The Power of Unwavering Focus
Episode Stats
Summary
Dan Dapani spent 10 years as a monk in a Hindu monastic order, and now he s on a mission to share the secrets of concentration he learned there with others. In this episode, he explains why developing your focus is so important, and why developing yours is so vital.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.
00:00:10.880
When you were a kid, teachers and parents probably told you to concentrate.
00:00:14.580
And as an adult, you likely often think about how much more productive, present, and happy
00:00:21.140
But despite how much we think about our desire to improve our focus, no one ever gets any
00:00:24.940
training on how to do it and even explains what focus is exactly.
00:00:30.360
He was taught the secrets of concentration when he spent 10 years as a Hindu monk, and
00:00:34.300
today he's on a mission to share them with others.
00:00:36.420
His name is Dan Dapani, and he continues to live as a Hindu priest, though he's now also
00:00:40.320
an entrepreneur and author, with a book just published called The Power of Unwavering Focus.
00:00:45.040
Today on the show, Dan Dapani defines focus and shares the existential reasons why developing
00:00:50.340
He explains how that development begins with understanding how the mind is different from
00:00:53.700
awareness, that where awareness goes, energy flows, and the need to bring awareness to
00:00:59.220
We walk through how to stop practicing distraction and how to start practicing concentration by
00:01:03.900
making each of your daily activities a focused practice, and ultimately, making your whole
00:01:09.900
We also discuss how daily sessions of meditation are inadequate for developing focus, how mindfulness
00:01:14.400
is different than concentration, and how the ability to control and direct your awareness
00:01:20.560
After the show's over, check out our show notes at aom.is slash focus.
00:01:41.300
So you are a Hindu priest and a former Hindu monk, and the author of a new book called The
00:01:46.060
Power of Unwavering Focus, where you, for a lay audience, talk about practices from your
00:01:51.840
faith tradition, about how to have more focus in your life.
00:01:55.000
Before we talk about your book, let's talk a little bit about your background, because
00:01:58.020
You're the first Hindu priest I've ever talked to.
00:02:05.040
Is it like Catholicism, where you don't have to be a priest to be a monk, or you can be a
00:02:17.940
They take vows of renunciation, and often other vows as well.
00:02:23.460
And typically monks live in a monastery with other monks, and some monks live independently
00:02:29.540
by themselves, and often, even sometimes in a forest, in a mountain, by themselves.
00:02:37.400
There's the path of the monastic and the path of the householder.
00:02:39.920
The monastic is the monk, and the householder is the family person.
00:02:44.440
So Hindu priests actually fall under the category of a householder.
00:02:49.020
So a Hindu priest can get married, can work at McDonald's, be an entrepreneur, have kids,
00:02:57.740
Whereas in the Catholic religion, Catholic priests are very similar to Catholic monks,
00:03:03.200
where they lead celibate lives and live in cloisies with each other or all by themselves.
00:03:07.080
So that's the big distinction between Hindu monks and Hindu priests.
00:03:12.640
I lived in a cloistered monastery, taking vows in a monastic order.
00:03:17.240
And then when my vows expired, I left, and I chose to live as a Hindu priest.
00:03:22.620
So now I'm married, I have a daughter, I'm an entrepreneur, and I live in the world, just
00:03:28.960
Well, what's a day-to-day life like for Hindu monks?
00:03:31.980
I mean, what's their role in Hinduism and their purpose?
00:03:35.620
I would say there's so many different traditions of monastic traditions within Hinduism.
00:03:42.260
The primary goal of a monastic in that order was self-realization or enlightenment, seeking
00:03:47.920
through deep meditation to experience divinity within ourselves.
00:03:52.380
So that was the primary goal of the monks in our order.
00:03:57.660
But while pursuing that, monks also pursued a life of selfless service where they took
00:04:04.000
Hindu, ancient Hindu teachings and tools and shared it with the world.
00:04:11.640
We had a massive digital platform where the monks had podcasts, similar to podcasts, blogs,
00:04:21.580
The idea was to empower people with these timeless teachings and tools to help people live better
00:04:27.700
lives, more rewarding lives, and ultimately guide and steer people to its enlightenment.
00:04:33.820
And that really was the role within our monastic community.
00:04:39.060
You are now a householder, you're a priest, and you're an entrepreneur.
00:04:45.960
So I work as an advisor to entrepreneurs and high-performance athletes.
00:04:50.960
I would say primarily my clients are entrepreneurs, successful ones that have built very successful
00:04:59.060
I do often do one-on-one coaching with a few of them, not too many.
00:05:02.980
And then I speak to companies, to senior leadership teams, sometimes to the whole company or departments
00:05:08.160
within the company, companies like American Express, Bloomberg, Nike, and things like that.
00:05:17.120
And primarily what I do is I help them understand the mind, how the mind works, teach them how
00:05:24.000
to concentrate, how to practice concentration so they can be good at it.
00:05:27.160
But ultimately, it's leveraging the mind so they can be the best at what they do.
00:05:32.880
And the same for athletes as well, high-performance athletes.
00:05:36.100
Most of us, like I always say, never get taught how the mind works, never get taught how to
00:05:41.500
So if we can learn how the mind works and we can learn to focus the mind, then we can live
00:05:48.740
But at the same time, we'll also be much better at what we do on a daily basis.
00:05:54.660
Well, yeah, that's a nice segue into your book.
00:05:57.240
So you start off the book in The Power of Unwavering Focus, talking about how parents, teachers,
00:06:03.880
coaches, bosses, they'll tell people, like, stay focused.
00:06:08.020
But we never really, I mean, I don't think I ever got an explanation on what it meant to
00:06:13.120
I kind of picked up what I thought people meant.
00:06:15.640
But we just kind of expect people to know how to concentrate and how to focus.
00:06:19.740
What do you think have been the consequences of not teaching people, like actually sitting
00:06:23.840
down saying, here's what I mean, and here's how to do it when I say focus?
00:06:28.760
I would say, you know, that one of the consequences of not teaching people how to concentrate is
00:06:37.860
It's the same way with not teaching people to eat healthy.
00:06:41.040
Then where do people get their eating habits through the environment?
00:06:47.100
It's, you know, companies selling people junk food, you know, crappy food to eat.
