C.W.WENDTE rightly said that ‘Success in life is a matter not so much of talent and opportunity as of concentration and perseverance.’

The art of concentration can be learned just like any other skill. According to the dictionary meaning that concentration is an exclusive attention on one object. Have you ever tried to give your entire and exclusive attention to one object? And that is how you develop the art of concentration.

Exclusive attention means that no other thought, no matter how trivial, can be allowed to enter your mind. You must be thinking of, concentrating on, and visualizing nothing but your object. The moment any other thought flits across your mind, stop trying. Your attention is no longer exclusive. You must strive to your problem, or whatever it is you are doing, and hang on.

Here is an exercise in concentration to practice without staring at a particular object. Simply try counting without allowing anything but the numbers themselves to occupy your mind. After some time, and much practice, you may get up to ten. If you ever manage to get up to one hundred without any outside or external thoughts interfering, you are approaching the genius class.

Take a piece of paper and start writing out one particular problem that has been annoying you. When you write it out, you will find many of the incidentals surrounding the problem can be put aside which have no vital connection, anyway. Get to the core of the problem. Give your conscientious and exclusive attention to that problem only, at that moment. Once you have got the clear idea of the problem, you can start doing something about the problem itself. List all the obstacles standing in the way of solution. Beside each obstacle list any and all solutions that come to mind. Action may not always bring happiness; but there is no happiness without action. Once you are doing something about your problems, in a direct and intelligent manner, there is much more chance of getting them solved.

The ability to concentrate also enables you to see a problem clearly. Most of the problems that may be bothering you could not be clearly defined if you tried to do so right now. The problem is usually quite vague in your mind; you see the tentacle of the octopus, but not the octopus itself. You can do this or that and get rid of one of those tentacles, do that or this and get rid of another one. But the body, the cause, the nucleus of you problem is still with you.

Practical problem solving often helps in increasing concentration. It will increase your concentration power. Do crosswords or other concentration problem solving puzzles. It will also help in your mind exercise. So practice concentration, which in turn should help solve some of your problems. Concentration will enable you to look directly at the heart of a problem so that you can decide the exact steps to take to overcome it.