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Abstraction is, in simple words, the ability to highlight the essential, leaving the important and discarding the unimportant. This ability is needed for various purposes. For example:
- identify the characteristics of an object and compare them
- look at the situation impartially and make an appropriate decision
- isolate yourself and not give in to distractions
Disabling information flow
In the East, there are various sets of practices: Tibetan, Zen, Indo-Burmese and others. They all use certain movements, methods of concentration, which can be done anywhere, even while going to work or walking. The main task is to discard everything unnecessary imposed from the outside, to turn off the endless flow of information.
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At first it is not easy to achieve this, the desired state of inner freedom will be rare and fleeting, but then this state will be observed more and more often.
The Eastern practice of relaxation differs from the Western practice in that a person has complete control over all his reactions. It requires extreme concentration and attentiveness. This is not a trance, when consciousness submits to someone’s will, but conscious control of one’s emotions and thoughts.
What will help you avoid irritability?
As always, we have tips for this case too:
- Use habits that help you structure and organize your thoughts, knowledge, and tasks. These are tables, diagrams, plans, distribution of tasks by level of importance, reminders, notes. When you have a plan, a vision of the situation and prospects, you will feel calmer, begin to manage your life, and stop feeling like a piece of wood carried by the current.
- Get enough sleep and don’t starve yourself: lack of sleep, fatigue, hunger lead to depletion of vital resources and signal that it’s time to start properly distributing rest and workload, planning your activities and getting enough sleep. You can’t get by with stimulants, pills and complaints: if you don’t take care of your health, then naturally everything and everyone will irritate you, and it will become difficult to abstract yourself. Think about what gives you a “reboot”, complete rest and relaxation. This could be sleep, meditation, yoga, massage; This could be time spent on the shore of a pond, a bike ride, swimming or other methods, you just need to think about what suits you personally.
- Replace extraneous noises with those that calm you down: for example, unobtrusive, quiet melodic music that you love. If you want “just silence,” use earplugs.
- Breathing exercises, slow, full breathing calm you down, help you cope with anxiety, enrich you with oxygen, and improve brain function. For example, use this breathing technique: take a slow, deep breath, counting to four. Hold your breath and count to eight. Form your lips into a tube, as if you were whistling, and exhale, also counting to eight. Repeat several times.
- Use anti-stress toys. When we stroke, squeeze, roll, rotate, fold something in our hands, it helps relieve internal tension and focus. You just need to choose “your” toy that helps you to abstract yourself: a rosary, a spinner, a rollspin or something else that you enjoy holding in your hands, that distracts you from emotions, relaxes and calms you down.
- Abstract with the help of your imagination if noise from outside interferes with your rest. Imagine yourself in a place where you feel calm and protected. Maybe on a shady lawn with the chirping of grasshoppers, or in a hammock in the country, or on the edge of a forest, or on sea pebbles. Imagine what you see and hear - a few minutes will be enough to “reboot”. By thinking about a pleasant place and imagining it, even for a short time, we suppress negative reactions of consciousness.
- How to learn to abstract if the imagination “does not want to turn on”? Then try to briefly focus on the sound that annoys you and interferes with your work, “accept” it and focus on the task you were doing. Consider it a workout. Gradually you will learn to be distracted from external stimuli, to “disconnect” from them. The main thing is to turn off the “this annoys me” mode.
What is it for
Experts are confident that a person is able to fully control his own body. Psychoanalyst Makarov says that it has been repeatedly noticed how such exercises can alleviate the severity of chronic diseases, reduce pain syndromes during menstruation, headaches, lower high blood pressure, and normalize the heart rate. Ethnopsychologist Zhukov believes that self-immersion allows you to take control of feelings and needs, and thereby enable a person’s hidden capabilities that contribute to self-healing.
Physician Frederick Rosenfeld says that the health benefits of relaxation practices are not an end in themselves. He claims that the beneficial effects are aimed at reducing anxiety, tension during stress, helps with depression, phobias and improves immunity.
Why do you need the ability to abstract?
Before mastering abstraction techniques, it is important to understand that there are situations when you need to get rid of thoughts about trifles, discard the unnecessary and unnecessary and understand the essence of the problem. And to do this, you need to separate one property from all the others. What does it mean to abstract? This means being able to mentally distract yourself from certain things.
The ability to abstract helps to highlight only what is important, necessary at this moment, throwing aside the accompanying husk
The ability to abstract is an effective definition of desires and goals, as well as ways to achieve them. The technique helps, when you are extremely busy, to be able to move away from distracting and irritating factors in order to solve a momentary problem. Or, by abstracting oneself, one can study the necessary material without analyzing it and comparing it with previously studied material, which speeds up the learning process itself. Effective and quick completion of a given goal and task is the ability to concentrate and abstract in the shortest possible time.
How to clear your mind
Our life is filled with various attitudes, ideas of strangers about us, trashy, unnecessary thoughts. They pollute our inner consciousness. We often perceive ourselves as failures, not attractive and skillful enough. Such thoughts and feelings overwhelm your inner world and do not allow you to live a free and happy life. Achieving complete abstraction helps to free yourself from this.
