Cheat Codes To Life

Attention; Life’s only true currency

What are you focused on right now? Or rather what are you ‘paying’ attention to? Why do we have to ‘pay’ attention yet we do not use any tangible form of currency?

Is attention the most valuable and highly sought-after intangible commodity in the world or better yet, is attention the only true currency? If not, Would corporations worldwide go to great lengths such as spending billions in advertising or using psychological tactics such as excessive repetition to force ideas down into our subconscious mind in an attempt to steal our attention?

Or the sneakiest one, using color psychology to elicit certain psychological effects on consumers. For instance, the color red stimulates appetite, of course, this has nothing to do with why most major fast-food chains all use the color red as their primary theme color 😉.

Nothing is for free!

Our attention is what buys us knowledge because the only way to learn anything is by ‘paying attention’ and we know very well that a lack of it when driving could make the difference between life and death.

 Our lack of attention is detrimental to anything in life and attention is what determines whether something flourishes and grows or it withers and dies. Just think about this for a moment, what determines whether someone makes a good parent, spouse, child, sibling, or friend? Isn’t it the quality of attention they can ‘pay’?

For any relationship to flourish a significant amount of attention has to be ‘paid’ or else that relationship is as good as dead. Your attention in exchange for a great relationship with loved ones. Don’t we all want someone to pay attention to us?

The quality of attention we received as children is what breaks or makes us. Most adults today can attest to the fact that they are still healing from wounds inflicted during their childhood as a result of a lack of the right attentive care they needed to grow and flourish as kids.

This is because choosing to give someone your quality attention is not only the highest expression of love but also cultivates a bond between the people involved. Beyond the intricacies of physical day-to-day life, attention has a deep and strange quality to it and is the purpose of this article. Let me explain.

The observer effect; the ‘weird effect’ of attention

One of the most fascinating and strangest quantum physics experiments ever recorded is the double-slit experiment popularly referred to as the observer effect. What still baffles scientists up to this day is they found out that the simple act of observation changes the nature of what is being observed.

When electrons, tiny particles of matter, are shot through a double-slit without the act of observation, they behave as waves but when the same experiment is repeated with the act of observation, the electrons behave as particles.

It is as if electrons decide to act differently as if they were aware they were being observed. That the act of measurement always disturbs what is being measured, meaning that nothing that is observed or paid attention to is unaffected by the observer. This also means that at the smallest scale matter exists as waves that is, potentials, not as particles as it was initially believed.

When we go deep enough, this realization has a massive implication on our understanding of the nature of reality and that is, everything exists as a potential and it is not until something is observed that it turns from a wave into a particle. Matter changes form just by the presence of awareness!

I understand you might not be totally sold on this idea which is fine but let this sink in for a moment; at the fundamental level, everything in the universe exists primarily as vibrating energy with different levels of frequency. Within this vibrating energy exists infinite possibilities, every possible outcome already exists and our attention is what turns things from a possibility into an actuality.

There’s no such thing as destiny or fate, you determine your destiny by your intentions, beliefs and what you pay attention to which influence your decisions and the actions you take. All these are not set in stone. You have the power to determine what you want your ‘destiny’ to be.

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So, thanks to quantum physics we know that it is not until something is observed that it turns from a possibility into an actuality, and also energy cannot be created or destroyed it only changes form. When you daydream or visualize and see yourself as having whatever it is that you want, you tune into a version of possibility that already exists.

In their purest form, thoughts are energy, you do not create something to imagine, it is a possibility that already exists. If you can imagine it, it already exists. Remember energy cannot be created or destroyed it only changes form. What this implies is that if we observe or pay attention to the future we want through visualization, the attention we pay by visualizing is what turns the possibility into an actuality.

 ‘Energy flows where attention goes’ Tony Robbins

As if that’s not weird enough when we get into the spiritual aspect of it, attention is an incredibly powerful force. Your attention is energy. Think of your attention as a battery, the more you give your attention to something, the more it is charged which Tony Robbins’s quote above sums up nicely; energy flows where attention goes! Why is it that 99% of the time you’ll always ‘catch’ someone staring at you from across the room? Or vice versa. When someone pays attention to you, they are literally ‘tapping’ you with energy, and remember, nothing that is observed is unaffected by the observer.

In an earlier post about the law of attraction, I wrote about how the law of attraction loves attention. That ‘whatever you focus on and give your attention to, expands and multiplies. Your attention is a source of life to any situation just as water is to seed in the ground.’ If you are familiar with the law of attraction concept, you know that what you focus on, that is, pay attention to, grows and multiplies.

For instance, the more you fester about the lack of something, the more lack of that thing you’ll experience. When you ‘pay’ attention, a barter trade has been made and according to universal laws of nature, you must reap or receive what you paid for. Your attention, which is the currency, in exchange for the thing focused on, good or bad. The moment you supply energy to something through your attention, that thing continues to self-perpetuate mirroring how you reacted to it long after you stopped focussing on it. Energy is always moving and changing, it cannot stop.

