Attention and Experience

Your attention is a powerful force.  It can be diverted to, or away from, things that are important.

Picture an auditorium filled with an audience, young and old.  They have arrived for the musical, ready to be swept up by the story, the show tunes, the color, the dancing. The lights go down, the show starts, and 20 minutes in, an older gentleman in the back gets a tickle in his throat.  Having felt it, his attention is now focused there, in the throat.  He is here to enjoy a play, and as a good audience member, does not want to interrupt others with a cough.  So he sits, maybe clears his throat a little, shifts in his seat, tries a cough drop from his wife's handbag.  But that tiny tickle is now all he can think of, and eventually, he takes an early intermission, leaves the auditorium, coughs, walks about, gets some fresh air, has a drink.  Once the attention was focused there, he could no sooner ignore that tickle than an elephant in the seat in front of him.

Maybe you have experienced a situation like this, or maybe something like dizziness, a muscle twitch, became a focus of your attention.  Just by thinking about pain in your head or stomach, you can create the actual feeling and experience (this is not an experiment I'd recommend).  Here's the more positive experiment, and the flip side:  Think about how strong your body is, how capable.  Get into Superman Pose - Stand up straight, hands on hips, head held high - and feel your ability to conquer the day.  Take a minute to recognize the positives and blessings in your life and focus on the good things going on.

We are bombarded daily with distractions that channel our attention away from the more important tasks at hand that deserve our focus.  Or towards mindsets and worries that drain us of energy.  But we have the power to channel our attentions to our amazing attitudes, productive passions, and creative capabilities and energize those traits, and ourselves, in the process!

Try the Superman Pose instead of the depressed stance and see if it makes a difference!