How to Use the Force, In Real Life
You probably remember the scene from the original Star Wars where Luke Skywalker is learning to use the Force on board the Millennium Falcon. He’s wearing the goofy helmet, and trying to avoid being zapped by the hovering droid.
“Remember, a Jedi can feel the Force flowing through him,” Obi-Wan instructs him, as the training droid shoots Skywalker on the leg.
“Ha ha!” mocks Han Solo. “Hokey religions and ancient weapons are no match for a good blaster at your side, kid.”
Luke, of course, goes on to train with Yoda, developing incredible powers of concentration and focus. Solo and his blaster, meanwhile, get frozen in carbonite.
Star Wars has been such a potent force in our culture, so to speak, because we recognize there is a truth to the idea behind the Force. I’m here to tell you that the Force is real, and you can learn to control it. And there’s one simple mind hack, or mental technique, that will teach it to you: concentration training.
Your Daily Training Exercise
Here’s the basic exercise:
- Find a comfortable place to sit, quiet and free from distractions.
- Spend two or three minutes relaxing your body, starting from the head and working your way down to your toes, then back up again.
- For the next twenty minutes, focus on the breath.
- When you find your mind wandering, refocus it on the breath.
- Keep track of how many times you are able to refocus your mind, awarding yourself one “Awareness Point” each time you bring it back to the breath.
- Write down your score at the end of your session, and keep track over time.
You may know this by its more popular name, “meditation,” which is hot and trendy. I prefer to call it concentration training, because that’s what it is. This exercise is proven by multiple research studies to increase mental clarity, sharpness, and focus, while reducing stress.
What this training does is improves your ability to control your mind — but more importantly, your ability to be aware of your mind. The exercise is simple, but mastering it is maddeningly difficult. The mind has a mind of its own!
The Well-Trained Mind
I ran into a neighbor the other day who just got a new puppy. She was telling me about training the dog, and the importance of consistency. You can’t train the dog every tenth time it misbehaves, you have to do it every single time. I’d argue that the same goes with disciplining children.
And the same goes with disciplining our minds.
Since the release of my new book Mind Hacking, a number of people have told me that they’ve tried meditation, but gave up after a few sittings because their minds seemed hopelessly restless. They liked the concentration training exercise, because it turned the model on its head.
In traditional meditation, the goal is to notice the mind when it wanders, and return it back to the breath, back to the object of concentration. Consequently, meditation often makes you feel bad that your mind is wandering (“I failed again”). Some people feel depressed about that disobedient dog.
Concentration training improves on that practice by turning it into a game. Awarding yourself an Awareness Point for noticing that your mind is wandering makes you feel good (“I scored a point!”). So you get a little dopamine hit, which encourages you to keep playing.
Keeping track of your Awareness Points, and writing down your daily score, also gives you real-time data that you can use to track your progress. Over time, you’ll start to see that score lowering, and that is satisfying.
The object of concentration training is not to keep your mind perfectly still and serene: that’s not how the mind works. The object is to become aware of it, and whenever you’re noticing it’s wandering, you’re gaining that awareness.
Once we learn how to become aware of it, we can begin to master it, leading to greater success in business and in life. Throughout our workday and our everyday life, we’re not yanked around by our mind’s every emotion and worry, like a disobedient dog on a leash. Instead, we’re in control.
In Star Wars: The Force Awakens, the aging Han Solo now proclaims that everything about the Force “is true. All of it.” Even the skeptic, in the end, is a believer.
The Force is real. This is how you learn to use it.
Sir John Hargrave is the author of Mind Hacking: How to Change Your Mind for Good in 21 Days, now available worldwide. Guided concentration exercises, to help you learn the Force, are available in the Mind Hacking audiobook.
