The art of mindfulness, and attention span issues

[mousme]

I have come lately to the conclusion that I suck at mindfulness. I'm not sure how people manage it at all, to be honest

Comments

[elanya]

How long have you been having these kinds of concentration issues for?

I mean, there is no guarantee that it is associated with age, so there may be something you can do to improve things!

Are there things that you have an easier time focusing on or remembering?

I mean, there is a legitimate argument to be made that sitting through a full day of computer training will tax anyone's ability to focus by the end of the day, too. I don't mean to minimize your problems, but there are other factors to consider as well in this particular situation.

Also, honestly, feel free to tell me to shut up with things if I am being the opposite of helpful. I don't want to make you feel worse.

[kiwano]

Experienced practitioners of mindfulness (or whatever else you want to call it), speak of it being effortless. You're not meant to think about it, just to be aware of what you're doing and the consequences of your actions, and to be aware of your feelings.These experienced practitioners are either liars, had better teachers than you, or have forgotten how difficult their practices were at the beginning. Any meditative practice is difficult to do well. That said, it's not that difficult to do poorly, and people seem to get better almost automatically if they keep at it. The difficult part is keeping at it in the apparent absence of any sort of progress to reinforce the behaviour. I remember hearing a story once about someone who was visiting a buddhist monastery, and saw a group meditation exercise where the monk running the exercise was ringing a bell every 5 seconds. He asked the monk about how hard it must be to maintain focus with the bell reinging so often, and the monk responded that the bell is a reminder to return to the