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