How to Concentrate | Dandapani & Jim Kwik

How do you concentrate? How do you maintain your focus over time? And this is something I feel like everyone is talking about. We are here in New York City where there are lots of sirens and horns that are blowing outside. And I have an expert here for you to help you with this challenge. If you're suffering from monkey mind, like you're all over the place, this is the conversation for you.

Thank you.

Thanks for being on the show, Dandapani.

Thank you, Jim. Thanks for having me on the show. I really appreciate it.

So a lot of people know your story. You were a monk in a monastery for about 10 years, and your total focus was focus and concentration. And you're doing your mental training, your discipline, honing your willpower. And why, why, why is concentration so important today?

I feel concentration is at the crux of all human success and endeavors. And if you can't concentrate, you can't manifest or create what you want to create in life. Right. And when I grew up, I spent my early childhood in Malaysia and then my teenage life in Australia. And no one ever taught me how to concentrate. Actually, as a child, people would make fun of me because I couldn't concentrate. They would tease me for not being able to concentrate. But it wasn't until I joined the monastery that my guru taught me that concentration is something that you can learn. You need to learn how to do, and then you need to practice to become better at it. So it wasn't until I was in my early 20s that I learned to concentrate, and my life completely changed after that.

And so I think it gives people permission to be kind to themselves if they're not great at concentrating or focusing, especially in the world of distraction we're in, because we've never been taught, like many things in school, They'll teach us math and history and science, but not how to focus.

How does the mind work?

How does the mind work? Yeah, exactly.

They don't, right? So, you know, and exactly. And that should be the reason why you should have empathy and compassion for yourself, right? The question to ask yourself, have you ever been taught to concentrate? And have you been taught how to practice concentration? Because learning concentration is not enough if you don't practice it, right? You only become good at something when you practice it. So learning concentration is not enough. Practicing it throughout the day is what makes you become good at it.

And someone beating you up on it, or you beating yourself up that you can't focus, it's like somebody being mean to you because you can't play the violin if you've never taken a violin lesson.

It's so interesting you say that, because one of the examples I give in my workshops and my talks is I pick on someone in the audience and say, who here does not play the piano? And someone will put their hand up and I go like, okay, Play the piano.

Right.

And they go like— so no, play the piano. It's the same way when adults go to kids and they go, can you just focus for a second?

Right.

You see parents yelling at their kids, right? Raising their voice. Can you just concentrate for a second? But you're telling your child to focus when you've never taught them how to focus. You're asking someone to play the violin when they've never played the violin before. So first step is teaching them how to do it. Second step is helping them to practice it. The more they practice it, the better they do. become at it. And people don't realize this. And it's so interesting, this is prevalent all across every level of society, even in big corporations and stuff. You know, I work with a lot of successful entrepreneurs and they'll tell their team, hey guys, we've got this big project that's due in 2 weeks, we need everybody to focus.

Right.

And I go like, what is the biggest mistake with that statement? He said, you never taught your team how to focus and you didn't teach them how to practice concentration. You just told your team that you need to focus because there's a big project due. And same with athletes, right? The coach will say to the soccer team or the football team, the basketball team, guys, we really need to go out there and we need to be so focused in the last quarter.

Right.

Okay. Have you taught them how to concentrate? No. Do they practice concentration? No.

Right. So they do the physical activities, but not the—

Yeah. No training in the mind on how to concentrate. So how can you actually concentrate When you never taught the people how to concentrate.

We know that concentration is the source, it's a superpower to get anything done nowadays, especially now with technology. And technology is not a bad thing. Technology is wonderful. It allows us to be connected, allows us to learn, be inspired, be entertained.

I love that you have that perspective because people ask me all the time, people come up to me and they hold their cell phones at me and they go, these things are ruining our lives.

Right.

And my response always is, absolutely not.

Right.

What's ruining your life is your inability to exercise discipline around the use of your technology. That's what's ruining your life.

Because the technology ends up using you.

Exactly. The technology is beautiful. I can call my mother in Australia and see her in literally 5 seconds.

It's amazing.

How amazing is that? Right? So it's your inability to exercise discipline around the use of technology is what's ruining your life. The technology itself is not bad, right?

And it's having an effect on— we're letting it affect our focus and our concentration.

Exactly.

Because every like, share, comment, cat video, this dopamine flood, and we're just— we have this monkey mind.

Yes.

So what do, um, what do we do about this? How do we train our concentration? Is it like a muscle?

