Intentional attention

We hear phrases like, "pay attention" or "may I have your attention", and many of us are in institutions that demand our attention even if we truly do not want to give it and for some, we don't give our attention to what we don't enjoy or love. Granted, giving our attention to things that we may not like or enjoy is important.

Attention is a commodity, it is our most valuable currency as we saw in the above paragraph with words like "pay" and "have". I heard that energy is our most valuable currency and I agree. I also think energy is too ambiguous and everything embodies some form of energy. Therefore, I am coming to learn that attention is by and large one of the most valuable energies we are able to emit and control in this life.

Think about how valuable our attention is...companies are working tooth and nail to capture our attention. Marketing is essentially just that, an attention grabbing entity. We are constantly bombarded with billboards, eye catching colored logos, commercials, social media, and even our phones for a few examples. 

Where our attention goes, energy will flow. 

This can be as simple as grabbing our attention and then we follow it up by purchasing something. I have done this more times than I would like to admit and I have done it on a very unconscious level, without much thought, just pure impulse because of how it is capturing my attention. I think, "wow, this is so cool!" and my attention is immediately and fully given to that thing.

The amazing thing is, we can give our attention to anything! Most of the time we are giving our attention to multiple things, jumping from here to there, it is a no wonder we may feel overwhelmed or unproductive. I am not saying we need to be more productive in the sense of accomplishing more, on the contrary actually. Being more productive with our attention means to allocate our attention to one thing at a time. If we are working on a blog post for instance and every 5 minutes I stop to check Instagram, my attention is working at a lesser capacity than if I were to simply focus all my energy and attention on writing a blog post. This applies across all areas of your life, paying attention to your spouse, kids, and so on. 

If you are going to be there, BE THERE. I am glad you are here :) and BEING here.

Jace

We GROW through what we GO through

 Everything you have gone through in life, the good, the bad, ugly and sad, triumphant, heart felt, and more has turned you into the person you are. You GREW through what you went through. And maybe you are still going through it, maybe you are in the thick of it now and you feel there is no end in sight. My reminder to you is this...keep going. Persistence with the right intellect gets anyone through what they are going through.

We go through things every single day...so are we constantly growing? Simple answer, yes we are. How we grow is a different story. If we are unaware of what is happening in and through the day, our growth is suppressed. GROWTH is a choice. CHANGE is a constant and each moment we are changing. Along the way, we have to make the right effort in order to grow.

Think of growth in terms of a seed becoming a tree. Planting a seed in the ground is generally not enough to ensure it will grow. Other practices include, ensuring good soil, watering it, and so forth. Seeds are being planted all the time in our lives and tending to the garden seems difficult at times and it is important that we have to make the right effort. Through making the right effort, we have a greater chance of that seedling growing into its full potential and more! GROWTH starts with making the right effort

What is the right effort?

Right effort according to Buddha is "to exert oneself to develop wholesome qualities and release unwholesome qualities". Back to the seedling metaphor; around the seedling will inevitably be weeds and they will compete with your seedling for nutrients and your seedling will not grow as well as it could if you were to not pull the weeds around it. Similar concept here for personal growth. In each experience, you will not be perfect. You will have wholesome qualities and unwholesome qualities threaded into the experience. The right effort here is to assess the situation, reflect and uncover what worked and what didn't, what felt right and what didn't.

Practice:

Think back to a time where you went through something uncomfortable, challenging, or whatever it may be that felt like a difficult experience. Heck, it could be that one time you spoke in front of 100 people about a project you were working on. Think about what you learned from that experience and take some time to write out the exact moment, how you felt leading up to it and during, and then write about how you felt at the end and further, what lessons were learned throughout the entire process. Lessons aren't just learned after the experience is done; no no, lessons are threaded from start to finish. Take a look back and analyze this experience for you and see if what you learned is still with you today and how it may be affecting how you interact with the world currently.

Self reflection is an incredible tool for life and the more time we spend understanding our own past and the lessons we have learned along the way and how in turn, we live out our days in accordance to that, it just might create a little more consciousness and awareness in our lives which is essential in living a happy and fulfilled life.