00:06:53.860
And so if people don't have any ability to discriminate between what food is good for
00:06:58.060
their body and what's not, then they'll just buy into the best marketing out there for crappy
00:07:04.260
And similarly with the mind as well, if you're never taught how to concentrate and the world
00:07:09.440
is always vying for your attention and trying to show you different things to engage with
00:07:17.040
you, then you're going to be trained in the art of distraction by the world around you.
00:07:22.180
And unfortunately, that's what's happened because, you know, if I asked you, were you trained
00:07:28.100
Did you have formal classes on concentration growing up in school, like every day, like math,
00:07:34.520
And I've asked this everywhere I've traveled around the world and all my workshops and
00:07:39.920
Has anybody here had formal classes on how to concentrate every single day in school, the
00:07:45.460
same way you've had formal classes in math, science, geography, history, and no one's ever
00:07:52.600
And we just tell people to concentrate and assume that they would know how to do it.
00:07:59.220
And people will get frustrated because they think, well, something's wrong with me, right?
00:08:08.000
Or maybe you just don't know how to concentrate.
00:08:10.380
And that's one of the arguments from the book, right?
00:08:17.180
And the whole concept there is that, you know, I share a story where a man, and I've had many
00:08:22.940
A man came up to me at an event and said, you know, my son has been diagnosed with ADD or ADHD.
00:08:28.400
And he's on drugs now, and I'm really unhappy about it.
00:08:32.680
And I said to the man, I'm not a medical expert.
00:08:39.500
But can you tell me what's the essence of the problem?
00:08:42.020
And he says, oh, my son has a really hard time focusing.
00:08:46.900
And so, the doctor diagnosed him with ADD and put him on medication.
00:08:52.600
Then I asked the dad, I said, have you ever, if he has trouble concentrating, have you ever
00:09:00.060
And I go, if you haven't taught him how to concentrate, how do you expect him to concentrate?
00:09:04.680
It's the same way if you told your son to play the piano, and he couldn't play the piano,
00:09:09.440
and then you diagnosed him with PPD, piano playing disorder, and then drugged him for
00:09:17.060
So, I'm not saying that diagnosing someone for having trouble keeping their attention
00:09:25.040
There's nothing wrong with the diagnosis of that.
00:09:30.760
The first treatment should be, well, let's teach them how to do it.
00:09:34.100
And then, let's help them practice what they've learned, so they can actually be good at it.
00:09:39.200
Because if you don't practice something, you don't be good at it.
00:09:41.720
And after a few years of that, there's still a struggle.
00:09:51.540
Well, so let's talk about definitions, because we hear the word focus.
00:09:55.520
And I think we all have a general idea when someone tells us to focus, we think we have
00:10:00.180
an idea, and you need sort of like, just to put all your attention on one thing for a
00:10:05.660
But how, and we'll get more into the definitions.
00:10:07.380
What I love about your book is you're very systematic in explaining, like, you need to
00:10:12.600
But big picture, when you talk about focus, what are you talking about?
00:10:16.880
Focus is my ability to keep my awareness on the person or thing I'm engaged with until I
00:10:24.220
choose to consciously move it to something else.
00:10:26.920
So if I'm speaking with you, I keep my awareness on you and completely engage with you.
00:10:32.800
Once I'm done with my conversation with you, I shift my awareness to the next thing I want
00:10:40.200
So I think often, you know, people might think focus is just my ability to keep my awareness
00:10:45.120
on one thing or one person for an extended period of time.
00:10:48.380
I would say that's a partial definition of focus.
00:10:51.140
Sometimes the other half of the definition of focus is my ability then to say, okay, I'm
00:10:57.380
I'm going to switch it now to this task, which at the end of the day tells you that you have
00:11:02.960
a conscious choice of who and what you're engaging with on a moment to moment basis.
00:11:10.760
Let's talk about like, why do you think you also make the beginning that you make the case
00:11:15.640
People get told you need to focus, but like, okay, why?
00:11:19.240
Like, what is your case for developing this focus?
00:11:23.220
In the book, I put three impetus for leading a focused life.
00:11:27.500
The greatest one, which is the third one I talk about is that life is finite, that we
00:11:33.020
So regardless of our religious affiliations or beliefs or philosophy that we subscribe to,
00:11:40.240
the fact that no one can argue with is that at some point in this life, we all die.
00:11:47.980
So if our life is finite, and I very clearly say in the book that life is not short, it's
00:11:53.340
finite, meaning there's a clear definitive end to it.
00:11:55.540
Then the question is, if I want to live a great life, a rewarding life, a content life, a happy
00:12:02.680
life, I need to define my purpose, my priorities, and then be able to focus on those things.
00:12:10.700
If I focus on who and what I love and I'm aligned with, the byproduct of that is happiness, the
00:12:19.240
And the ultimate byproduct of that is I live a rewarding life, a fulfilled life.
00:12:24.340
And to me, that's one of the greatest impetus for leading a focused life is that you get
00:12:32.840
You don't want to get to the end of your life, look back and go like, oh, I should have
00:12:37.220
I should have spent more time with this person.
00:12:39.160
And if you can't focus, you know, the other impetus too is that a lot of people work hard
00:12:45.000
They save their money so they can go out for a really nice meal with a friend or with
00:12:52.660
And then when they get to that meal and when they get to that holiday, they can't concentrate
00:12:59.680
How many times have you gone to a meal and looked at the table across from you and seen
00:13:03.900
someone on their phone texting, distracted with their phone rather than enjoying the meal,
00:13:09.240
enjoying the company of the person that they're with?
00:13:11.100
So, I mean, if you can't focus, then, you know, you work so hard to save money so you
00:13:16.120
can go and have this beautiful meal and this beautiful restaurant, but you can't stay focused
00:13:22.040
I had an entrepreneur tell me, you know, he'd been building this business for years.
00:13:25.900
When he sold this business, one of the first things he did was take his family on this
00:13:31.580
They were on a private boat sailing to another island on a speedboat, sorry, speedboat sailing
00:13:37.920
And at one point, he realized that his whole family was enjoying, you know, going from
00:13:44.180
an island to island on the speedboat and he'd been, his face was buried in the phone for
00:13:49.680
So, you work so hard so that you can earn money to give you and your family the experience
00:13:54.860
of this beautiful holiday in the Caribbean or wherever it was.