It is like a muscle, kind of. The first step is defining what concentration is, right? I always like to start by defining so we put everybody on the same page, at least people who are listening to me. So I define concentration as the ability to keep my awareness on one thing for an extended period of time. So if I can keep my awareness on you for an extended period of time, I'm concentrating. If my awareness drifts from you to something outside, to the sound I hear, then I'm being distracted. So every time my awareness drifts away, I bring my awareness back. I use my willpower, my mental muscle to bring my awareness back, hold my awareness on you. And my ability to do that is my ability to concentrate. So now that we've defined what concentration is, then the next step is how do you practice concentration? And one simple task I tell people is to practice doing one thing at a time. Keep your awareness on one thing at a time. So if I'm having a conversation with Jim, then I give Jim my undivided attention. I keep my awareness on him. If it drifts away— Jim's talking to me and I'm listening to what he's saying, and then my awareness starts to drift away and I'm thinking— I'm thinking about something else. I'm gonna have for lunch today. You should go try that restaurant that's on the side of town. Looks— oh, and then I'd be like, what did you say, Jim?

Right?

So I bring my awareness back to you. It drifts away again, I bring it back. It drifts away again, I bring it back. And I repeat this practice 1,000 times, 100,000 times, a million times, till I train my awareness to stay on one thing for an extended period of time.

And it doesn't take as much effort when you're trained, when you've— after you've trained.

No, it doesn't. Now I can concentrate really well. There's not a lot of things I can do very well, but I can concentrate well.

And I noticed that because when we met, we met at a conference with thousands of people that we were both speaking at.

Yeah.

And when you're talking to somebody, you're very present with them.

Yeah.

And that also, for our Accelerated Learners out there, that helps with your memory. You're more likely to remember that conversation or that person's name if you're Exactly. Or if you're concentrating when you, when you read something, a lot of people, they can't sustain their focus and their mind is somewhere else and they read something and then forget what they just read. Yeah, because it never registered.

I always ask the question, what's the greatest impetus for learning to live, for leading a life, a focused life, right? What's the greatest impetus for leading a focused life? And for me, it's death, right? Death is the greatest impetus. We have one life. Even though I subscribe to a philosophy of reincarnation, I believe that I have one life as me. Right.

And it's finite.

And it's finite, right? I don't believe life is short. I believe it's finite, right? If I have 40 years to live, that's a long time. It's not short, right? But I want to know, on my deathbed, I want to be able to look back on my life and go, that was amazing. And the only way I can say that is if I could be present in all the experiences I've had throughout my life. How am I present in all those experiences? If I'm concentrated. People talk about being present, being in the moment, being in the now. And you see all these cute little Instagram quotes floating around, be in the moment, be in the now. No one tells you how the hell to do it, right? You can't be in the moment if you can't concentrate. The ability to be present stems from being able to be concentrated.

And put your awareness on something or someone for a certain period of time.

Exactly.

Yeah.

So how can I be in the moment here with you if I can't concentrate? So everybody talks about the end product, which is be in the moment, be present, be mindful. Mindfulness, right? Being sold like, you know, bottled water everywhere. But they don't teach you concentration. You can't be mindful unless you concentrate. Mindfulness is a byproduct of concentration, but no one's teaching concentration.

So let's go into awareness. How would you define awareness if concentration is Sustained awareness over a period of time. What's a— do you have like a metaphor for it?

Yeah, I would say in understanding the mind, the simple way I teach people this is there's 2 things you need to understand. You need to understand there's the mind and there's awareness. So let's define both of them. I define the mind as a vast space with many different areas within it. One area of the mind is anger, one area is jealousy, one area is happiness, food, sex, photography, so many different areas of the mind. And then you have awareness. I define awareness as a glowing ball of light. So imagine an orb or ball of light that can float around. So your mind doesn't move, but it's your awareness that travels to different areas of the mind. So you hear people say all the time, I have a monkey mind, or my mind travels a lot, or my mind's all over the place. Technically, I believe, from my experience, that's false. The mind doesn't move, but it's awareness that's traveling within the mind. So your awareness can go to the happy area of the mind, it can go to the sad area of the mind, it can go to the scientific area of the mind. Your goal is to control your awareness, that ball of light, and determine where it goes in your mind. And your ability to keep that awareness in one area of the mind for an extended period of time is your ability to concentrate. So if you're reflecting on something, you're meditating on something, it's your awareness. It's in one area of the mind and you're holding it there long enough to actually gain knowledge from it. I know you talk about reading just now, right? Someone opens a book, is reading, their ability to keep their awareness on that page long enough.

That ball of light.

That ball of light on that page Right. Allows them to gain information from the book. But if they can't keep it there long enough, they don't gain anything. Right. So understanding awareness and the mind is the precursor to learning how to concentrate. Perfect. Yeah.

So then what would you recommend that our community do? What are one or two things people could do to improve their concentration and focus?

