What’s Got Your Attention?
Being a marketing guy, I’ve spent a lot of my time understanding how to get your attention. I think it was Seth Godin who once said, “In an attention economy, marketers struggle for attention. If you don’t have it, you lose.”
It’s true.
Modern life is overloaded with demands on your attention. Right now you’ve got: people trying to sell you stuff, work to do, people to call, new messages on Facebook and Twitter to read, people trying to sell you MORE stuff, e-mail to check, TV to watch and errands forget about. Everyone has too many things to do, and too little time to do them all.
So what’s my point, right?
Well, for awhile, I’ve also been keenly interested in how people achieve results. If you spend enough time studying this topic you’ll soon realize it all comes down to what the mind focuses on at any given time. In other words, what you give your attention to. However, it’s not just external distractions that fight for our attention. To eliminate the outside noise we can shut off email notifications and take the phone off the hook, but what remains is your own thoughts.
That’s right.
The biggest obstacle to achieving results is you, specifically your thoughts. In the past, you have been responsible for creating what I call “the software of your own mind” through repeated attention to certain thoughts, both helpful and harmful. The problem? When it comes time to take action or work towards a goal that might improve your life, sometimes these harmful or non-helpful thoughts come into your mind and take over, often unconsciously.
Changing your mental software
Over the last 12 months, I’ve been experimenting with meditation and yoga. Not because I want to shave my head, wear a robe, and go live in the mountains (not that there’s anything wrong with that), but mainly as a means to “hack my mind.”
Yes, “hack” my own mind.
Meditation and yoga provides me with a reliable and systematic method for creatively rewriting my current limiting mental software. When I sit regularly and meditate I’m actually training your mind to direct its attention consciously for long periods of time.
When your mind is one-pointed or focussed, you gain access to your creative side. In my experience, I get more things done in less time with better outcomes.
Don’t believe me?
Think of a laser. When you take units of light energy (photons) and focus them in one direction it creates a laser beam powerful enough to cut through steel. When you learn to focus your attention for long periods of time, you apply the principle of the laser to the energy field of your mind.
By learning to focus your entire attention (mental energy) toward a single object of consciousness (i.e being present) you have the potential to do great things.
photo credit: toolstop