00:13:59.000
But then when you actually get there, you can't focus long enough to be present in that
00:14:03.540
experience to actually enjoy it, because now you're distracted with something else.
00:14:08.160
I mean, he might say, well, I was focused on my email, but like he probably wasn't consciously
00:14:16.980
And if you want to focus on your email, why don't you just stay home and do it?
00:14:22.100
The whole purpose of being on a boat traveling between islands is so that you can spend time
00:14:27.860
And how many times, you know, do you sit with someone, you're having a conversation with them
00:14:34.460
They're not even listening to what you're saying.
00:14:36.580
They're physically there sitting in front of you.
00:14:39.620
Their head has been subconsciously trained to nod at what you're saying, but mentally their
00:14:59.560
I know you're physically sitting here, but your awareness has wandered off somewhere
00:15:06.440
Because if you don't want to be here, I'm happily good to leave and go somewhere else
00:15:11.500
But once, you know, going back to the question, what you said, you know, it's like, what's
00:15:14.920
The greatest impetus is that our time is finite.
00:15:20.080
And distraction is the biggest thief of that time.
00:15:24.600
It robs us of that time that we have, that precious time.
00:15:31.940
And you also talk about that if you want to develop focus, you have to have a desire for
00:15:38.720
And I imagine that desire, you know, can come from knowing that life's finite.
00:15:43.500
It can also come from wanting the happiness and meaning that, as you said, is a byproduct
00:15:52.880
And, you know, I can see people saying, oh, yeah, I want that.
00:16:09.960
You know, I think people go through what I've realized since leaving the monastery and
00:16:13.960
being engaged in the world and been doing this for over a decade now is that I think
00:16:18.020
when people are going through a challenging time in their life, whether it's a personal
00:16:21.660
crisis or divorce or whatever it may be, loss of job or death, loss of a loved one, that's
00:16:29.040
And then when the pain starts to ebb away, then they just default back to who they were
00:16:37.780
How do you keep that desire going when the bad time goes away?
00:16:41.320
I would say remind yourself, write it down, remind yourself every single day.
00:16:47.900
You know, someone asked me a long time ago, Dr. Pani, how often do you think about dying?
00:16:53.720
And I said to him, I hardly ever think about dying.
00:16:57.060
But what I do think about every single day is that my life is finite.
00:17:02.520
I don't say my life is short, that my life is finite, meaning at some point I will die,
00:17:06.400
that I'm only here for a limited amount of time.
00:17:10.060
And that drives me to make sure that every day I'm leading a full life, that I'm focusing
00:17:18.320
on the people that I love, I'm focusing on the things I love.
00:17:21.540
Because that also reminds me every day that the people I love, their lives are finite too.
00:17:31.440
I look at the, you know, people look at young kids, they might look at their daughter or
00:17:36.420
their son who's five, six years old and go like, oh, you know, they have their whole lives
00:17:45.780
We want them to have their whole lives ahead of them.
00:17:47.900
We want them to live till their 90s or 100 and die then.
00:17:54.280
So while I have these people and things in my life, I want to enjoy them.
00:17:58.300
And the ability to focus allows me to enjoy them.
00:18:02.500
The realization that life is finite is the greatest impetus for leading a focused life.
00:18:08.160
And to make sure that we don't waste this precious gift that we have, which is life itself.
00:18:14.540
Okay, let's talk about how to develop this focus.
00:18:16.460
And it's important, you make this point in the book, in order to understand how to develop
00:18:20.120
focus, it's important to understand some of the metaphysics that underlie Hinduism.
00:18:26.400
So you say you teach people how the mind works.
00:18:29.500
When you talk about the mind, what is the mind?
00:18:32.220
So I describe in the book, the mind as a vast space with many different areas within it.
00:18:37.740
So you can say one area of the mind is happiness, one area of the mind is jealousy, anger, food,
00:18:48.480
One description of it is it's a glowing ball of light.
00:18:50.940
And I describe that ball of light being able to travel to any area of the mind that it
00:18:57.660
And you are, in essence, pure awareness, pure energy traveling through different areas of
00:19:03.800
So if you go to the angry area of the mind, you experience being angry.
00:19:07.720
From there, you can shift your awareness to the happy area of the mind.
00:19:12.440
You can shift your area to the technology area of the mind and be immersed in technology.
00:19:18.140
What we can surmise from this is that there's two things.
00:19:21.840
One is there's a clear separation between awareness and the mind.
00:19:27.740
And number two is that at any given point in time, you, all your environment, the people
00:19:34.360
and things around you can dictate where your awareness is going.
00:19:37.220
So I can choose to go to a happy area from my mind.
00:19:39.560
And if I don't choose to do that, I can allow my environment to take me to the happy area
00:19:45.300
But I can also allow my environment to take me to the sad area of the mind.
00:19:48.820
The goal, ultimately, is to be able to have conscious mastery of where awareness goes in
00:19:56.080
And if you look at most people around you, because we haven't been trained in this, we
00:20:00.300
haven't been taught this, most people allow their environment, and again, I define environment
00:20:05.220
as the people and things around them, to dictate where their awareness goes.
00:20:10.800
The story in the news takes awareness to a depressed area of the mind.
00:20:14.160
They see a picture of a politician they don't like.
00:20:24.920
And within the space of two, three minutes, awareness could be bouncing around the mind.
00:20:28.960
And within a space of a day, your environment could take your awareness to a million areas
00:20:36.240
And then you're no longer focusing on the people and things that really matter to you.
00:20:40.900
So there's a distinction between mind and awareness.
00:20:48.940
And I think that's interesting because I think oftentimes when you read books about
00:20:53.100
mindfulness, we can maybe talk more about this because you kind of have a pet peeve
00:20:57.920
But people talk about like, well, my mind is wandering.
00:21:04.600
It's just your awareness is all over the place.
00:21:07.300
And Brad, another thing people also often say is that I have a monkey mind.
00:21:10.200
I don't know if you've ever heard that statement before.
00:21:14.800
It's your awareness that's moving within the mind.
00:21:16.740
And I mean, all you have to do is just look at your day for the moment you woke up.
00:21:22.080
Your awareness is moving through different areas of the mind.
00:21:26.080
Do you remember the very first podcast you did for the show?
