Every top athlete and professional understands the benefits of getting their thoughts under control.  World Champions often describe attention control as one fo the most important skills for a world class athlete.

Attention control is defined by the American sport psychologist, Dr. Robert Singer as “an individual’s readiness in a particular situation to selectively perceive and process information”.  When you display a high level of attention control, it is the same as having excellent powers of concentration.

The state of your attention reflects your brain activity.  If your attention is scattered and fragmented on many things and places, then your brain activity is also scattered and fragmented throughout your brain.  We all know the feeling of forgetting what you were saying or not knowing where you left your keys.  If you sustain your attention for long enough on one thing, your brain will reflect that, shutting down brain areas not related to the object of your focus and activating the brain areas that are related to it.

Sustained concentrated focus on one single object collects your attention in that one place, much like a magnifying glass collects the suns rays in one powerful point.  If it’s a visual object you are focusing your attention on the visual part of your brain will become the most active.  If you sustain your attention long enough on that one signal, other brain areas will get less and less active and your visual part will get more and more active.    Take it all the way and you will collect all of your conscious brain activity in one part of your brain, in this example your visual part.  At that point you don’t hear, feel, smell or taste anything.  Your other senses are certainly taking everything in as usual and your brain is recording it, but you won’t be conscious of any of it at that moment.

When improving concentration beyond a certain point, you gain enough control over your attention to be able to do almost whatever you want with your attention and your mind.  Whatever that goal is that you choose to focus on, when you selectively focus on what’s important to you, it can separate success from the ones who only thought about it from time to time.  Maximizing your ability to attend to the important details will lead you to better performance.  What do you choose to pay attention to today?  Control your attention and you control your brain.

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