Francis de Sales Quotes

I sometimes got distracted easily and allowed my mind to wander when I needed to be focused. It's quite subtle, really, and just being aware of it helps.

Everyone's mind wanders, without doubt, and we always have to start over. Everyone resists or dislikes the thought of or is too tired to meditate at times, and we have to be able to begin again.

When we allow distractions to wobble us away from ourselves, that's when our intuition starts to fade and our focus dulls.

Meditation is not passive sitting in silence. It is sitting in awareness, free from distraction, and realizing the clear understanding that arises from concentration.

Follow the wandering, the distraction, find out why the mind has wandered; pursue it, go into it fully. When the distraction is completely understood, then that particular distraction is gone. When another comes, pursue it also.

Always staying focused is something that's been very tough for me. I'm still working on it.

I'd like to be more patient! I just want everything now. I've tried to meditate, but it's really hard for me to stay still. I'd like to try to force myself to do it, because everybody says how wonderful meditation is for you, but I can't shut my mind up. So patience and learning is the key.

It's amazing how confused and distracted and misdirected so many people are.

I think I'm really good at forgetting about golf when I'm off the golf course.

I meditate two hours a day, and every year I do one big long meditation course. I love it, and I'm really into it.

I try to block out everything that distracts me. Even a big play, I blank it out.

We know even from ordinary life that we have to achieve a sufficient degree of attentiveness if we want to concentrate on an inner picture or an object of some kind; we must also have it in our power, though, to turn our soul away from something we have been concentrating on.

My toughest opponent is me. My mind has a tendency to wander during bouts. I tend to focus on things other than the bout. I have to work at staying motivated, getting my head right.

I know not to let myself get distracted and to concentrate on what happens on the pitch.

To learn to concentrate we must choose a prayer or meditation and follow this path with commitment and steadiness, a willingness to work with our practice day after day, no matter what arises.

The mind is running on all sides to think about many things, - what we call thoughts coming from outside. We must withdraw the mind from these distractions and make it abide in the self. Thus guarding the peace within we shall have to do the work without.

It is better to meditate a little bit with depth than to mediate long with the mind running here and there. If you do not make an effort to control the mind it will go on doing as it pleases, no matter how long you sit to meditate.

The mind may wander, but let not the senses wander with it. If the senses wander where the mind takes them, one is done for.

Meditation does not mean just sitting quietly for five or ten minutes. It requires conscious effort. The mind has to be made calm and quiet; at the same time, it has to be vigilant so as not to allow any distracting thoughts or desires to enter.

The inner experience of meditation can be had without any kind of forced discipline. The outer trappings - how one sits, breathes, dresses, and so forth - are irrelevant.

An audience proves its discipline by its capacity for stillness. Those who have never practiced continuous application to an exacting process cannot settle down to simple watching; they must chew gum, they must dig the peel off their oranges, they must shift from foot to foot, from buttock to buttock.

It's okay that the mind drifts away but you just bring it back.

The degree of freedom from unwanted thoughts and the degree of concentration on a single thought are the measures to gauge spiritual progress.

I find it so easy to get distracted - I try not to do more than one thing at any one time.

The mind is a monkey, hopping around from thought to thought, image to image. Rarely do more than a few seconds go by in which the mind can remain single-pointed, empty.