What's Concentration? What's Intelligence? How to concentrate well?

Almost all teachers, parents just keep blabbering 'CONCENTRATE!!' or 'FOCUS! FOCUS!' But they never bothered to tell you- What's concentration? In other words, as it is the ability to record in your mind the process or thing or a phenomenon in form of images which is nothing but storing in your short-term memory.

Chemically speaking, concentration has an altogether meaning, the abundance of a constituent divided by the total volume of a mixture. We have synonyms to chemical concentration like 'strength', 'strong'.

"Your ability to concentrate well is a strength too."

Mental concentration is similar to chemical concentration, which indicates your focus and the ability to read, listen anything objectively. In other words as it is the ability to record in your mind the process or thing or a phenomenon in form of images which is nothing but storing in your short-term memory.

We need focus or concentration for better memory, that's why we see these people yelling at us. Mind basically records and remembers in the form of images, the accuracy of which is highest when the person can focus. We may hear people saying "Oh! Wow! he has PHOTOGRAPHIC MEMORY!" This is not unusual; this is something that everybody has. Maybe they are referring it to better, clear photographic memory. We'll learn about improving our photographic memory in a separate post & video.

Let's understand what's CONCENTRATION of mind:

Concentration is a state of absolute focus, where you are unperturbed by any external or internal disturbances or conflicts and focused on the relevant event.

Concentration of mind is also the state where you are able to carefully observe, listen or watch one thing or an event, by being mindfully detached from external or internal conflicts, and non-judgmental towards everything.

You can learn about mindful detachment & non-judgementalism here: https://www.getinspiredspiritually.com/post/those-who-judge-will-never

One should remember, concentration is subjective to each person & topics. It depends on your area of interest as well. As every human is unique, so are his interests, so is with his concentration to different subjects.

I have seen many parents complaining their kid is having concentration problem or he's/ she's slow in learning. This is not a big problem at all, why? Concentration is something that's volatile, each person's concentration varies depending upon the topic(interest), place, time and personal bias & prejudices associated with the individual. That's why we see some students say they've more concentration during night or early morning, so on. It's also partly due to their conditioning and beliefs that makes them focused during certain time intervals.

It's wrong to judge a person, based on intellect or concentration or whatever.

"The measure of intelligence is the ability to change."

- Albert Einstein

To be frank, everybody possesses equal ability to concentrate and learn, but every one's unique so are their interests. We all are neutral as humans.

For ex - A kid who's considered to be academically poor, his parents & teachers say he doesn't focus on studies. This kid is highly interested in sports esp. cricket, if you ask him the highest score of Tendulkar or Bradman, he remembers all these, he keenly listens to the sports news, to his coach's instructions on how to play cricket.

How come this is possible? The same person who is considered to be slow in learning or lacks intelligence is good in cricket, he remembers everything about cricket. This factor drills down to an individual's unique interests and also CURIOSITY.

Einstein said:

“The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing. One cannot help but be in awe when one contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries to comprehend only a little of this mystery every day.”

The same Einstein who's considered to be genius says:

"I'm no more intelligent than the next guy. I'm just more curious."

Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid. – Albert Einstein

9 types of intelligence:

Each person has these 9 types of intelligence at different levels, so everyone's intelligent.

Most of the IQ tests fail to accurately measure a person's intelligence. So, all these who claim to have IQ above 140 with least standard deviations are simply just feeding their superficial ego, claiming that they are geniuses or intellectuals. Why?

Intelligence is based on your consciousness, consciousness is heavily dependent on your focus; as focus itself is volatile & subjective, IQ tests fail to accurately measure your IQ. IQ tests are nothing but statistics.

“There are three types of lies -- lies, damn lies, and statistics.”

― Benjamin Disraeli

To improve concentration, practice mindfulness by closing eyes. Learn mindfulness meditation from a learned Guru or visit our YouTube channel where we are going to make a video on meditation. Already we've made a video on prerequisite for meditation.

As of now, you can practice this direct technique:

Go to some park or any open space, observe what's around is happening. It can be people or animals, or wind rustling or any such sound or activity. Try observing it as it's, while observing you get a lot of thoughts, let it come! Don't cling on to those anything. Just observe them! Be completely non-judgmental and mindfully detached from these thoughts or images or anything. See if there's any change in the thing that's under observation.

To conclude each person is a genius in some or the other or in some way, you need to find it and conjure it up to become successful. Don't believe in this unrealistic judgement that you have some concentration problem! If you really want it, you get all the concentration to do things that you really want to do.

In the coming article, we'll learn about different memories & how to improve memory through some (direct) techniques.

For more like this, stay tuned! Please like, share & subscribe to our blog.

Hope this inspires you!!

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