00:21:36.480
I did it from my apartment when I lived in an apartment a long time ago.
00:21:40.940
So now your awareness has moved to that area of the subconscious where the memory of the
00:21:47.740
And I could sit here the next five minutes and take your awareness to different areas
00:21:55.100
At this point, I'm in charge of where your awareness is going and what you're feeling.
00:22:09.760
And the goal is to control where awareness goes.
00:22:16.020
We make it very complicated, but it doesn't get more complicated than that.
00:22:19.900
Well, yeah, you do this great exercise to show, highlight the distinction between mind
00:22:24.880
You know, someone could be listening to this podcast right now and their awareness is on
00:22:29.220
But we can just say, well, wiggle your toes and think about how your toes feel.
00:22:34.060
And their awareness is going to go to that immediately.
00:22:45.020
If I'm having a conversation with Joe and Joe's sitting in front of me, I'm talking to
00:22:49.020
him and Joe's nodding his head going, yeah, I see.
00:22:59.180
Because if your awareness has drifted out somewhere, you're not there.
00:23:01.680
Have you ever had the experience where you're talking to someone and someone says to you,
00:23:10.900
In the context of this book, the correct question with the right terminology would be, where's
00:23:20.420
The correct answer is, well, I'm standing in front of you.
00:23:23.280
But when you ask someone, where's your awareness?
00:23:25.420
Then they go, my awareness is off somewhere else in my mind, thinking about something else
00:23:36.340
That's why understanding awareness in the mind is so critical.
00:23:40.340
People talk about time management, you know, balancing life and working so many hours.
00:23:46.860
And someone might say, okay, I'm going to spend an hour and a half with my family every day
00:23:52.960
And 45 minutes of those two hours is having a meal, a dinner with my family.
00:23:58.100
So every night they come home and they have dinner with the family.
00:24:00.580
So they can check off the time management box and say, okay, today I did 45 minutes having
00:24:05.600
dinner with my family every day and be very proud of it.
00:24:08.900
And for me, my question is, yes, you were physically present those 45 minutes having
00:24:16.220
But I want to know in those 45 minutes, where was your awareness?
00:24:20.640
Because when your husband was talking or when your wife was talking and your kids were talking,
00:24:25.120
was your awareness somewhere else in your mind?
00:24:35.940
And I think that distinction is very useful because I've been thinking about that a lot.
00:24:40.040
It's like, well, I'm going to control my awareness.
00:24:42.200
I'm going to shift my awareness to different parts of my mind.
00:24:44.900
So one thing you talk about in the book is something you learned from your guru is this
00:24:54.580
And what are you talking about when you're talking about energy?
00:24:57.680
So, you know, Tesla, Nikola Tesla, the scientist had a beautiful saying, if you want to find
00:25:02.640
the secrets of the universe, think in terms of energy, frequency, and vibration.
00:25:07.020
I elaborate a little bit more on that to add to that by saying that everything in this world
00:25:11.640
is made up of energy and that energy is vibrating at a certain frequency.
00:25:22.480
There's another phrase, and I'll tie this back to what my guru's quote.
00:25:25.500
There's another phrase I have in the book where I say,
00:25:28.000
life is a manifestation of where you invest your energy.
00:25:31.240
And the best way to understand the statement is to look at energy the same way we look at
00:25:34.880
So if I took a watering can and I watered a garden bed, both the weeds and the flowers
00:25:39.520
Water has no ability to discriminate between the weeds and the flowers.
00:25:43.240
Similarly, energy has no ability to discriminate between what's positive and what's negative.
00:25:48.160
Whatever I invest energy into will start to grow in my life.
00:25:51.540
So if you look at your mind as having different areas, and let's look at the mind,
00:25:56.380
take an analogy as the mind is a huge garden made up of a thousand garden beds.
00:26:02.380
One garden bed is anger, another garden bed is jealousy, another garden bed is growing
00:26:07.360
tomatoes and lettuce, and there's so many different garden beds, right?
00:26:11.440
Now, if I took a watering can and I watered a garden bed, that garden bed would start to
00:26:16.560
Similarly, I have these different areas in my mind of anger, jealousy, happiness, and contentment.
00:26:23.260
And as awareness goes to those areas, that's where energy is flowing to that area of the
00:26:29.440
And as energy flows to that area of the mind, I strengthen, you could say, the muscles in
00:26:38.740
If my awareness is constantly going to the angry area of the mind, that's where my energy
00:26:46.240
I deposit more energy in the angry area of the mind.
00:26:49.220
Eventually, it starts to strengthen and strengthen.
00:26:51.480
Now it starts to vibrate at the frequency of anger, whatever that frequency is.
00:27:00.400
Think in terms of energy, frequency, and vibration.
00:27:02.400
Now the stronger, the more energy I deposit in the angry area of the mind, the stronger
00:27:08.200
And now I start attracting into my life anything of a similar frequency.
00:27:14.020
And because that area is so highly magnetized, it also then has the ability to pull awareness
00:27:22.140
And have you ever met someone who's so quick to get angry?
00:27:24.660
No matter what you say, that's the default place they go to in their mind.
00:27:30.680
And similarly, someone can cultivate a happy area of the mind, a jealous area of the mind,
00:27:36.240
So where awareness goes, that's where energy flows.
00:27:42.320
And the more it gets strengthened, the more magnetic force it has over awareness and the
00:27:47.820
ability to pull awareness there as a default place to go to.
00:27:52.280
And you see this idea in neuroscience, this idea of neurons that fire together, wire together.
00:27:56.860
So if you just keep on thinking the same sort of pattern, you're just going to, that pattern
00:28:01.640
And you're more likely to follow that whenever you're put in a similar situation.
00:28:07.100
And you know, a lot of times we do this without even being conscious of it.
00:28:11.540
We say things, we think things repeatedly over and over again.
00:28:14.940
Someone might look in the mirror every morning and go like, oh, I'm too fat.
00:28:25.140
Now, if you say I'm depressed 20 times a day, every day, seven days a week, what are you
00:28:32.320
Depressed because you're creating that pattern in your mind.
00:28:35.720
Awareness is going there, investing energy in that.