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Complete abstraction is a paradoxical state in which a person is able to observe everything that happens in him, at the same time actively participating in what is happening, but also feeling some detachment, not allowing emotions to take over the mind. You can experience any feelings, but do not strive to hold them, possess something, or experience attachment.
This inner view of the world makes it possible to contemplate and accept everything that exists, a feeling of complete freedom. On the path to achieving such a state, you will have to delve deeply inside yourself, know your weaknesses and strengths, and learn a lot about yourself that can be very unpleasant.
Viktor Makarov says that a person who tries to gain full consciousness through relaxing practice changes his system of internal values. He stops always rushing, finds pleasure in contemplation, Over time, he realizes greater satisfaction with his life and himself. Sociologist Lenoir argues that in our technological world, man increasingly needs to gain a higher power.
When should you abstract yourself? Abstraction Methods
To make it easier to master the method, consider individual examples of detachment. You will have the opportunity to start training these techniques today.
1
Abstraction from the situation and problems
If the situation has reached a dead end, or you are experiencing too many negative emotions, the easiest way is to abstract yourself and look at it from the outside. Then you will be able to see other possible solutions. How to do it?
Method: close your eyes and imagine that you are a completely different person, he does not experience what you feel, he does not know what you know. Ask this person what he thinks about this situation, how he sees you and other participants in it, how he sees and understands its cause, what prevents its resolution? You will literally hear the answer in your head. This technique also works when abstracting from problems.
2
Abstraction from a person
It can be physical or emotional. Temporary or complete abstraction from a person can be useful in several cases:
- when you need to understand your own feelings and emotions;
- when your personal boundaries are violated;
- when a person tries to cause physical or psychological harm to you (in this case, complete abstraction is recommended, i.e. forever);
- when you are torn between several decisions.
Methodology: physical abstraction - moving to another place or room; you can also go outside in the midst of a quarrel, for example, this will also be a physical abstraction.
If you strive for emotional abstraction, then, firstly, you need to stop direct contact with the person (stop arguing, proving your point of view and listening to him).
Secondly, calm down, because while you are emotional, no sensible thoughts can come to your mind.
Thirdly, try to put yourself in the shoes of this person (ask yourself why he behaves this way, why he did this, what he wanted, etc.).
Fourthly, imagine what other developments of events/relationships there may be, analyze every possibility. And only after these stages, make a final decision.
3
Abstraction from work
When can this be used? During a period of emotional burnout, when you feel disgusted with work. Also when you are very tired and overworked. Abstraction in such situations helps you avoid exhausting yourself and completely losing interest. In addition, when you are very tired, you can harm other people and yourself.
Method: Do something distracting. For example, if you work on the computer a lot, sign up for fitness or capoeira. If your main activity is physical, on the contrary, spend time on spiritual development and art. When there is a lot of work, take a few minutes to listen to beautiful music (preferably with headphones) and contemplate the beauty. You just haven’t yet asked yourself to study the question of how music affects a person and what healing properties it has on health, development and life in general. I advise you to study it.
4
Abstraction from bustle and noise
Music and meditation also help in this situation. The solitude technique works well. To do this, just choose a deserted or sparsely populated place where you need to come for at least 30 minutes every evening .
It is desirable that it satisfies your aesthetic needs (nature, beautiful view). It was not for nothing that our ancestors turned to the forces of nature to restore vitality and harmony.
5
Abstraction from the world and society
This implies abstraction from some social norms, foundations, rules, of which there are an unimaginable number in modern society, and it often happens that these rules greatly limit individual freedom. Boundaries are necessary to prevent lawlessness and anarchy, but when there are too many or they are excessive, the individual cannot realize his full potential, which is why he suffers.
It happens that a person himself binds himself to certain canons that are formed in the process of his upbringing and formation in society. And so it turns out that he wants one thing, but the attitudes say something else. To understand your true values and needs, it is important to learn to take yourself beyond the boundaries of a social unit , to imagine yourself not only as part of the system, but also as a unique being, which has no analogues.
Methodology: associate yourself with an element or phenomenon. For example, imagine that you are the wind (it is better to do this outdoors, feeling at least a light breeze), you are soaring above the ground and there are no obstacles for you. You penetrate through the cracks of houses, touch leaves, stir the sea. You can see any corner of the planet, any person. What do you see? How do you feel? Looking at what moments do you feel happy?
6
Abstraction from negativity, negative emotions
To do this, you can start developing positive thinking. Most often, getting stuck in negative experiences is associated with the inability to see the other side of the coin and learn useful information from negative experiences, as well as the inability to rest.
Methodology: if it is not possible to abstract yourself from the source of stress, then you need to allow yourself emotional abstraction for certain periods of time. At the end of every hour, give yourself 10 minutes of relaxation. Completely immerse yourself in activities that bring you pleasure - drawing, singing, doing a crossword puzzle, reading, socializing.
7
Abstraction from time
Time flies, and people are trying to keep up with it, to do everything. As a result, they miss out on their lives. Sometimes it’s useful to turn off all the equipment, put the clock away and spend the whole weekend with loved ones, doing what you love.