Life is full of endless possibilities. But these possibilities are all in the ‘dark’. Dark in the sense that every possible outcome already exists ‘in the dark’ and it is not until we focus our attention on it is when we are able to see that possibility. Think of your attention as a flashlight in this vast darkness, what you shine your attention on is the possibility that you’re able to perceive and experience.

What is currently taking up your attention in form of your life situations, is what you were trained to pay attention to as a child based on the environment you were exposed to. Simply put, if all possibilities exist here and now which they do, then you were trained to pay attention to the possibility of life you’re currently experiencing in form of subconscious beliefs. It is like being given the wrong instruction manual or the right one for the lucky ones! The moment you start to ‘shine’ your attention on what you want, which is a possibility that already exists in the ‘dark’, a new life begins to unveil itself.

We all have 86400 units of attention

That’s the number of seconds in a day, in case you’re wondering, I googled that! In every moment, something always has our attention and because our brains are designed to be survival tools as opposed to learning tools, we constantly scan the environment for threats. This means that we are instinctively wired to focus on what might go wrong or what is not working versus what we would like to happen. Inevitably we unconsciously spend most of our attention on unwanted situations in our lives.

The moment you wake up, you have your battery charged to 86400 units and by the time the day ends, you’ve spent ninety percent of this power to propel undesired situations by simply paying your attention to them. This is because, from the moment you wake up and regain your awareness, you have a narrative that automatically starts to enumerate in your mind. We all do. These narratives are the memories we hold and at the deepest level, they are deeply rooted in our subconscious beliefs. For instance, how you feel about your social standing, health, happiness, etc

This is replicated daily and is how we spend our attention. Our attention is the battery, the more we fixate it on what triggers us or what is not going right in our lives instead of what we want, the more we charge and propel those circumstances and this further keeps us stuck in the same cycle.

This does not mean that it’s wrong to feel certain negative emotions or we should turn a blind eye to any negative situation in our lives. We cannot escape from the dualistic nature of reality at least not in this 3D world. Every challenging situation is meant to teach us something and also bring the best out of us. We are supposed to use every challenging situation as a stepping stone to aid us in becoming the best versions of ourselves.

The ability to focus your attention is a real-life superpower

Because we are wired for survival, we have to learn to develop the power of attention to focus on what we want to override the instinctive nature of constantly scanning the environment for danger. It’s like charging your phone. Can you unplug the charger when your phone is only charged up to five percent and then start complaining about how you don’t have enough power to go online? You know you have to wait for it to charge to a hundred percent.

Similarly, you have to ‘charge’ what you desire up to a hundred percent. The trick here is learning to transcend your current circumstances and have a laser-sharp focus only on what you want. This doesn’t happen in a day nor is it going to be easy especially at first. It will feel like swimming against the current but with time it gets easier

Consider your subconscious mind to be a garden, your attention is the water and the seeds are your dreams. The more you focus your attention on them the more you energize and charge them. If you lack something in your life, it means you have not ‘paid’ enough attention to it or when you do, your focus is mainly on the lack of that thing.

If your attention is the battery and it charges anything you focus on, then attention is the only true currency that can buy the things money can and can not buy. If you’ve been following from the beginning of this article, you understand that it is safe to say that attention is what buys us wealth, health, fulfilling relationships, and life-enriching experiences. The moment you’ve tipped the scales by paying enough attention to something you desire, it begins to draw itself to you.

Three ways to master the skill of training your attention

Attention is a sticky business. when you pay attention to something, you not only ‘disturb’ it just by your perceptions and expectations as seen earlier, but your subconscious mind also starts to take notice of what you pay attention to and seeks to make it true in your life. Learning to train your attention is a real-life superpower and is at the core of what most spiritual teachings like meditation and mindfulness point to. The following is a list of HABITS that you can practice daily to harness the power of attention in your life.

1. Mentally Rehearse or visualize how you want your day/week to turn out

Many of us spend our energy worrying about how certain events will unfold. Thoughts such as ‘I don’t want to mess up in my upcoming interview’, ‘I hate my life’ or ‘I don’t want to be late’ and so forth siphon our energy and go on to create more of the same. Before you start your day or before an important event, spend at least 10-15 minutes mentally rehearsing exactly how you want the events in your day/week to play out or how you want your life to be in the next 12 months. Be sure to feel it in your body too.

2. Create vision boards

Pictures have powerful impressions on the subconscious mind. Cut out pictures of what you want from magazines or download them on the internet and stick them where you’ll see them regularly. Remember attention is the only true currency, so spend your attention seeing and feeling as already in possession of those things. Let the pictures inspire you to take the right action toward achieving your goal

3. Write down and review your goals.

Studies show that people who write down their goals are more likely to achieve them than people who don’t. Set an intention of what you want to achieve within a given time frame and whatever action you think might help you achieve that goal. When the time frame has elapsed, come back to your list and tick off what you accomplished.

That’s it for now folks see you on the next post and remember;

“If you don’t like something, take away its only power, Your attention“