00:28:41.420
You know, I think I give an example in the book where, you know, I met this guy many years
00:28:46.200
ago when I just left the monastery and I did a workshop in New York and after the workshop,
00:28:51.180
I had talked, spoken about all of this and he didn't quite believe it.
00:28:54.400
And I asked him, you know, I said, what do you do?
00:29:00.900
I said, every day, I want you to go to the stock exchange when you're working there,
00:29:04.580
Monday to Friday, and I want you to say 15 times a day, all my stocks, all my shares,
00:29:09.900
all my bonds or whatever is failing and I'm losing tens of thousands of dollars.
00:29:14.800
And this is how I want you to say it and how I want you to impress your mind with these
00:29:27.760
But no entrepreneur, no athlete will go out there and say, I'm terrible at what I do.
00:29:36.520
But we do this in our personal life all day long.
00:29:40.220
You know, we don't understand awareness in the mind and we repeat things.
00:29:43.820
We send awareness to negative areas of the mind all day long, strengthening those areas
00:29:49.000
of the mind, which then negatively impact our life.
00:29:52.480
So learning to control awareness in the mind is highly critical.
00:29:58.040
We're going to take a quick break for your word from our sponsors.
00:30:04.280
Well, let's talk about how we can start controlling our awareness.
00:30:09.340
Well, first you have to understand what awareness is, what the mind is.
00:30:12.780
But the idea is you need to bring awareness to attention.
00:30:23.640
Have you ever been in a conversation with someone, talking to them?
00:30:28.680
Now they start talking to you, your awareness drifts away.
00:30:33.100
And it may take you like 15, 20 seconds later before you realize you've drifted away.
00:30:38.440
Their mouth is still moving and you go like, oh my God, they're talking and I haven't heard
00:30:44.240
You can only get to that place where an awareness can be aware of itself and go, oh my God,
00:30:54.680
And once it's aware it's drifted away, it can bring itself back.
00:30:58.160
So the first step is bringing awareness to attention.
00:31:02.780
And that exercise, that practice comes through one's ability to learn to concentrate.
00:31:12.200
So the more I learn to keep awareness on one thing at a time or one person at a time, the
00:31:17.700
more observant I become because observation is a byproduct of prolonged states of concentration.
00:31:24.200
The more observant I become, the more conscious I become of my awareness drifting away from
00:31:33.280
And unless I'm observant of it, then I won't know.
00:31:36.880
And you do this, another great, I love that you have these really practical exercises you
00:31:40.020
can do to highlight this, this idea of bringing awareness to attention or awareness being aware
00:31:45.660
It's like if you're in a movie, you're at a movie theater, you're watching the movie,
00:31:49.300
you're sucked into the story, your awareness is inside the story that's being portrayed in
00:31:54.280
But then you say, well, you can shift your awareness to where you're no longer inside the story.
00:32:02.180
Maybe you just observe, you're looking at the screen, but you're just saying, noticing,
00:32:06.000
you know, this is just light being projected on a screen.
00:32:09.420
That's when you separate awareness from what it is engaged with, right?
00:32:13.700
And the movie is a great place to do this because you go to the cinema, you see everyone's saying
00:32:17.540
that everyone's watching the movie, they're laughing or being sad or upset or whatever
00:32:24.120
But if you can pull your awareness out of the movie and just like wiggle your toes, right?
00:32:29.660
If you start to wiggle your toes, your eyeballs go down, you look at your toes, you're no longer
00:32:35.040
So when you're no longer engaging, your awareness is no longer engaging with the screen, you're
00:32:43.040
Now, when you look back up again and you look around you, you can see people laughing and
00:32:47.340
people like, you know, gripping onto the chair or whatever it may be.
00:32:50.320
Now you realize my awareness is separate from that which it is engaged in.
00:32:56.540
And I can choose to let my awareness go back into the movie.
00:33:00.260
And once my ball of light gets absorbed back into the movie, now I experience everything
00:33:07.860
And if you start playing that game and that exercise of pulling awareness in and out of
00:33:11.840
things, you realize that at the end of the day, I have complete control over my awareness
00:33:18.280
and I can choose at any moment in the day if I want to engage with something or not engage
00:33:25.980
And you think about the freedom that gives an individual.
00:33:29.040
I lived in New York for 11 years, you know, and I'd walk down the street and something would
00:33:33.880
be happening or in the subway and everybody's awareness gets engaged with a couple arguing,
00:33:40.080
for example, in the subway train, in the subway car.
00:33:44.120
And now they're all upset about the whole thing that's going on because they've let their
00:33:48.260
ball of light go to that experience and get engaged with it.
00:33:51.240
And now it matched in the same emotional area of the mind that the couple is arguing in
00:33:58.480
But if they pull their ball of light out of it, then they go like, okay, I see them arguing,
00:34:07.540
Yeah, that experiment, the thought experiment at the movie, I mean, really, it's a great
00:34:12.540
way to practice the separating awareness and showing that you do have control over your
00:34:17.840
So, like you said, in the subway, you can see someone fighting and you can decide, well,
00:34:22.040
am I going to allow this to take my awareness to my angry part of my brain?
00:34:27.180
Or am I going to stay in a neutral part where I'm just watching what's unfolding?
00:34:31.540
And here's the thing, right, you know, you see on social media all the time, people say
00:34:41.920
You know, it's like telling someone, be focused.
00:34:48.000
And people always say this, you know, in the spiritual context, be the observer.
00:34:55.480
It's about understanding awareness in the mind.
00:34:57.240
If I can keep my awareness with me, then I'm watching from here, like you said, in
00:35:08.220
As soon as I let my ball of light leave me and go to the couple and get involved with
00:35:17.520
Keeping my ball of light with me, like you say, in a neutral place or in a happy place
00:35:21.200
or peaceful place, is me being an observer of what's happening in me, outside of me.
00:35:27.240
And, you know, that's why, you know, in the book, I spent like so much time talking about
00:35:33.880
awareness in the mind, because this, this lays the foundation of so many things going
00:35:40.460
forward, not only just learning to concentrate, but learning how to be observant, how to be
00:35:47.400
Okay, so concentration or focus, use those words interchangeably, is the ability to consciously
00:35:52.660
choose what you're going to direct your awareness on.
00:35:55.900
And you can choose to direct your awareness on that thing in your mind or in your environment
00:36:02.740
It's going to be a really long time, or maybe just for a little bit of time, but you're choosing
00:36:11.080
Let's talk about the opposite of that, distraction.
