After practicing nonjudgemental awareness of our thoughts, feelings and reactions we have seen them come and go. We work to not ascribe our own judgement to them and learn to separate fact from feeling. While this helps to prevent ruminating or projecting, it doesn’t focus us on a task or a moment.
In order to initiate one-mind we want to affix ourself to a moment. To be present and focused. We do one thing at a time. The desire of the mind to wander is natural. We must train it to come back to the task at hand and resist the urge to do multiple things “at once”.
As we see the mind attempt to drift, we bring it back through practice. When we sit down to eat, we eat. We put away work or the news and turn off television. We give our full attention to the meal in front of us, embracing it with all our senses.
We can use one-mind in any and all our affairs. Be it a walk or a workout, even if we sit in worry we can be in presence of that worry and not wander. Focus on this very moment in time.
Multitasking doesn’t work. From a cognitive standpoint we show that there is decreased activity in the learning aspects of the brain, we are unable to do more than one thing so we have a tendency to switch between these tasks, never fully engaging. One-mind is that focus on one task or feeling or action. It is presence.
Work to develop the focus and presence of one-mind. Swaddle yourself in the moment in front of you and truly experience it. Watch time slow and feel the anxiety of the future fall away. The increase in productivity is just a welcome side effect.
