, write in small letters “You Are Here. In between, make 8 dots in a line from “You Are Here” to the “Target.” Mental Focus is the total, absolutely clear mental knowledge of Target, Dots, & Starting Point.

Mental Focus is your skillful ability to KNOW WHAT YOU WANT with absolute clarity, knowledge so clear and uncorrupted by competing desires and distractions that it thoroughly brings into congruent alignment your THOUGHTS, EMOTIONS, IMPULSES & URGES, PERCEPTIONS, & ACTIONS. That’s right: If you forge it clearly enough in mind, it will TRANSFORM YOU into the person you need to be in order to make it come about. MENTAL CONCENTRATION on the other hand is totally ‘HERE AND NOW’.

MENTAL CONCENTRATION is your skillful, CONSCIOUS, PURPOSEFUL ability to direct and control your ATTENTION (it’s DIRECTION (target), SPAN, DEPTH, and DURATION) AT WILL!!!  I repeat:  AT WILL! Mental Concentration happens RIGHT NOW, RIGHT HERE. If you moved in a line from “You Are Here” to “Target,” Mental Concentration is total immersion and energy applied to each DOT.

With Mental Concentration, you MOVE FORWARD STEP BY STEP, but your only concern is simply the CURRENT, NECESSARY STEP in direct defiance of all internal and external sources of distraction in the present moment. With Mental Focus, you SET YOUR COURSE and STAY ON IT for lengthy periods of days, weeks, months, or years. Mental Concentration is MOTION NOW, while Mental Focus is TARGETING, constant and in total defiance of all internal and external distraction over the long term.

So, in closing, a person (YOU, for instance) best implements his or her training agenda by learning how to CONCENTRATE EFFECTIVELY and for crazy LONG DURATION onto ANY TARGET against ANY FORM OF DISTRACTION (Thought-based, Impulses, Urges, or External Sights & Sounds – especially OTHER PEOPLE and their ‘demands’). Whatever your training technique, you WANT that kind of skill, because you can then apply it to FORGING & HOLDING an IDEA, PURPOSE, or VISION in such a way that you EASILY bring it about.