00:36:13.840
Distraction is when something or someone outside of you moves your awareness from one thing to
00:36:23.840
So you surrender where awareness goes in your mind to your environment around you.
00:36:29.760
So I let TikTok take me to a happy area of the mind because I see a dancing cat.
00:36:37.200
And then two seconds later, take me to a sad area of the mind because I see something else.
00:36:42.200
And then three minutes later, take me to an angry area of the mind because I see something
00:36:50.600
That's allowing your environment to dictate where your awareness goes in your mind.
00:36:55.260
And the more you practice this, so an external force can do that, but it can also happen
00:37:03.120
Your own subconscious, if the patterns in your subconscious mind are distracted of nature,
00:37:08.920
then it can move your awareness from one thing to another to another all day long as well.
00:37:15.780
And you make this really, I like this point you make.
00:37:17.680
The reason why you have a problem with distraction is because you have practiced distraction.
00:37:23.020
Like, what do you mean by, how do we, I mean, people don't think, well, I'm not practicing
00:37:32.640
So what do you mean by we practice distraction?
00:37:35.240
There's a lesson in the book called the law of practice.
00:37:37.860
And what I mean by that, I say, whatever we practice, we end up becoming really good
00:37:47.100
So anything we repeat over and over again, even if we're not conscious we're doing it, it
00:37:53.400
So if we, on a daily basis, allow our awareness to jump from one thing to another, to another,
00:38:01.000
to another, to another in quick succession, we're training our awareness to be distracted.
00:38:12.860
You know, people want like, your videos need to be 15 seconds to 30 seconds long in order
00:38:19.460
So everyone's making these short reels and TikTok and stuff.
00:38:24.840
And that's how long we're being trained every day to keep our awareness on one thing.
00:38:30.860
Because that reel or story can only be 15 or 60 seconds long.
00:38:36.160
And then before the next thing is fed with you.
00:38:38.600
So if I'm on TikTok every day or Instagram reels every day for two, three hours, watching
00:38:45.400
things for 60 second periods before it switches to something else, that's what I'm being trained
00:38:52.700
That's what my awareness is being trained to stay on one thing for 60 seconds before it's
00:38:57.160
then switched to another area of the mind based on what's being fed to me.
00:39:01.460
Now, I sit down to have coffee with you for an hour.
00:39:05.200
I can only keep my awareness on you for 60 seconds before I need to move it to something else.
00:39:10.920
Before you pick up your phone to look at what's going on.
00:39:12.780
I pick up my phone, look past you, see what's happening behind you, who's walking, what's
00:39:16.600
the waiter doing, or I see a bird sitting on the tree, or I want to change the subject.
00:39:20.920
Because TikTok, social media, Instagram, all these things are changing things every 16 seconds.
00:39:27.900
Every 60 seconds or 15 seconds or whatever it may be, they're feeding you something completely
00:39:32.660
So awareness is now moving within the mind to different areas of the mind every 60 second
00:39:39.760
And if you do this two, three, four hours a day, that's what you become really good at.
00:39:48.480
So let's talk about how to practice concentration.
00:39:51.780
And you make this case that when people think, well, I got to get more focused, I want to
00:39:56.480
They think, well, I'll do some mindfulness meditation for 15 minutes a day.
00:40:04.500
That's not going to be enough to develop your concentration.
00:40:06.860
Because, you know, the example in the book I give is that we need to look at our life
00:40:12.260
the same way an Olympic sprinter looks at his life.
00:40:15.400
Take Usain Bolt, for example, when he was competing.
00:40:17.620
I don't know much about this guy, but, you know, fastest man on earth, you know, he had
00:40:22.300
the hundred meters at 9.56 or 5.4 seconds or whatever it is.
00:40:25.860
I am assuming his whole day when he was competing was structured, meaning that, you know, he
00:40:32.040
drank water, he exercised, he did weight training, he ran, he sprinted, he stretched, he rested.
00:40:37.540
His whole day was there to support the 9.56 seconds as opposed to 9.56 seconds supporting
00:40:46.660
So, people often think that if I meditate five minutes in the morning or 10 minutes in
00:40:52.700
the morning, that's going to help me be focused the rest of the day.
00:40:56.740
My question is, what are you doing the 23 hours and 15 minutes of the day?
00:41:03.060
The first step is structuring the lifestyle that can help you then support a meditative
00:41:13.560
So, the idea is then to look at your life and go, okay, if I want to be good at meditation,
00:41:20.500
So, I need to practice concentration throughout the day.
00:41:23.340
How do I integrate this practice of concentration in everything I do?
00:41:26.640
And we define concentration as doing one thing at a time, one simplified definition.
00:41:30.920
So, if I'm speaking with my spouse, I give my spouse my undivided attention.
00:41:35.180
If I'm speaking with my daughter, I give my daughter my undivided attention.
00:41:39.440
I give my team my undivided attention, my clients.
00:41:44.340
So, if I'm doing this seven, eight, nine hours a day doing one thing at a time, then
00:41:49.360
when I actually sit down to meditate for 15 minutes, I've been trained at doing one thing
00:41:55.740
So, now when I sit down to meditate, my awareness has been trained to just stay in one place.
00:42:02.740
But if I'm distracted all day long, if my awareness is jumping from one thing to another
00:42:07.440
every 60 seconds throughout the whole day, then when I sit down for 15 minutes by myself,
00:42:12.660
what do you think my awareness is doing in my mind?
00:42:22.940
My awareness practice is something different for eight hours, and then when I sit down with
00:42:26.880
myself, all of a sudden, I can be hyper-focused.
00:42:32.260
So, what you're saying is that if you want to practice concentration, you just have to
00:42:37.100
Find opportunities to practice the practice of concentration.
00:42:45.540
And in the book, we go through a very systematic process of identifying what I call the non-negotiable
00:42:53.660
So, for example, if you live with your spouse, with your kids, speaking to them is non-negotiable.
00:43:06.140
And if you talk to your child for half an hour a day or an hour a day or two hours a
00:43:10.420
day, then every time you speak with them, give them your undivided attention.
00:43:15.780
Now, when you do that, you're practicing concentration.