For most people, not thinking about time is a problem. Therefore, you need to give yourself such breaks at least once a week. Let life simply flow, without frames or restrictions.
How to start disengaging from the outside world
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Find the right time
You can choose any time that suits you. To achieve peace, you can use the morning - this will help you achieve a better mood, the evening - to relieve accumulated irritation and tension, the middle of the day. But it is better to choose the most convenient time and duration of practice for yourself.
Create a comfortable environment
Find a quiet place where no one will disturb you, you can turn on calm music. It is better to choose loose clothes and take off your shoes. Focus on breathing, do not be distracted by extraneous thoughts, listen to yourself. Gradually you will feel yourself completely calming down.
Try to relax
You can perform it lying down or sitting. Try to relieve tension. Close your eyes, breathe evenly, slowly and calmly. Try to completely relax and feel different points of your body. Start at the tips of your feet and work your way up to the top of your head, then to your fingertips.
Find a comfortable position
You can choose any position in which you can feel calm, focused, what you are trying to achieve.
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Focus on your breathing
Try to feel how you breathe without disturbing the natural rhythm. After some time, you will notice that your breathing has become easier, smoother and slower. You will feel how, when you inhale, the air spreads downwards, you will feel muscle relaxation and the elimination of tension. Gradually a feeling of harmony will come.
What is abstraction?
Abstraction from Latin is translated as distraction . But this concept does not mean a change in activity, but a change in thinking - a look at familiar or unfamiliar things from a different angle or from a different perspective. The word abstract means that it is necessary to step away from your activity in order to impartially understand it, analyze its processes and identify principles.
Abstraction means, on vacation by the ocean, forget about work, everyday life and focus on relaxation
The human brain is accustomed to looking at things and situations, combining all the ideas it has about this object, without dividing it into its component parts. What is abstraction? According to the definition of psychology, abstraction is the separation or even distancing of one component from another.
How to deal with negative emotions?
It's time to talk about negative emotions - the main obstacle that affects all areas of our lives. We advise you to pay attention to some points:
- In life, not everything can go smoothly, and events do not always easily develop according to our plan. There must be a plan, but you need to understand that life always has its adjustments in everything. According to legend, the inscription was carved on the ring of the wise King Solomon: “Everything passes. This too shall pass.” Accept life as it is, avoid excessive euphoria in moments of joy and do not fall into deep despair in moments of sadness. We cannot control everything around us, but we can understand this and learn to treat life as a source of wisdom, joy and feasible hardships, as a path to self-improvement.
- We all make mistakes, we all learn, we all lose our tempers at times, we are not perfect. Do not rush to judge others or yourself. It’s just that we are all different, and the circumstances are different, and we never fully know other people’s circumstances, just as those around us never know ours. Therefore, the main thing is not to take someone else’s or your own failure or mistake to heart. This will allow you to avoid a lot of suffering and mistakes. Be simpler, take things easier: anger is a bad advisor.
- Learn from mistakes, but don't let criticism or self-criticism ruin your life. Mistakes are necessary, thanks to them we gain invaluable experience, learn and improve. But it’s not just us, everyone has the right to make mistakes. Therefore, treat mistakes philosophically, with understanding, extracting rational grains of benefit from each and abstracting from the negative emotions associated with them.
- Nothing energizes you more than the ability to enjoy the current moment. We feel, think, breathe, we are healthy (or at least relatively healthy), we have those who are dear to us, we live: we feel, touch, hear, see, we are able to think, invent, enjoy even the simplest things – you just need to sometimes “stop” in the current calm moment in order to feel it and feel the joy of what you have. Everything is learned by comparison, and you yourself can give many examples confirming that everything is not so bad for you personally.
- Perhaps the only thing left to say is a positive attitude. By becoming more positive, kinder, more compassionate, calmer, you will “attract” positivity, kindness and mercy into your life. Perhaps new faces will appear in your life, communication with whom will bring you more joy. Well, let’s abstract ourselves from the toxic environment! Abstracting from the bad means learning to concentrate on the good, not allowing ourselves to be drawn into an emotional “storm” in which we predictably lose strength. Instead, we will switch to other topics, other thoughts, and use our imagination.
Well, it's time to sum up. Abstraction will help you solve inevitable problems without unnecessary emotions, thanks to an unbiased view from the outside, which means that thanks to it you get a valuable opportunity to benefit from your mistakes. Everyone makes mistakes, but few people know how to learn from mistakes and move on with gratitude for the fact that they now know more and understand more deeply. Difficulties can become new goals for you, and mistakes can become tips (what you can improve on, what to pay attention to). Knowing how to learn to abstract yourself, you can become the master of your emotions, the director of many situations, and simplify the process of solving current problems.
When we are focused on something, such as a game, we also learn to abstract ourselves from the outside world.
To ensure that your attention and memory, thinking and perception - the cognitive functions of your brain - are maintained in good condition and improved, you can successfully use classes on effective and exciting online brain game simulators. Try it now!
We wish you success in self-development!
