Attention

Attention is significantly more valuable than you realize.  Your attention is a reflection of who you are; it determines the content of your consciousness and influences the quality of your experience.  From the moment you were born, your attention has been hailed by the things that surround you.     The person you become is shaped by what you repeatedly give your attention to.  Like anything of value, it must be guarded.

The more obvious place to see this is through mainstream media.  News, movies, companies all pouring as much resource as they can to have your attention--telling you what you need, what life you should have, whether your current state is good or bad, placing you in a category and hopefully influencing you to make a decision.   Social media has created a system to figure out the algorithm of your attention. It analyzes which content you repeatedly go to and how long you watch it.

The goal of this post isn’t to make you stop everything, instead to simply be aware of what you are attending to.  You see your attention matters in a much more significant way.  It is a reflection of you in your day-to-day experiences.  Imagine you are with everyone enjoying the day in a park.  You hear splashing and loud laughter and when you turn towards the sound you realize it is two toddlers splashing in the fountain and picking up coins while laughing.  What would go through your mind?

A park attendant might automatically be thinking to stop the children because they are in a fountain they aren't supposed to be in.  A parent might be wondering where the parents of those toddlers are and why they don’t stop the behavior.  Another toddler might be smiling and earnestly wanting to join the fun.  The same scenario but perception highlights what is valuable and what is meaningful.

Even more subtle is through conversations we have.  What people say and how we perceive them or what we focus on often times determines what is going on inside of us.  Are we defensive, receptive, cautious, or something else?   And what does it show us about ourselves?

Practice this--to just be aware of what you are attending to both in conversation and day-to-day interaction.