00:43:18.420
And if you speak to your child two hours a day, that's two hours of practicing concentration.
00:43:24.680
Now, Brett, if I practice the piano two hours a day, every day after six months, what would
00:43:32.220
You know, if I practice concentration two hours a day by giving someone my undivided
00:43:38.320
attention every day, then after six months, I'm naturally good at concentration.
00:43:45.180
How is this idea of using your day to practice concentration?
00:43:52.020
Well, when you're washing the dishes, be mindful of washing the dishes.
00:43:58.000
No, because, you know, I, to me, it's really helpful to define words, right?
00:44:04.640
And because then there's clarity what that word actually means.
00:44:07.820
So that in the book, as you know, as you go through the book, I take time to define all
00:44:12.560
And I turn to the dictionary for definition of the words, because who am I to define a word?
00:44:17.880
So when you look at the word mindfulness and how it's defined in Webster's or Oxford or
00:44:24.240
dictionaries, it defines a state of being observant or conscious from a moment-to-moment basis.
00:44:31.940
Mindfulness is a byproduct of a concentration state of mind.
00:44:39.040
You don't practice mindfulness, you practice concentration.
00:44:42.160
And when you can concentrate, then you can be mindful or observant.
00:44:50.540
How can I be mindful of where I'm stepping if I'm not focused on where I'm walking?
00:45:03.980
So you don't tell someone to be mindful of washing the dishes.
00:45:07.480
You tell someone to be focused, keep your awareness on the dishes you're watching.
00:45:13.300
The byproduct of that, that awareness being focused on the dishes is that you become mindful,
00:45:22.080
You start to see where it's dirty, the stains, how to scrub it, clean it, make it better, look nicer.
00:45:36.700
It's the same way, you know, I talk about meditation in the book, right?
00:45:39.540
It's like people say, oh, you know, when I walk my dog at night, that's my meditation.
00:45:48.600
What do you call this that we're doing right now?
00:46:08.620
So you don't go around having conversations with a person at Starbucks and ordering your coffee and say,
00:46:16.400
Podcast is this, a structured conversation that you talked about, that you're interviewing for a very specific reason.
00:46:22.080
So we use words, we use words like meditation, walking my cats in meditation.
00:46:27.640
Then what the heck is sitting down, closing my eyes and breathing?
00:46:29.840
I think a lot of times people don't define words clearly, and because they don't define words clearly, they use it incorrectly, and that causes confusion to the mind.
00:46:51.280
Once they understand the meaning of the word, then it's so much easier to use it.
00:46:57.840
Okay, so if you want to start developing your concentration, find those non-negotiables in your life, things you have to do, and then really bring attention to awareness.
00:47:08.200
Just, I'm going to, all my awareness is going to be on this thing.
00:47:11.280
I'm going to choose to bring my awareness to my conversation with my spouse.
00:47:14.460
I'm going to bring my awareness to washing the dishes.
00:47:19.780
And you have to do it, like, it's like a sport, like you said.
00:47:22.240
It's not just something you can do in 15 minutes.
00:47:26.440
Right, because if you're practicing distraction all day, to counteract that, you're going to have to practice concentration all day, all the time.
00:47:35.540
You know, I can't eat junk food all day and then eat a bowl of salad at night and expect to be healthy.
00:47:45.320
So, the same way, if I'm practicing distraction all day long, then I think, okay, I get up in the morning and do 10 minutes of meditation.
00:47:54.360
Now, that's going to counteract 10 hours of practicing distraction.
00:48:00.040
The day needs to be structured to support that.
00:48:02.420
And every time you're doing a task or speaking with someone and your awareness drifts away, to say you're washing your dishes and your ball of light drifts away and goes to something else, bring it back.
00:48:15.740
At the end of the day, what comes out of all of this is that you start to have profoundly deep experiences with all the people and things that truly matter to you.
00:48:25.380
So, when you sit and talk to your spouse, you can be completely present because your awareness is just anchored in her.
00:48:38.080
You get to experience the emotions, what they're going through, what they're saying to you.
00:48:41.920
So, that becomes really rewarding and that's a great impetus for practicing focus.
00:48:47.460
So, we've been talking about one of the reasons you want to develop focus is so you can have this enriching life that I think most people want.
00:48:53.860
But you also talk about how a focused life can counteract things like anxiety, fear, anger, depression.
00:49:00.440
I know a lot of people are struggling with these things.
00:49:01.840
How does developing a focused life, how can that help with those?
00:49:06.120
It's essentially you could say that my ability to focus is my ability to control where my awareness goes in my mind.
00:49:13.920
That would be like another definition of focus.
00:49:20.400
You know, in the book I share a story that my guru shared with me when he was a kid that he had experienced.
00:49:30.340
It was snowing really heavily and he was worried he was going to miss his favorite radio program.
00:49:37.680
He saw his awareness going, leaving the present moment, sitting in the car, going into the future, creating a situation in his mind where the car got stuck in the snow and they got home late and he missed his radio program.
00:49:51.080
And then his awareness came back to the present and started worrying about this experience he conjured up in his mind.
00:49:58.920
And then at seven years old, he observed all of this happening and then he said to himself, are we stuck in the snow?
00:50:08.120
And then he said to himself, I'm all right right now.
00:50:12.000
And that's a great example, a story that shares what fear and worry is.
00:50:19.840
If you look at all the things you're worried about, all the things you're fearing, there in the future, awareness leaves the present, goes into the future and says,
00:50:28.480
Oh my God, what if I get old and I never find a partner or I never marry and I end up being alone?
00:50:35.500
And awareness comes back to the present and start worrying about that.
00:50:39.920
So if you can control awareness, you can prevent awareness from going into the future in your mind, conjuring up things that haven't happened, and then coming back to the present and worrying about those things.
00:50:52.440
That doesn't mean awareness can't go into the future and think about negative things.
00:50:55.820
It's okay to do that as long as you're coming up with solutions for it.
00:51:00.080
And also as long as you're consciously deciding to do that.
00:51:04.380
So I gave an example in the book, an entrepreneur is creating a restaurant.
00:51:08.200
So he's thinking about how his restaurant is going to look like, and he's seeing seven months from now when it's built on a busy Friday night, there's 150 people in there, everyone's busy eating, chefs, cooks are cooking.
