The Power of Concentration

You meant to spend the evening on the thing that matters. You spent it on something else, and nobody made you.

Dumont opens his first lesson right there: "Everyone has two natures. One wants us to advance and the other wants to pull us back." Neither one is a villain, and neither is the real you. Both are simply trying to gain control, every day, over the same hours and the same attention.

What settles the contest is not temperament, mood or luck. In his words, the will alone decides the issue. Whatever you are at the end of a year is the nature you kept choosing.

His introduction makes an observation that sounds odd until you test it: it is easier to hold the mind on something that is bad for us than on something that is good for us.

Think of the hour lost to a feed you did not even enjoy, or a grudge replayed all the way home. That is concentration, and it is strong. Nobody lacks the power to hold the mind on one thing. The backward nature simply gets it without asking.

So the line about the two natures has a second half that matters as much as the first. The one we cultivate and concentrate on, Dumont says, decides what we are at the end. Concentration is not a rare talent you must go and acquire. It is the food both natures live on, and the only real question is which one you are feeding.

In Lesson I, what does Dumont say decides which of your two natures ends up in control?

• The circumstances and chances that life hands you
• The will, which chooses the nature to cultivate✓Correct answer
• The temperament you inherited from your parents
• Whichever nature happened to be stronger at birth

Dumont is blunt: the will alone decides the issue. Inheritance and circumstance are exactly the excuses he goes on to reject, since even a habit that runs in the family can be broken once a person masters the "I will."

Dumont is not gentle about excuses. No man, he writes, has to do anything he does not want to do, which makes every person the director of his own life if he wills to be.

He turns the same edge on family inheritance. People say someone comes by a failing naturally, a chip off the old block, meaning he only repeats what his parents did. Dumont grants that this often happens and denies that it has to. Habit is a matter of acquirement, and a person can break one the moment he masters the "I will."

That is a hard claim, and he means it literally. Whatever pulls you back was learned, which means it was chosen often enough to start feeling like nature.

Dumont holds that a habit you picked up from your parents can be broken the moment you master the "I will."

True✓Correct answer

True, and he states it without softening. He calls habit a matter of acquirement rather than inheritance, so the chip off the old block is only repeating what he was trained to do, and training yields to the will.

Dumont does believe in turning points. He says he could fill a book with cases of men plodding along in a matter-of-fact way who suddenly woke, as if from a slumber, and were different people from then on. One supreme effort of the will, he writes, can change a whole career.

But notice who sets the date. You alone decide when the turning point comes. No teacher can do it for you, and he admits that all any book or lesson can do is awaken a person to possibilities he must then use himself.

This is where first-time readers stop, thrilled, as if the awakening were the achievement. In Dumont it is only the moment the forward nature gets its first real meal.