Want a more fulfilling life? Train your attention
The underrated currency of our world.
The only thing we can really control in our world is our attention. Plain and simple.
We cannot control our thoughts (we can redirect, but not stem the flow). We cannot, for the most part, control our emotions (we can manage our responses to them and analyze them, but not control them). We cannot control how our bodies feel (again, we can manage how our bodies feel and cater to them but not control them).
Externally, we can hardly control anything. The economy, the news, our relationships, how others perceive us, our health, and of course, the golden question: when we will pass. Such levels of uncertainty destroy humanity’s ability to focus, cope, understand, reflect, prosper, and live. Some theorists have gone as far as saying that all mental illnesses and substance abuses stem from the knowledge of our own mortality.
And yet amid such chaos there is hope. Though there is much in our world that we cannot control, the one thing we do have power over is our most important weapon: our attention.
Training your attention will boost your emotional, mental, and physical health. First there is the simple fact that a task well executed in a state of flow — the mind’s work processes not being interrupted by other thoughts or actions — is deeply satisfying. No surprise there: a TV show is always more engaging when it’s not interrupted by commercials, right?
But it’s more than executing tasks. Building a strong attention span boosts our ability to think through our emotive state more rationally and thoughtfully respond rather than instinctually react. You know those rare people who can sit in traffic with a smile and skip in their step rather than pumping their first into the odometer? That is the attitude I’m talking about.
As I’ve worked to manage anxiety I’ve seen how training my attention span has helped me take a moment before reacting to situations that anger, displease, or upset me. The best part is that I don’t even have to do anything in the moment to realize these benefits — my attention span being stronger naturally gives me more space to think clearly and not act on impulse.
You know what’s bad for mental health but totally common? Perseverating on our emotions. You know the feeling — you remember something that makes you feel down, upset, or triggered, and you indulge in thinking about the stimuli one hundred different ways in an effort to “understand it” so that it will “go away.” The problem here is that feelings are, to some extent, like marinating food. We have to let them sit for awhile before we can glean anything constructive and insightful from them. In many cases it does us no good to sit on emotions for minutes and hours. Rather, we should make good use of our time and do something else with our energy (we should redirect our attention!), coming back to the emotions later when we have had adequate time to process. In some cases, the feelings naturally wane over time anyway. Focusing on where we are placing our attention is the ticket to redirecting our energy from perseverating on our emotive state to being constructive with our time.
Mindfulness
Then there is the buzzword of the century: mindfulness. Mindfulness this, mindfulness that. Andy Puddicomb on headspace calmly speaking to me about watching my thoughts fleet by and not indulging in them. Analogies left and right on how mindfulness is like a seagull in the wind or fish in the sea. So many words, but so little understanding (at least for me).
In an effort to make things even more confusing, let me offer yet another iterative explanation of what mindfulness is: the simple practice of focusing your attention on being aware.
Focusing your attention on being aware. Focusing your attention on being aware. Focusing your attention on being aware.
There, I said it three times so your mind will probably remember it better (take that, neural pathways!).
Awareness — of everything in our world from how our bodies feel, to our immediate environment, to the thoughts flying into our mind, to the natural cadence of our breath. Mindfulness is, at core, the simple practice of focusing one’s attention on being aware rather than “engaging” or “grappling” with anything in particular. The notion of being “aware” is a tricky one. After all, we are all aware all the time — and we have to be if we are not going to trip on our own two feet or choke on our food (for the record I still do both of these things anyway).
Practicing awareness means, to a large extent, focusing our attention entirely on observing our own existence rather than controlling it. In several series of Anime there are huge machine robots that humans can pilot — Mechas — that provide the human species with a weapon and defense system of their dreams. The humans pilot the machines by stepping inside of the head of the Mech and controlling the various components of the body from there. Think of mindfulness this way: your attention is the pilot of your own Mech, and your body, mind, and emotive state is the Mech itself.
If your attention is the pilot then you can do one thing: direct where your managerial energy (or what I would just call, your attention) goes. Most often this energy goes to our minds — focusing on our thoughts, communicating them, thinking about them, or writing them down. Sometimes it’s at the body as we work to become more in tune with ourselves. When things are emotional the energy is directed to our emotive state. When we work, socialize, eat, or generally live, we are letting the pilot run the Mech in the outside world and engage with such external stimuli.
But when we are mindful, we let the pilot sit completely still and just observe what the Mech does when we aren’t bossing it around. Oh, thoughts are flying this way and that? Interesting! Oh look at the emotions, they’re going crazy and then calm and then crazy again. That’s pretty neat. The body doesn’t seem to really care much at all. Ok then!
Focusing our attention on being aware.
Mindfulness is not about judging, fixing, working, thinking, trying, or sculpting. It’s about being aware, period. Focusing our attention on being aware over and over again. Training the muscle in our mind that is “awareness” slowly one moment at a time. If you’re anything like me, it’s likely that your “awareness” muscle is basically nonexistent at the outset of our mindfulness journey. Remember the first time you lifted weights and your muscles were literally nonexistent/non-visible and you could barely do three pushups? Yes, that’s what I’m talking about.
You can do it!
Remember — you can’t control a lot, but you can control your attention. And if you can control your attention you can better manage the mind, body, and emotive. And if you can do that, you’re well on your way to a more fulfilling life, whatever that may look like for you!
Cheers!
