It’s nothing really new for adults to complain about the attention spans of children–especially rambunctious young ones–but in recent years, many people have begun expressing concerns about the attention spans of adults as well. Have we all been trained to distraction by smart phones and social media? Perhaps. If so, how might we go about addressing or managing these compulsions and behaviors? Sadhguru responds to a seeker who asks if attention deficiency is a disorder, and if there is any way to addressing it.
Sadhguru: “You have attention deficiency, but I had another kind of problem. I had too much attention. If I pay attention to this one, I can’t shift my attention to this. People thought it is a problem. You know, my father has academically excelled all his life. But unfortunately, he produces a son like me, who has no concern about academics of any kind. So he thinks he’s a very strict disciplinarian and every day in the evening, we must all study. I pick up some textbooks because it doesn’t matter for me what. I just open some page. And I find some small speck on the page. A tiny speck, some flaw in the paper. I just look at that. It grabs my attention in such a way. Two hours- I’m just looking at the speck because there is so much in a bloody speck. People have spent their lifetimes looking at a microscopic molecule or an atom, isn’t it? Speck is much bigger than an atom. So, people thought I was going crazy because I had too much attention.”
“Don’t go on labeling yourself this and that. Is there some standard, how much attention you must have? There is no such standard anywhere, isn’t it? You’re making it up. The problem is right from childhood. Children are labeled and they are supposed to carry this label for the rest of their life. What level of attention you have at five? What level you may have at six, at seven, at eight, at fifteen or twenty? It can be entirely different. Haven’t many of you evolved through this process? Huh? Haven’t you? First day school, you couldn’t figure out a damn thing. Maybe later on you did well.”
“So you’re at a certain age. Now you get drawn to somebody. You don’t have to concentrate. They will invade. So it is only a level of interest. If you have a deep level of interest in something, attention will come. If you become profoundly drawn to something, why will you not have attention? Attention will come. Do I have as much attention as somebody else? Maybe not. Find something that you are passionate about. Attention will come. I’m taking that example of a girl because there is a chemical support. There is a chemistry working for your attention. Other things need a little more effort to pay attention to. You need to develop some intensity of passion for something that is important. What you think is important. Whatever your state of mind has been, from your childhood to now, need not be the state of your mind for the rest of your life.”
“The easiest thing to do is change the framework of our mind, isn’t it? To change the framework of our body is very difficult. To change the framework of our mind is the easiest thing to do, because that is the most flexible thing but that you have made like a concrete block.”
“You must keep this as flexible as possible, isn’t it? You can do many more things only if you keep it completely fluid and flexible. Otherwise, a concrete block is useful only for certain things. It doesn’t matter what labels they put on you, if you wish, you can change the structure of your mind.”
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