There is a popular saying which I’m sure most of us have heard by now, that ‘the brain is a GOOD SERVANT, but a TERRIBLE MASTER’, an adage that I’ve laughed off without much thought till date. After all, we are our brains, aren’t we? But I’ve finally begun to appreciate the symbolism behind this axiom, which is actually trying to tell us to avoid cursory irrational thoughts, by which the mind can be plagued from time to time. Remember that old drill where you are not supposed to think about the 'pink elephant'? I bet most of you just did exactly that!
I have beared upon some of the theoretical aspects of this topic in few of my previous articles including ‘Abstraction’, ‘A Different Perspective’ and quite recently in ‘Emotional Equilibrium’. But the question now is how it can be practically inculcated. Although some might talk about meditation as a possible solution, let us be honest that in today’s ultra-busy lifestyle, hours of daily meditation might not always be feasible... So I decided to device a thought experiment!
Imagine you are at your office desk working on an excel sheet, and your mind begins to wander when you want it to focus. Just choose a cell towards the centre of the very file you are working on, highlight it in your favourite colour, and simply concentrate on that highlighted cell with your entire mind. I chose the colour green as it represents nature, and brings with it a certain sense of peace for me. If you still get senseless ephemeral thoughts during this exercise, then imagine a similar ‘green screen’ in your mind as well, and gradually try to increase the duration of your focus. In my case, my first few distractions were at intervals of about 1 minute each and then when I rivetted my eyes harder, the interval begun to increase and gradually went up to almost 5 minutes at a stretch, which I’d say is decent progress.
The objective here is to reach the maximum ceiling of mental perfection allowed by our singular personal circumstances, which in my case couldn't get more nonpareil. After all, each one of us is running an empire in our own right and can’t always afford to think of the past battles it took to get our kingdom established, even if those memories are as winningly fond as mine, or anything else that might creep up once in a while, within the extremities of one's mind.
