Attention, Focus and Consciousness: How We Usually Get What We're Focusing On!

When I was in college, I spent several semesters living in a somewhat "sketchy" part of town — at least that's what the locals "believed," and what was reported in the newspapers.

In the 18 months I lived in my little house on East 32nd, I never had a problem, however. Neither my house nor my car was broken into, nor did I have any issues walking to the bus stop and back daily; nor walking down to the corner "Stop and Rob" for soda or beer, even at night. To be honest, I did not feel unsafe in our neighborhood. Foolish of me? Who knows...

Evening sun on our backyard labyrinth

My Unfortunate Neighbor

My neighbor across the street lived in an almost identical little delapidated house and drove an even rattier car than I did. Unlike me, he was eternally worried and anxious about "getting mugged" and "people breaking in and stealing his stuff," because it was such a shitty neighborhood.

Now, this could be pure coincidence of course... but in the same time period I lived there, his car was broken into twice, stolen once, the house broken into twice and he was robbed at knife point, twice.

Whereas there might have other unknown variables at work, I am not convinced these very different experiences of the same neighborhood, at the same time, were pure coincidence.

I've had some friends tell me he must just have "had bad karma," but that doesn't sound quite right, either. I should also add that my neighbor wasn't some loud assflake who picked fights and was publicly obnoxious.

Regardless, his experience was very different from mine.

Yellow VWs and Welsh Corgis

I think a lot of people are familiar with the way we decide we are going to get a new car, and suddenly it seems like the type of car we want is everywhere, where a few days ago we never noticed a single one. Most recently, I remember this from when our 27-year old daughter wanted a yellow VW Beetle, and once she'd made up her mind to that effect, there suddenly seemed to be lots of them on the road when — in fact — they are not a particularly common car.

Something similar happened when Mrs. Denmarkguy got involved with a Welsh Corgi rescue group. Corgis are not all that common, as dogs go, but suddenly it felt like every third person we met had a Corgi.

Both of these, of course, are simple psychological phenomena having to do with what we are keeping in our "active attention" area. On any given day, we see and process thousands of inputs, but we're only capable of holding a few of them in our active attention space. Buying a BBQ goes OUT; yellow VW Beetles come IN; lilac bushes go OUT, Corgis come IN.

Back to Focus and Attention

I would submit that my former neighbor, my daughter and Mrs. Denmarkguy were all participants in what the New Age Woo-Woo People would call "Creating Your Own Reality."

Whether you're into "Woo-woo Stuff" or not, I happen to believe that's totally "a thing." But it's not particularly Woo-woo.

I believe it was industrialist Henry Ford who once remarked that "Whether you believe you'll succeed or not, you're probably right." A saying that basically amounts to an "applied" version of the same idea: We tend to get what we focus on.

So how is this helpful?

Well, it points to the importance of consciousness and awareness, and truly being in tune with whatever we want in our lives. A lot of people end up feeling like their lives are chaotic because they lack focus, while others feel like the cards are eternally stacked against them simply because they are focused on the wrong thing.

Let me offer you a really simple example: Let's say you're serious about wanting to get in a real and good relationship, and one of your important "things" is that want to be with someone who is NOT in any way involved with recreational or other drugs. OK, here there is a huge difference between saying I DON'T want to be with a drug addict and I want to be with a drug-free person.

The two statements may effectively look identical but they are NOT!

The first has "drug addict" as its focal energy, meaning that you are consciously (or subconsciously) going to be scanning the world for drug addicts. Going back to our "Yellow VW Beetle" example, what do you think you'll see? The second, conversely, will have you focusing on "drug-free persons," which is a different set of search results. See what I am getting at, here?

A Quick Practical Thought, Before I Go...

I've probably spent rather too many years studying the spiritual aspects of living along with various forms of consciousness and self-development.

The root question I always come back to, when I find my mind cycling over particular issues — success/failure, love/hate, poverty/abundance — is "What are you looking for evidence or proof of, and WHAT will you have when you find that?"

Take our tiny microcosm known as Whaleshares.

As you travel around and visit other people's pages and read comments... and participate in the community... are you looking for "proof" that Whaleshares is thriving and will succeeed? Or are you looking for proof that we're screwed and things here will fail? Either way, I ask you what you will HAVE if you're right? And is that what you WANT?

If not, you'd better change your approach!

Thanks for reading!

What do YOU think? Does any of this make sense to you? Or is it so much mumbo-jumbo? Can we create our own realities, by consciously learning to be very specific about where we give our attention and energy? Leave a comment-- share your experiences-- be part of the conversation!

(As always, all text and images by the author, unless otherwise credited. This is original content, created expressly for Whaleshares)
Created: 181125 17:01 PDT