How To Pay Attention
We attract what we give our attention to.
I inhaled pure humidity in a Yoga studio above the treetops, with a view of the ocean in the distance. I lifted my left knee into the air. On the exhale, I came into tree pose, bringing my arms to the sky, claiming my small space in the Costa Rican jungle, listening to the sounds of howler monkeys and waterfalls in the distance. Then, a thought popped into my head: Should I be posting more on the retreat Instagram, instead of my personal one? Or is my personal account better, since it has more followers?
Look, nobody’s perfect.
I lost my balance and I fell out of the pose. Obviously. Because I wasn’t paying attention.
Recently I’ve been thinking about what it means to pay attention in our lives.
We all know that in order for our bodies to balance, our minds need to focus, typically on a singular point in front of us. If we focus our minds, our bodies can stay stable.
We know this truth, yet we spend most of our lives doing whatever we can to avoid focusing on what’s in front of us, and we, like our bodies, lose balance. We fall. We miss out on what we’re capable of. And we’re all so trained to constantly live in this state of imbalance that we’ve learned to call it normal life.
It’s so hard to pay attention to right now because we love fantasizing. In fact, most of the time we manifest our own creative blocks through these fantasies. Dreams of the future, or fantasies of what could have, should have, would have been in the past. Giving our attention to those fears and anxieties only invites more fear and anxiety into our lives. It does absolutely nothing to create the reality we want to live.
I just got back from hosting my first retreat in Costa Rica, hence the retreat Instagram thoughts. It was a remarkable week, even when insipid thoughts brought me out of balance in tree pose. I was also busy for every second of the day. When things went right, I was so present I didn’t have a chance to second guess it. When things went wrong, I simply thought, “Okay, this is different than I expected, how can I solve this issue?” But I was not stressed, anxious, or afraid. I simply was there. In the moment. Paying attention. It felt so good.
(The only other time I’ve felt so present is when I’m producing or directing. That feeling is a huge reason as to why I love being on-set, too. )
I want to be better at paying attention to each day, not just the ones with high stakes or when I’m traveling. I want to give my focus to my values, principals, goals, and the things in my life I’m grateful for. Healthy food, a healthy body, the love I give and receive from my friends, family, partner and dog.
Yesterday I texted my new friend Smaranda who came on the Costa Rica retreat saying that I love the way she talks about her husband. They’ve been married over 10 years, but she talks about him as if they just started dating. It’s so sweet and inspiring, and I love it! She texted me back something quite insightful, exploring some themes we’d discussed over the week:
“I was thinking a lot about this. I feel like it is an example of if you are grateful for something and talk about it in a good, loving way, it creates more love and good things. I want to start doing that about my career. I always talk about the things that are not working with it, because I want to solve them. But, if I think about how insanely freeing it is to just go after what you want and all the joys this career has brought me, maybe I can generate more good things.”
Smart friend, am I right? (She’s also a hilarious comedian and writer, and you can follow her here!) Paying attention to whatever good is in our lives right now is an incredibly powerful tool to attract more good, and create the change we want.
However, you might feel that there isn’t anything good in your life, which is why you live in the past or future. I’ve been there, too, and I can tell you that avoiding your reality will not solve this problem.
You cannot create a new present unless you’re living in it.
Giving your attention to the moment you’re experiencing, good or bad, is ultimately the best antidote to pain. It can ground you, heal you, and help manifest the actual future you’re fantasizing about.
Don’t take it from me, listen to Julia Cameron instead:
In times of pain, when the future is too terrifying to contemplate and the past too painful to remember, I have learned to pay attention to right now. The precise moment I was in was always the only safe place for me. Each moment, taken alone, was always bearable.
In the exact now, we are all, always, all right. Yesterday the marriage may have ended. Tomorrow the cat may die. The phone call from the lover, for all my waiting, may not ever come, but just at the moment, just now, that's all right. I am breathing in and out. Realizing this, I began to notice that each moment was not without its beauty.
The reward for attention is always healing. More than anything else, attention is an act of connection.
— The Artist's Way, by Julia Cameron
I do want to take a moment to note that there is a difference between focusing on what’s good and lying to yourself. If you’re in a relationship that you’re constantly stressed about, but your partner also does the dishes — and you find yourself constantly paying attention to him doing the dishes to justify staying together, this is not what I mean!!!
What I do mean is: are you focusing all your attention on whether or not you should be together? That is a waste of your attention. That makes it impossible to be present in your day, and therefore, in your life. How you spend your days, is, of course, how you spend your life (Annie Dillard). So it’s time to either accept the relationship (and give your attention to things that are worth it, like yourself and your healing) or move on (and give attention to yourself and your healing.)
So, what are you paying attention to?