Ever find yourself saying one thing when you really mean or feel something else? You are thinking about your hair while a co-worker, for example, explains vital data at the workplace. Many writers, including myself, talk about being in the moment and acting authentically. And this implies being attentive. But this of course doesn’t mean you should say to someone, “Hey I am not getting much out of what you’re saying, in fact I am “presently” thinking about a new hairstyle, let’s talk about that instead. “ Intention without good attention can be outright dangerous.
Feeling ownership of your own mind, however, does give you a sense of control over your life. Ownership generates confidence and helps build a positive world view. As such, feeling as though you are not in control can lower self-esteem and can create other problems as well, such as depression. Both of these conditions slow thinking and make you feel disingenuous.
William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience come to mind, as does J.D. Salinger’s iconic novel, The Catcher in the Rye. Everywhere from the worlds of literature, art, music, to kids cartoons, artists have historically tried to convince us that maintaining ownership of your mind is not easy, but is imperative if your thoughts are ever going to feel authentic and effective. But is this easier said than done?
Developing a strong awareness of self, your ability to feel and own what’s in your mind (content), is an important first step in developing good attention. This is because you can attend to what appear to be great life-options to anyone else in the world, but if they are not great for “you,” if they are not fueling your genuine inner needs, they won’t ultimately amount to very much. They may even interfere with your real goals. In short, they become an exercise in futility, leading you away from the person you really are and letting someone or something else captain your life.
Becoming self-aware helps you aim your attention where it will do the most good, aligning your needs with your actions and with the needs and responses of others.
Using what I call a self-scan can help. To do this, simply put your attention on an immediate goal and what procedures you are implementing to accomplish it. Then focus on what you are feeling (physiologically and emotionally), and any related memories you can identify which are affecting your actions and responses. Ask what is working for you and what isn’t? If everything is matching up, continue on course. If not, edit (see my previous blogs for some editing strategies you can begin with). This kind of self-awareness is a fundamental attentional growth step because it provides you more information with which to gauge your responses as you work toward daily goals. Without self-awareness, attention can become pretty haphazard.
Self-scanning is essential to being able to self-regulate your attentional mechanism. My newest book Can I Have Your Attention?: How to Think Fast, Find Your Focus, and Sharpen Your Concentration offers a more in-depth discussion of how to self-scan.
The more self-aware you are, the more effective and genuine your actions can become. Feeling real gives you a sense of being more in control and allows for better life management. Confidence and positiveness follow naturally. And your attention, just like your body, matures.
You will find that the more consciously you put your attention on how you are feeling and your options for how you can use that information to finish projects and achieve goals, the better you are able to organize, plan, and accomplish tasks—and still feel good at the end of your day.
Self-awareness, again, is central to this processing because it is the hub that connects and coordinates all of the voices taking inventory inside you, giving you on-the-go accounts of not only who you are but what you want from a specific situation, why you want this, and how these match up with the demands of your environment. Self-awareness helps you predict the success or failure of specific thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. From an attentional perspective this means being able to fluidly re-orient your focus from what is important to the person you are at your deepest, to the details presenting themselves to you (physically, emotional and otherwise) moment by moment, as well as what options both may offer.
Image by Mike Kline
