Dear Wandering Friend,

There are times in your life when everything clicks. When your skills match your challenges. When you feel most fully alive. This is what experts call the flow state. It’s a zone of optimal learning, of calm intensity, of nearly effortless mastery in all your endeavors.

You’ve had these magic moments in your own life. You’ve enjoyed the professional and financial benefits and experienced the personal fulfillment they bring.

But, if you’re like most people, these flow states – these productive periods of focused concentration – come to you less frequently than you’d like. If only you could learn to create them on a consistent basis, you know that great satisfaction and business success would be yours.

The Focused Mind State: Maximizing Your Potential through the Power of Concentration is your guide to utilizing this state of perfect concentration, and getting into a peak performance state whenever you need it.

With a rich selection of proven effective methods, authors Joel and Michelle Levey teach you to achieve a higher degree of confidence and to attain freedom from anxiety and fear. They integrate the best of modern scientific research with the traditional wisdom that’s been preserved and used in various cultures for thousands of years.

Learn to live your life “on purpose” and to focus the energy of your sometimes wandering mind. Awaken a deeper sense of wonder, joy and delight that can be brought to everything you do. Enhance the essential quality of your life, your work and your relationships.

Let the Leveys teach you to:

• Free yourself from mental dullness or agitation.
• Develop the Power of Mindfulness while maintaining a clear recognition of what you are paying attention to in the moment
• Renew your commitment to your goals and priorities
• Manage the outer demands of your environment and the inner elements of high stress and emotion
• Acquire a greater flexibility of attention that allows you to deal with more and greater challenges.

Sessions and topics included:

Session 1: Focus, Flow, and Flexibility: An Introduction to the Focused Mind State

• What is the focused mind state?
• The key to the focused mind state – dynamic and fluid concentration.
• The three essential features of the focused mind state.
• A simple method for developing your flexibility of attention during your working day.
• Applications of the focused mind state.
• Three strategies to get the most from this course.

Session 2: The Mastery of Attention

• The difference between light bulbs and laser beams.
• Gaining a better understanding of the mind-body.
• Three guidelines for using questions to focus your attention.
• Some of the forces that focus and direct your attention.
• The four factors present when concentration is functioning.
• How to use labeling to build the power of mindfulness.
• Understanding the dynamics of mindfulness.

Session 3: Understanding the Nature and Potential of Your Mind

• A shot history of the study of the mind.
• Three major research trends.
• The importance of recognizing when you’re tense.
• What happens as your learn to quiet and focus your mind.
• Three strategies to increase the performance level of the people around you.
• Another method you can use to strengthen your concentration.

Session 4: Personal Energy Management

• Exploring the warrior mentality to cover obstacles.
• Understanding the mechanics of how concentration becomes impaired, 6 steps.
• Why you aren’t fully focused all the time.
• Strategies to help you create an outer and inner environment that conductive to optimal concentration.

Session 5: Mastering Stress to Maximize Concentration

• Homeostasis (self-regulation): the primary principle in a living system.
• Clearing the way for concentration by learning how to release tension.
• How to dissipate stress.
• A few simple relaxation strategies.
• Transforming distractions into aids for your concentration, 3 principles.
• Guidelines for creating your own focus-training sessions.

Session 6: Finding the Flow in Daily Life and Work

• Three ways to learn about flow.
• Catching the wave: making the notion of flow real for you.
• An overview of the research on flow.
• Applying the knowledge about flow to your daily life and work.
• How to get proactive and intentional about living in the flow.

Session 7: Dynamic Balance

• The different dynamic dimensions of the focus, flow, and flexibility of your attention.
• The Energy Arousal Continuum: a teeter-totter.
• What to do when you feel our mental clarity fading.
• Exercises that help restore stability and calm to a restless wandering mind.

Session 8: Control Follows Awareness

• What does it mean to be mindful?
• Bringing the mind into focus.
• How to make things real.
• Using breathing to return to mindfulness.
• How to be mindful of the body.
• Practicing the mindfulness of seeing.
• Mindfulness of mental functions.
• Mindfulness of thinking.
• Liking and disliking/judging and accepting.
• Mindfulness of intention.
• Global mindfulness.

Session 9: Mindfulness: The Key to Breakthrough Thinking

• Applying mindfulness to the art of high-performance, breakthrough thinking.
• The keys to mindful/breakthrough thinking: five guidelines.
• Classical themes for breakthrough thinking.
• The Encampment and the power of living kindness.
• Four primary skills to breakthrough thinking.
• Using breakthrough thinking in you daily life.

Session 10: Single Pointed Concentration

• What is single point concentration?
• Investing attention and energy in the training of single-pointed concentration: four strategies.
• Learning to sit like a mountain.
• Anapona: using this yogic technique to build single-pointed concentration.
• Several ways to practice single-pointed concentration utilizing visual and mental images.
• Five important things to remember while developing single-pointed concentration.

Session 11: The Power of Panoramic Attention

• The panoramic focus of attention: six steps to open the dimensions of the focused mind state.
• Objectless imagery: applying “Open Focus Training” to your life.
• Three realizations on the workings of the mind.

Session 12: The Focused Mind State in Action

• Applying what you’ve learned to the workplace
• How to apply the focused mind state on a large scale.
• Applying it to your personal achievements.
• Three challenges to training for extra-ordinary performance.
• How to make any activity more interesting and satisfying with correct concentration.

Bonus Sessions-

• The Daily Concentration Booster - strong>An exercise for gaining quick access to the focused mind state whenever you need it. (Used with permission for Bryan Brewer, Earth View Inc.)
• The Nine-Part Breath Exercise - strong>An exercise for synchronizing the left and right hemispheres of the brain.

A more focused mind state can be yours, along with the many personal and professional rewards that it brings. Joel and Michelle Levey lead you to the inner peace and external excellence that, with heightened concentration, are within your grasp.

Bringing Your Life into Focus,
Vic Conant
Chairman, Nightingale Conant