Concentration Exercises to Train and Focus the Mind

In this article, you will learn a few concentration exercises. These mental exercises will strengthen your mind’s power and improve your focus and attention.

Better concentration means a longer attention span, more patience, more mental power, and more mental discipline.

It is a most essential skill we all need. It helps us learn and study better, make fewer mistakes, work and act more efficiently and helps us with personal growth, meditation, and mindfulness.

The Power of Concentration

Sharpening the needle of concentration requires practice, like everything else in life.

Do you go to the gym? If you do, how many times a week and for how long?

Have you studied a foreign language? If you did, how long did you practice until you had a basic knowledge of the language?

It is the same with developing your concentration. You need to train your mind and attention.

How long do you need to practice daily?
Practicing concentration exercises for ten minutes a day will bring you great benefits.

Why do you need to train your mind and attention?
The mind does not like discipline and will resist your efforts to discipline it. It loves to wander from one thought to another and will resist your attempts to master it.

It will make you forget to practice the exercises, tempt you to postpone performing them, or make you feel too lazy. Your mind will find many tricks to occupy your attention with something else.

The choice is yours, to be mastered by the mind and its whims or to become its master.

What Is Concentration?

Concentration is sustained attention. It is the ability to command your mind and mental focus and master your attention.

It is the ability to focus mental effort on a specific task, object, or thought while filtering out distractions.

Concentartion involves directing your attention toward a particular thought, activity or goal, allowing you to process information more efficiently and act with more focus.

Effective concentration requires mental discipline and can be influenced by factors like motivation, interest, and environment. By maintaining concentration, you can improve productivity, learning, and performance in various tasks, whether they are academic, professional, or personal.

This skill is most essential in meditation, mindfulness, affirmations, and visualization.

Oxford Learners Dictionaries define it as: “The ability to direct all your effort and attention on one thing, without thinking of other things.”

Advice for Practicing Concentration Exercises

I have gathered here a few simple concentration exercises, which I know from personal experience that they can improve focus and increase the attention span.

Before we begin here are guidelines for practicing the exercises:

Find a place where you can be alone and undisturbed. If you wish, you may sit cross-legged on the floor, but most people would find it more comfortable to sit on a chair. Sit with your spine erect.
Take a few calm, deep breaths, and then relax your body by directing your attention to it and relaxing each muscle from head to toe.
Start with the first exercise. Devote to it 5 minutes each day. After one week of training, you may lengthen the time to 10 minutes.
Practice only one exercise until you can do it without getting distracted or forgetting it and without thinking about anything else while practicing it. This might take days, weeks, and even more.
Don’t be impatient; you do not need to become frustrated if you cannot focus. Just continue, and gradually, your ability will improve. You don’t have to be perfect; even partial success is a great achievement.
Proceed to the next exercise only after you are convinced you have practiced it correctly and with a good or reasonable degree of concentration.

Related: How to improve attention span.

Is There a Set Timetable for Practicing the Exercises?

There is no set timetable since proceeding according to a timetable could be frustrating.

If, for example, I tell you to practice a particular exercise for a specific number of days, two things might happen. You might get disappointed, if you cannot get the desired concentration within the allotted time period. Or you might also proceed to the next exercise, without practicing correctly the previous one.

Mastering the exercises successfully can take days, weeks, months, or even more.

Guidelines to Follow

Put your whole attention into the exercises, and do not think about anything else.
Be careful not to fall asleep, daydream, or think about other matters.
The moment you find yourself thinking about something else, stop the exercise and start again.
After you become proficient, lengthen the time by a few more minutes, and if possible, include another session in the afternoon.
Do not attempt too much at the beginning, and don’t try to practice everything you find here all at once. Go slowly, without overdoing anything or tensing your brain.

If you find it too difficult or discover that thoughts distract your attention and make you think about other matters, don’t despair. Everyone encounters difficulties along the way.

If you persevere and never give up, despite difficulties and disturbances, success will crown your efforts.

Remember, even those with powerful concentration had to exercise their minds initially.

It does not matter if your concentration is weak now. You can develop and strengthen it like any other skill through training.

In time, you will discover that you can concentrate on anything, anywhere, anytime, no matter where you are. You will be able to focus your mind, think, and function under the most trying circumstances while remaining calm, relaxed, and collected. The reward is worth the effort a thousandfold.

Now, let’s start with the exercises. After you are convinced that you are practicing each exercise correctly and with full attention, you should practice each exercise for one additional week for the full benefit.

Our Guide for Increasing Focus and Concentration

Concentration Exercises

Practice the following exercises according to the guidelines set in this article.

Exercise 1 – Counting Words

Take a book, any book, and count the words in any one paragraph. Then, count them again to ensure you have counted them correctly.

