By EricAre you ready to pay attention? On second thought, who really wants to do that? Paying attention sounds like work, doesn't it? And we all already have enough work to do... How about instead we figure out how to make your attention pay you? That sounds pretty good right? The payoff being much more joy, fulfillment, and abundance in all areas of your life. All you need to do is learn the process.
As you no doubt already know from experience, when you have idle time on your hands, you probably spend some (or much) of that time worrying about things. Worry can be the greatest thief of joy and peace in life, and there is a better way to live, by learning to focus your attention on the good.
Be like a tiger when focused on something, decide what you want and focus in on that as if nothing else in the world exists.
Think for a moment about when you've had time on your hands to think, such as in the shower, driving a car, in bed before falling asleep. You may realize much of that time is spent worrying about the regrets of the past, stresses of the present, and fears of the future. Our inherent human nature is to be worrisome, and our culture reinforces that tendency in a big way with the news and social media. Hence why so many people do everything they can throughout the day to stay plugged in to a distraction—TV, phone calls, scrolling, reading, work, texting, blogging, going out for a drink, etc. Even serving others or do-gooding can be a form of distraction from our own selves. None of those are all bad, but when done to avoid focus they can be.
It turns out that most of us have already learned how to focus our attention at an expert level, but mainly on the unwanted, and we have to be careful of that, because as the old saying from Lao Tzu says:
"Watch your thoughts, for they become words.
Watch your words, for they become actions.
Watch your actions, for they become habits.
Watch your habits, for they become character.
Watch your character, for it becomes your destiny.”
In our modern day, meditations and affirmations have become very popular, and those practices are designed to change / suspend your thought patterns for a variety of reasons; mainly to improve and control your well-being on a subconscious level.
In the Christian scriptures, the apostle Paul taught how to do this very well when he said:
“Whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good report, if there is any virtue and if there is anything praiseworthy—meditate on these things"
The Apostle Paul may not have called it this, but he was being a master practitioner of the Law of Attention, and teaching how to focus attention to live a happy, purposeful, and impactful life.
Everything in life is filtered by your thoughts. Therefore, if you want a joyful life; if you want an inspired life; if you want a meaningful life; if you want a life that is a blessing and inspiration to others; and if you want to have a life that can handle the challenges that come your way; you can benefit greatly by disciplining your attention to work for you instead of against you.
So do what Paul and Lao said. Consciously and deliberately focus your attention on those things which are wanted. It’s a proven neurological fact that your life will change for the better if you exercise your attention regularly.
