“Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity”—Simone Weil
Last month we opened up the topic of paying attention. Our plan was to practice paying more attention to what is going on in the present. One huge step toward being able to do this better is in noticing the difference between living from our heads and living from our hearts.
The next step is practicing being able to switch from being led by our minds to being able to lead our minds into becoming servants for us instead of masters over us. This requires understanding that we are more than what goes on in our minds.
Our thoughts, emotions and even our actions don’t define us. Our true self is deep, calm and wise but can get overshadowed by our jumpy, pushy minds, to-do lists and external environments.
Paying more attention to our internal environments, what is going on inside us mentally and emotionally, gives us a much clearer understanding of how to walk the journey of our own lives, one step at a time.
It should be stressed that we can’t expect ourselves to maintain continual focus without any distractions since this is pretty well impossible. The human brain has a lot of thoughts during any given day. Scientific studies vary widely in their conclusions of how many thoughts per day an average person has, ranging from 6,200 to 60,000.
Even if the lowest number is correct, that’s a lot of thoughts per day! It is believed that up to 95 per cent of our thoughts are repetitive. The National Science Foundation believes about 80 per cent of our thoughts are negative.
Observing our own thoughts can be very informative. By paying attention to what goes on in our minds we train the brain to notice when it is wandering off, jumping around, going in loops or being negative.
Rather than becoming upset, frustrated, or self-condemning when we notice our minds doing things we don’t want them to, it is best to simply and calmly redirect our attention to what we would like to think about. Otherwise, we create even more negativity in the mind. Our efforts toward trying to “fix” our minds aren’t very effective because they simply create more stress and distraction.
Creating and sustaining systems and habits that support the ability to focus works far better than trying to use willpower only to focus the brain, especially since willpower requires the brain to work harder.
The concept of paying attention is a step up from focusing. Learning how to focus our minds is a very valuable skill to learn to help us get things done. Paying attention includes the involvement of our hearts as well as our minds and may actually come easier to us as it brings more of our whole self into operation.
Paying attention more can be seen as simply as noticing more, giving our presence, awareness and time to the people and things around us. Decide what things are most important to give your attention to, which aren’t usually the loudest demands or distractions.
Paying attention could be reading a book to a child without being somewhere else in your mind. It could be listening to a partner or friend without thinking about what you’re going to say to them. It could be taking a walk in nature, choosing to notice beautiful things more than trying to figure things out. Giving ourselves the gift of peace also gives us the perspective we need to make choices that give us more meaning, joy and clarity.