00:51:28.120
Now he brings his awareness back to the present.
00:51:30.200
Now he can worry about that and say like, oh my God, we could have a fire, I could get sued, people could die, I shouldn't build a restaurant, what if the fire spreads to the building upstairs?
00:51:42.500
Or he can say, okay, if a fire breaks out in the kitchen, we need to make sure there's an emergency exit here and here.
00:51:55.700
Maybe they put some, I don't know, fireproof insulation to the thing.
00:52:01.200
Now he's solving for the problem and that's very different than worry, right?
00:52:05.360
But that all comes down to controlling awareness in the mind.
00:52:08.180
Most people allow their awareness to go into the future, create a problem, then bring their awareness back to the present moment and now start worrying about the problem they create in the future.
00:52:16.840
Five minutes later, awareness goes back into the future again to the same problem, thinks more about it, amplifies it some more, comes back to the present and starts worrying about it some more.
00:52:28.200
Repeat this process over and over again, that fear becomes so huge that it becomes crippling in your life.
00:52:35.080
Learn to control awareness in the mind and you learn to overcome fear and worry.
00:52:39.280
Yeah, and I think this can work for anger, depression.
00:52:41.640
I've already been using this, you know, just that understanding that the mind is separate from awareness.
00:52:46.520
Whenever I find myself getting frustrated, I think, well, I'm just in the frustrated part of my brain right now.
00:52:51.740
I can direct my awareness to something more neutral or positive if I want to.
00:52:56.800
My three and a half year old daughter went up to my wife two months ago and said, mom, you need to move your awareness out of the unhappy area of the mind.
00:53:10.340
Because we're not talking here about scientific terms.
00:53:16.180
We're not talking about the prefrontal cortex, the hippocampus or this or that part of the mind, which are things that most of us don't know.
00:53:24.080
We're talking about a ball of light called awareness traveling to different areas of the mind.
00:53:29.560
My awareness went to the unhappy area of the mind.
00:53:31.680
If it went there, then it can come back here or it can go somewhere else.
00:53:37.480
I've taught this to kids and kids just get it so quickly because it's not complicated to see what's happening in your mind.
00:53:46.500
Every time you're in the angry area of the mind or even in the happy area of the mind, you can say to yourself, right?
00:53:53.520
Now, my awareness is in the happy area of the mind.
00:53:57.780
The same way is when my awareness is in the angry area of the mind, I'm going to experience being angry.
00:54:04.040
I'm pure awareness experiencing the state of mind called anger.
00:54:08.600
As easily as I'm here, I can move to another area of the mind.
00:54:12.060
By using my willpower and false powers of concentration, I can move my awareness to a different area of the mind.
00:54:17.640
And once you start to see this happening in your mind and you start to do it with small things, you realize the freedom it gives you.
00:54:25.940
Then it's a matter of practicing it over and over again so you become better and better at it and are able to apply it to more challenging experiences in life.
00:54:40.900
But when more difficult things happen, crisis in life, bigger crippling challenges, that's when the true test of how well you control awareness in the mind is displayed.
00:54:51.880
And I also want to point out one thing, Ren, if I may.
00:54:54.620
Choosing to move awareness in the mind is not ignoring the problem in the mind.
00:55:00.600
It's giving you the choice of when you want to choose to engage with that problem.
00:55:08.340
Or, you know, choosing when, but, like, also how you're going to engage.
00:55:14.060
I think I can see some people taking this idea, well, whatever you're aware, that's your reality.
00:55:18.880
Well, yeah, to an extent, but it's not going to make the problem go away if you just ignore, if you don't even direct your awareness to the problem at all.
00:55:26.580
What you're saying is you can direct your attention at the problem, but you get to decide how or when you direct that awareness.
00:55:37.200
If I'm at work and I have a problem with my spouse, now, I don't want my awareness to be engaging with the argument I had with my spouse this morning, so I keep my awareness in the work area of the mind and focus on work.
00:55:51.120
And then maybe I have an hour lunch break and I go to the park, I go sit down for half an hour, and I move my awareness to my spouse area of the mind and reflect on what the problem is.
00:56:04.160
So I can choose when, where, how I'm engaging with my problem.
00:56:09.520
It doesn't ignore the, it's not ignoring the problem, it's giving you the conscious choice of when you want to engage, how you want to engage, and where you want to engage with the problem.
00:56:21.360
Well, Don and Pani, this has been a great conversation.
00:56:23.240
Where can people go to learn more about the book and your work?
00:56:28.200
If you go to dondapani.org, you'll find all the links there.
00:56:32.320
The book is available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, online, and also in bookstores.
00:56:37.700
And yeah, and my website has more information about my weekly newsletter that I send out or email that I send out and the courses I have online, my app, and things like that.
00:56:50.840
No, thank you so much for having me, and thank you for all these so wonderful, thoughtful questions.
00:56:55.660
And I so greatly appreciate that you're starting to see how awareness and the mind works, and you've been able to apply that in your life as well.
00:57:13.740
He's the author of the book, The Power of Unwavering Focus.
00:57:16.420
It's available on Amazon.com and bookstores everywhere.
00:57:18.420
You can find more information about his work at his website, dandapani.org.
00:57:22.100
Also, check out our show notes at aom.is slash focus, where you can find links to resources, where you can delve deeper into this topic.
00:57:34.880
Well, that wraps up another edition of the AOM Podcast.
00:57:37.540
Make sure to check out our website at artofmanliness.com, where you find our podcast archives, as well as thousands of articles written over the years about pretty much anything you think of.
00:57:44.280
And if you'd like to enjoy ad-free episodes of the AOM Podcast, you can do so on Stitcher Premium.
00:57:48.100
Head over to stitcherpremium.com, sign up, use code manliness at checkout for a free month trial.
00:57:52.080
Once you're signed up, download the Stitcher app on Android and iOS, and you can start enjoying ad-free episodes of the AOM Podcast.
00:57:57.060
And if you haven't done so already, I'd appreciate if you take one minute to give us a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
00:58:03.280
Please consider sharing the show with a friend or family member.
00:58:05.400
You would think we could get something out of it.
00:58:06.800
As always, thank you for the continued support.
00:58:09.820
Remind you not to listen to the AOM Podcast, but put what you've heard into action.