After a few times, do so with two paragraphs.

When this becomes easy, count the words of a whole page. Do the counting mentally and only with your eyes, without pointing your finger at each word.

Exercise 2 – Counting Numbers Backwards

Count backward in your mind, from one hundred to one. Counting backwards requires more focus and attention than counting forward.

Star from 100 and count backwards to 1. Do so slowly and with attention, not missing any number.

Exercise 3 – Conting Numbers with Increments

Count in your mind from 100 to 1, skipping each three numbers like this: 100, 97, 94, etc.

Repeat this exercise a few times in each session.

Exercise 4 – Repeating a Word or a Sound

Choose an inspiring word or phrase or just a simple sound, and repeat it silently in your mind for five minutes. When your mind can concentrate more easily, try to reach ten minutes of uninterrupted concentration.

You can choose the sound “OM” or a positive word like “light”, “peace” or “happiness”.

Exercise 5 – Examine a Fruit

Take a fruit, an apple, orange, banana, or any other fruit, and hold it in your hands.

Examine the fruit from all sides while keeping your attention focused on it. Do not let yourself be carried away by irrelevant thoughts that might arise or thoughts about the grocery where you bought the fruit, how and where it was grown, its nutritional value, etc. Stay calm, ignore, and show no interest in other thoughts.

Just look at the fruit, focus your attention on it without thinking about anything else, and examine its shape, smell, taste, and the sensation it gives you when you touch it.

Exercise 6 – Visualize a Fruit

This is the same as exercise number 5, only that you visualize the fruit this time instead of looking at it.

Start by looking at the fruit and examining it for about 2 minutes, just as you did in exercise number 5. Then, close your eyes and try to see, smell, taste, and touch the fruit in your imagination. Try to see a clear and well-defined image. If the image becomes blurred, open your eyes, look at the fruit briefly, and then close your eyes and continue the exercise.

You may imagine holding the fruit in your hands, as in the previous exercise, or imagine it standing on a table.

Exercise 7 – Examining an Object

Take a small, simple object such as a spoon, a fork, or a glass. Concentrate on one of these objects. Watch the object from all sides without any verbalization, with no words in your mind. Just watch the object without thinking with words about it.

Exercise 8 – Focusing on a Geometrical Drawing

You can try this exercise after becoming proficient with the exercises mentioned above.

Draw a small triangle, square, or circle about three inches in size on a piece of paper and paint it any color you wish.

Put the paper with the drawing in front of you, and concentrate your whole attention on the shape you have drawn. For now, only the drawing exists for you, with no unrelated thoughts or distractions.

Keep your attention on the drawing and avoid thinking about anything else. Do not strain your eyes.

Exercise 9 – Visualizing a Geometrical Drawing

Start the same as number 8, but after looking at the drawing for a moment, close your eyes and visualize it with them closed. If you forget how the drawing looks, open your eyes for a few seconds, look at it, and then close your eyes and continue with the exercise.

Exercise 10 – Visualizing a Geometrical Drawing with Open Eyes

The same as number 9, but now visualize with your eyes open.

It might be more difficult to visualize with open eyes and it requires more attention. Practice the exercise despite any difficulties you might encounter. It need not be perfect.

Exercise 11 – Suspend Your Thoughts

Try to stay without thoughts for at least five minutes. Do this exercise only after you have successfully practiced all the previous ones. If you practice the preceding exercises correctly, you will be able to impose silence on your thoughts, even if this is, at first, just for a short while.

Mental Practice Is the Secret of Success

The more time you devote to the exercises, the faster you progress, but you should do it gradually. Start with five minutes, and increase the time as the exercises become easier and your ability to concentrate improves.

When you start seeing results, you will begin to love the exercises. You will be able to concentrate on anything you want to concentrate on easily and effortlessly.

Do you jog, exercise at the gym, or study a foreign language?
How difficult it was when you first started?
How many times have you wanted to quit?

Despite the difficulties, you started to like what you were doing after a while. It became a habit and did not require special effort. So it is with developing the power of concentration.

After some practice, concentrating and focusing will be easier, and your mind will learn to be calm and relaxed. People, circumstances, and events that used to agitate and anger you will not disturb you, and you will experience happiness and contentment.

The concentration exercise will also help you gain self-confidence and inner strength, and to be able to cope more easily and efficiently with the outer world.

You will feel a new form of consciousness growing in you, bringing you peace of mind. At first, you will experience it sporadically and briefly, but it will grow and fill you in time. You will be able to make the mind work for you efficiently and silence it when you want.

After your concentration gets stronger, your attitude and reactions to events and people will change. You will become more calm and confident and discover many things about the mind, how it functions, and how to use it efficiently.