Peace be the journey,

Jace

Look where you want to go, not what you are trying to avoid

 I heard this phrase on an NPR segment this morning and it has stuck in my mind ever since. In deeper contemplation, I remember my drivers ed teacher explaining how to avoid items that might be on the road. He said something similar, "if you look at what you don't want to hit, you are going to hit it but if you look to the area around the object, you will miss it." In essence, where you look is where you are going to go.

Where you look can also be reframed as, "what you focus on". This becomes apparent in the thoughts we experience. If we are constantly focused on the negative, more negative will emerge, and vice versa. As we move through this life, we learn what we want to be more and less of. More patient, less impatient. The thing is, if I say, "I want to be less impatient", this insinuates that I want to be more patient. What if instead, we reframed this as, "I want to be more patient". Both are positive and yet, one carries more weight to it. Just say those two to yourself and feel which one resonates deeper.

When avoiding certain thoughts or ways of being, we are focused on what we don't want to be or do rather than directing our attention to what we want to be and do. It is amazing the power of reframing our thoughts.

If you catch yourself thinking about the things you don't want to do or be, try flipping the script, reveal the opposite and frame your thoughts in what you do want to be and do.

Examples:

"I do not want to be negative anymore" REFRAME "I am working on being more positive"

"I wish I weren't so impatient" REFRAME "I am working on becoming more patient"

One thing to note here is that our reframe also requires an addition of 4 words...

1. I

2. AM

3. WORKING

4. ON

Instead of using words like, "I wish I were" or "I want to be", speak in terms of IMMEDIATE ACTION. The words, "I am working on" are obvious, your mind is in the mode of working on whatever proceeds that statement and you will start to act in accordance to such.

Happy reframing my friends :)

WHAT you are is not WHO you are

 Ozan Varol said, "we don't see things as they are, we see them as we are."

Let that sink for a moment and even re-read it a few times.

I guess the questions I have are, WHAT are we? How does this WHAT thread itself into how we perceive the world around us? Why is it important to realize WHAT we are is not WHO we are.

The world around us is seen through the lens of our experiences. “We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are”. If we were in a distrusting relationship, we may perceive other partners as distrusting. If we had a bad encounter with a dog, we might think all dogs are bad and live in accordance with this and buy a cat instead. You see, our experiences determine how we perceive life and act in an autopilot way. If we were to take control of our life and explore why we are perceiving things the way we are, we open ourselves up to experience more of what we are…conscious awareness. These experiences are just that, experiences, we are not an experience, we are not even the culmination of our experiences as some mainstream philosophers argue; we are beyond all form and time. It is hard to grasp, I understand. It is also uneasy to contemplate that we are not all the things we have self proclaimed.

The thing to remember here is that life is a dance. We are meant to dance with our personality, not be like a clingy partner. The same is true for what we do in life! Our work is merely an extension of consciousness and what we do is not who we are. It is what we do, obviously. 

Living detached from all we have thought to be true about ourselves frees us from the bondage of being attached. Our ego cannot live if it has no identity to hold onto. Having an identity is fun! It’s like the Soul gets a chance to try on this fun outfit and we can always change it up.

Shifting gears…

If someone were to ask you, "what are you", it might take you some time to consider that answer because usually it is framed as, "who are you?" which then is followed up by us describing ourselves in the context of "what" we are through adjectives, verbs, and even nouns. 

Exercise: write out two lists, one answering the question, "who are you" and the other, "what are you?". If there is overlap, thats okay. See what overlapped and then create a list based off that data.

Dissemination of data: When you see what has overlapped, take a look at it and then wean out emotions such as, positive, happy, sad, angry, etc. After removing that, remove anything related to your work, i.e., I am an engineer. Then remove anything related to family, i.e., I am an older sibling. Then remove personal characteristics like how old or tall you are, etc. See what is left. If anything is left, view it critically. Is that really who you are or is it more of a temporary experience or something that you constructed as part of your identity?

You see, we are beyond all form, we are not what we do, we are not the labels that have been put on us, we are not our emotions. We are the silent observer within. We are the listener. We are pure consciousness embodying this physical vessel to experience personality, identity, and action. Remember, we are not THAT, we are the EXPERIENCER of that.