What is your attention doing for you today?
Permit me to say without reservation that if all people were attentive, if they would undertake to be attentive every moment of their lives, they would discover the world anew. They would suddenly see that the world is entirely different from what they had believed it to be.
Jacques Lusseyran
What is your attention doing for you today?
When we pay attention to something, we narrow our focus and easily forget about the context of the experience. At the same time our attention can be fleeting, jumping from here to there and everywhere.
What makes staying focused on a consciously chosen task difficult is that the untrained mind is attention-driven and tends to react to the strongest stimuli present at the time. This could be stimuli from outside of ourselves, e.g. the ding on your phone signaling a new social media post, a favourite song, the smell of baking that makes you want to go and get a muffin or something arising from within, such as emotionally loaded thoughts or memories.
Sadly, it is the negative stimuli that are the most powerful triggers for our brain. This can be traced back to our evolutionary human development when recognizing threats in the environment was a matter of survival.
Therefore, before we address the quality of our attention as Maria Popova suggests, it pays to be attentive to what we pay attention to.
Be attentive to you attentions
Considering that what we pay attention to is mostly based on unconscious reactions rather than free choice, and that, as the saying goes, “energy flows where attention goes”, we can easily find ourselves investing energy and time in things and situations that do not serve us and do not reflect at all the kind of life we want to lead or the kind of person we want to be.
So, how do you reign in your attention?
You might have had the experience of how at times it feels like every fiber of your being wants to dwell on what isn’t going well or times where others have let you down; all you want to do is hold on to that self-righteous feeling you have been nursing so successfully over weeks, months or even years.
What we need in such situations is not a good talking to, or a greater dose of self-discipline or willpower, but a strong and vibrant vision and powerful reminder of what and how we want to be*. What we need is to create enough inner spaciousness so beauty and bounty can start to spread its wings and blossom.
At the beginning it can be helpful to set aside regular time to write about or contemplate your core values - such as being authentic, family, finding your purpose, being kind, leaving a legacy, being financially independent, the list is endless - so they are truly anchored within your consciousness. So that next time you make a decision, no matter how small and seemingly insignificant it might be, your core values are taken into consideration.
"Energy flows where attention goes." Keep the energy flowing into the direction that serves you and it will help you live your authentic self.
And one more thing
You don’t need to know what it is you want for the rest of your life. Oliver Burkeman in his book Four Thousand Weeks shares how a friend used the analogy of a frog jumping from lily pad to lily pad when reflecting on Burkeman's life path. What he was suggesting is that all one needs to do is identify the next best lily pad to visit and ensure it will take one into the approximate direction one wants to go.
Make your next lily pad your safe space, to rest and play on it, explore it, stay on it till you are bored and move on to the next lily pad when ready.
By recalling and reliving the moments when things were going well, when we were aligned with our vision and purpose, frees up energy that propels us forward. Not only that but we are also more likely to identify new opportunities and find the courage to make the most out of them, with curiosity and lightness of heart.
(*Try this guided 8-minute "Inner Self-Critic and Self-Appreciation Meditation" to experience first hand what I am talking about.)
My invitation to you.
At the end of each day take a moment and reflect what you have given your attention to throughout the day – how many times you have prioritised what seemed pressing over what truly matters to you, or dwelled on old hurts and negative visions of your possible future. Be curious – staying curious stops you from being judgmental.
Notice how it felt when you could stop yourself in your tracks and softly and attentively shifted your focus to something that is aligned with your chosen path.
What lily pad do you want to come to rest on and explore for a while?