Our world wants to distract you, or really, what it’s doing is trying to steal your attention. Try going anywhere without being bombarded by a million different things trying to get your attention. It’s the constant notifications on your phone, the signs and billboards on the street, the radio, the logos on cars and on people’s clothing, everything is trying to get your attention, and this is the reason why: your attention is valuable.
Companies spend BILLIONS trying to get your attention because if they can direct how you think, then they can get you to give them your resources. You can have the greatest product in the world, but if no one gives it any attention, then you don’t sell a darn thing and your product doesn’t create any impact on the world.
Where your attention goes, your energy flows, and we need to wake up and realize that if our attention is so valuable that multi-billion dollar companies will compete for it, then we need to direct that value back into our own lives.
When you PAY attention to a thing, you are INVESTING energy into it, and that determines what kind of RETURNS you are receiving from life. So many people have no idea how valuable their attention is, and the stronger the ability to direct that attention, the more valuable it is.
Our world wants you to have squirrel-brain, so that your attention span is so short and weak that you will basically go any which direction they distract you in. When your attention is on yourself and on being a better person, then you’re not being a very good consumer, and that’s bad for business.
Consumers pay attention to whatever advertisers want them to pay attention to and their return for their life energy is a bunch of stuff that doesn’t really matter too much, but it made someone else rich.
You want a rich life? Pay attention to what you are paying attention to. What are you investing your time and energy into? Stop paying attention to what other people are doing. Stop using your attention to make other people rich.
Make your own life rich by paying attention to what matters like being a better person, loving your family, and building something that you can be proud of.
If you want peace and contentment, then pay attention to what really matters. The people I know who have the most satisfaction out of life and who are the most at peace with who they are as a person are not the people who are paying attention to social media, or to politics, or to what material things that they don’t have.
The people with the most peace and prosperity are the people who pay attention to their own character development, to their personal relationships, and to something that brings their lives meaning.
What you pay attention to, and how you pay attention to it is so important. Remember: paying attention is a mental investment, and what you put in is what you get out.
For example, paying attention to others when they talk to you is a huge investment in your relationship with that person. So many of us, and I am definitely guilty of this, are really just waiting for an opportunity to jump in and talk about ourselves when we are having a conversation.
We want other people to pay attention to us and to what we have to say, which means that our attention is self-centered and when your attention is self-centered, well, then you miss out on the world around you. You fail to learn.
The next time that someone you care about is talking to you, actually pay attention to them. Put down your phone. Stop thinking about that new thing you want to buy or that Tik Tok video you saw 5 seconds ago, and actually focus on the person in front of you.
Stop only paying attention to the conversation for the sake of finding your opportunity to blather about yourself and listen to what that other person has to say.
That person will tell you so much about them if you would just pay attention to what they are saying, how they say it, and to their body language. By paying attention, you learn about them and you invest in your relationship.
When I talk to my wife, you best believe I’m giving her all my attention because when I do, I will learn all I need to know about who she is and what she wants and needs. And when I really listen and give her all of my attention, then I am armed with everything I need to know to make her feel safe and loved and to strengthen our marriage.
I know some guys who only give their wives their full attention when they are fighting or when they finally get what they want from her. That’s not a marriage. Some men will pay more attention to their phones and video games and football then they do to the women in their lives and wonder why their relationships with women are terrible.
I know people who think that they don’t have any meaningful friendships who also never truly pay attention to their friends when they are with them and who don’t pay enough attention to how they are acting to realize sometimes they are the shitty friend.
When you pay attention to the improvement of your own character and not to what other people are doing, you can make yourself better and prevent the heartbreaks in life that come from when you lacked the strength of character to do what was right.
Maybe if you didn’t pay attention to how other people look, and you payed attention to how you eat and exercise and take care of yourself, then you won’t do the shitty things that insecure people do that ruin relationships.
I know there have been more times in my life than I would like to admit when I have been so focused on how someone else hurt or wronged me that I failed to realize that I had been a significant contributor to the problem, and even more embarrassingly, I made their wrongdoing an excuse to do wrong myself.
All because I focused my attention on those bad feelings, when instead I could’ve been looking for opportunities to fix things or to pay attention to my own actions and avoid the pitfalls of compromising my own character.
Maybe if you didn’t pay attention to what other people have, and you paid attention to what you do have and to what you are building towards, then you could actually be grateful and not feel so miserable all the time. Maybe then you wouldn’t buy things to feel adequate and you could pay attention to making your money grow instead of spending on superficial things.
Maybe if you didn’t give a screen all of your attention for the sake of entertainment, and you paid attention to your own education, then you wouldn’t feel so inadequate or incompetent when you are in the company of great men and women.
Maybe if you paid attention to how that entertainment made you think, then you would understand why you’re lustful or self-indulgent and you would be inspired to find better ways to fill your free time that doesn’t fill your mind with lowly thoughts.
Maybe if you didn’t pay attention to the news or spend your time scrolling through toxic social media feeds, and you paid attention to developing a skill or to reading inspiring literature, then you wouldn’t be so depressed all the time. Maybe if you paid more attention to your hobbies you wouldn’t be sitting with that hollow feeling scrolling on social media gives you.
Maybe if you paid attention to what you were doing, and not giving your time and energy to thinking negative thoughts, then you wouldn’t have to go back and fix your mistakes all the time and feel like an idiot. Sometimes the problem isn’t that you’re dumb; its that you can’t pay attention long enough to do things right.
Maybe if you actually payed attention to your problems long enough to figure out what is actually going wrong instead of focusing on your negative thoughts and emotions concerning the problem, then you would actually start fixing issues in your life.
Some people aren’t clumsy, they just don’t pay attention to what they are doing. Some people aren’t dumb, they just don’t pay attention when they should be learning. Some people aren’t depressed, they are just paying attention to the wrong things.
One of the virtues of the Eclectic Method is the Virtue of Industry which teaches us to employ all of our resources wisely, to focus our resources and direct our actions towards the creation of something meaningful, towards something that serves our purpose.
Well, you can have all the resources in the world, but if you’re not paying attention to where your resources are going and to how they are being used, then they won’t help you accomplish anything of significance. You have to employ your attention in a direction of meaning for you, or someone else will use it for their own purposes.
The people who pay attention to what is important in life are miles ahead of everyone else. They’re like the guy who started investing as a teenager and is a millionaire in his 30’s because they are investing, but we’re not talking about the stock market. They are investing their most valuable resource into what matters, and as a natural consequence, the things that matter improve exponentially.
Paying attention pays you back, and what you get back all depends on what you are investing your attention into. That is the mental economics of paying attention in its simplest form.
Like what you read? Subscribe to get the latest content!
Support the Eclectic Method and get cool stickers in return! Click the banner or the link below to shop on the Eclectic Method store at stickermule.com and get a $10 credit! Search @theeclecticmethod and browse for unique designs and artwork created by the author.
https://www.stickermule.com/theeclecticmethod
Related Content:
theeclecticmethod.com 