Cultivate Attention
Excerpts from
Thought-Culture
Practical Mental Training
William Walker Atkinson
The first role in the cultivation of the attention
is that the student shall carefully acquire the habit of thinking of or doing
but one thing at a time.
And as Granville says: "A frequent cause of
failure in the faculty of attention is striving to think of more than one thing
at a time." Kay also well says: "If we would possess the power of
attention in a high degree, we must cultivate the habit of attending to what is
directly before the mind, to the exclusion of all else. All distracting
thoughts and feelings that tend to withdraw the mind from what is immediately
before it are therefore to be carefully avoided. This is a matter of great
importance, and of no little difficulty. Frequently the mind, in place of being
concentrated on what is immediately before it, is thinking of something
else—something, it may be, that went before or that may come after, or
something quite alien to the subject."
Principles of Application of Attention
I. The attention attaches more readily to
interesting than to uninteresting things. II. The attention will decline in
strength unless there is a variation in the stimulus, either by a change of
object or the developing of some new attribute in the object.
III. The attention, when tired by continuous
direction toward some unvarying object, may be revived by directing it toward
some new object or in allowing it to be attracted and held by some passing
object.
IV. The attention manifests in a two-fold activity;
viz. (1) the concentration upon some one object of thought; and (2) the
shutting out of outside objects. Thus, it has its positive and negative sides.
Thus, when a man wishes to give his undivided attention to one speaker in a
crowd of speaking individuals, he acts positively in focusing his consciousness
upon the selected individual, and negatively by refusing to listen to the
others...
VI. The degree of attention possessed by an
individual is an indication of his power of using his intellect.
The attention may be cultivated, just as may be the
various faculties of the mind, by the two-fold method of Exercise and
Nourishment; that is, by using and employing it actively and by furnishing it
with the proper materials with which to feed its strength. The way to exercise
the attention is to use it frequently in every-day life. If you are listening
to a man speaking, endeavor to give to him your undivided attention, and, at
the same time, to shut out from your consciousness every other object. In working,
we should endeavor to use the attention by concentrating our interest upon the
particular task before us to the exclusion of all else. In reading, we should
endeavor to hold our minds closely to the text instead of hastily glancing over
the page as so many do.
A half-hour's study in this way is worth more than
hours of careless reading so far as the cultivation of the attention is
concerned.
Carpenter says: "The more completely the
mental energy can be brought into one focus and all distracting objects
excluded, the more powerful will be the volitional effort."
Many authorities hold that the attention may be
best applied and exercised by analyzing an object mentally, and then
considering its parts one by one by a process of abstraction.
We can only obtain a full and complete knowledge of
an object by analyzing it and concentrating the attention upon its different
parts, one by one ."
To develop and cultivate the power of attention and
concentration, (1) Analyze; (2) Analyze; and (3) Analyze. Analyze everything
and everybody with which or whom you come in contact. There is no better or
shorter rule.
Excerpts from
Thought-Culture; Or, Practical Mental Training
William Walker Atkinson