I would say the simplest thing you can do is practice doing one thing at a time. Which is very difficult for people. So if you're speaking with someone, give that person your undivided attention. Keep your awareness on them. So imagine your awareness again as a ball of light. I'm speaking to Jim. My awareness starts to drift away, I bring it back. It drifts away, I bring it back. So I use Jim as an opportunity to practice concentrating. So if you have a spouse or a partner or a loved one that you see every day or speak to every day, Then use that person as an opportunity to practice concentration. Every time you speak with your spouse, could be 2 hours throughout the day, give your spouse your undivided attention. Now you have 2 hours of practice in concentration. So after a month, what would you become good at? So imagine if you're practicing tennis for 2 hours each day. Yeah, after a month you'd be better at tennis.

And the opposite is also true. If somebody's spending 16, 17 hours a day in distracting.

Exactly.

They're going to be really good at being distracted.

I always tell people the reason they're so good at distracting— at distraction is because that's what they practice all day long. You become good at whatever it is you practice, right? The mind has no ability to know the difference between what's right and what's wrong. If the mind knew, I'd be perfect. It would tell me not to eat the bowl of fries, to tell me to eat a salad, to exercise so much a day. how much water to drink, how much to sleep. My mind doesn't know, right? It relies on me to tell it what's important, and then it can tell me then what's important. And because of that, people practice distraction 10 hours a day, 14 hours a day, 15 hours a day. And like you said, after 6 months, they're an expert at distraction. So imagine if you've been doing it for 20 years.

Right.

And you know, you've talked before in one of our other conversations we've had You've talked about self-compassion and having empathy, and I think it's really important to bring that topic into this as well. People who struggle with concentration and want to learn how to concentrate, they should have tremendous empathy and self-compassion for themselves. Because if you're 40 years old or 50 years old and you've never been taught how to concentrate and you've been practicing distraction for the last 35 years and now you want to start, it's going to be a struggle.

Yeah, right.

So you have to have patience. You have to have empathy and compassion for yourself. And it might take you a few months, a few years before you can get there. But look forward. If you're 50 years old and you can live to 90, you have 40 years of living a concentrated, focused life where you can truly enjoy all the experiences in your life. And it's well worth the effort.

And that's the thing that I'm not saying it's necessarily that easy, but it's worth it.

It's worth it, right?

It's that simple, but it's also that difficult. Yeah. But when you're doing it, it's not that we ever get to a place where we have complete concentration, right? Your mind goes places still, right? But I feel like this is amazing mental training and it's preparation. So when you do things like you're with your partner or you're meditating, you've prepared for that.

Exactly.

The rest of the day.

Exactly. And, you know, there's a wonderful saying my guru used to say is that the efforts are far— the rewards are far greater than the efforts put into it.

Yeah.

And that's something to keep in mind, right? So that if you think about the years and decades to come where you can truly enjoy all the experiences you've creating for yourself, the holidays, the time with friends or loved ones, whatever it is you're designing for your life, you can truly experience them once you learn to concentrate. So it's well worth learning how to do.

Amazing.

Yeah.

Dandapani, how do people stay in touch with you and go deeper with you?

My website's always a great place to start, dandapani.org. I also have an app that you can find on the Apple Store and the Play Store. You can download, search for Dandapani to help you with your concentration. Yeah, I have actually a 10- And I've actually taken a very different approach. It's 10 chapters and they're drip-fed every 5 days. And the only way someone can get from chapter 1 to chapter 2 is if they watch all the videos and answer all the quizzes. And if you don't get through chapter 1, you can't get to chapter 2 because I truly want people to learn.

And you're doing what you're saying. You want people to complete things.

Exactly.

Yes. Because that helps with their concentration. What would your challenge be for everybody who's watching when it comes to What's their concentration challenge?

I would say pick one thing, right? Pick one person or one thing in your life that you repeatedly do throughout the day. So if you have a loved one, a spouse that you see every day, and if you don't have a partner, then maybe pick one thing that you do throughout the day. Maybe you go to the gym every day or you do yoga every day for half an hour. Pick that one thing and use that one thing as an opportunity to practice concentration and see how well you do at it. Right. The rest of the day, go ahead and be a squirrel. Pick one thing and start building. It's a muscle, right? It's a mental muscle, and you want to start developing it bit by bit, right? And that's really the key.

Yeah. And concentration is one of the keys to success and joy and fulfillment. You can't have any kind of— if you think about somebody who has no concentration and picture that person in your mind, you have a certain image, right? And so it's not something you ever get perfect, and it's not something you have. something that you do to completion. So I challenge everybody to take a screenshot of this video, this episode, tag Dandapani, tag myself so we see it, and put what you're gonna challenge yourself, your concentration challenge. What's the one activity or, or task that you're gonna put your complete focus and attention to this week until you're complete?

So look forward to reading about that.

Absolutely. And I always repost some of our favorites. And so Don DePani, thanks for being on the show.

Thank you very much, Jim.