Focus your attention

Pay attention to yourself. It is very easy when life is so full of what we need to get done – our home lives, relationships, work – to avoid paying attention to what we are thinking and feeling. By this I don’t mean that we aren’t aware of how we think and feel about what is happening in our lives, but that we aren’t paying attention to the kinds of emotions and thoughts that we are having.

For most of my life I was fixated on my responses to each and every situation on a case by case basis and when I had a reaction I would give it my full attention, think about it, talk about it with others until it grew and grew. Unfortunately I was extremely good at doing this when the situation that I faced was one I had had a negative response to. My attention was firmly on my responses to life and I believed that this was what I should be doing, how I should be reacting. I went from situation to situation reacting, reviewing, analysing and drawing conclusions, mostly negative ones.

It never occurred to me to pay attention to my responses, let alone to think of them as something that I could change. I considered my responses as nothing but the way that I did things, the way that I as a person responded to things and that this was surely like that because of my personality. I was just ‘like that’ as a person. These responses were just me being me.

It was a big day when I started to pay more attention to my thoughts and feelings and once I did I realised that I was thinking and feeling within a framework, a pattern of thinking and feeling that was almost identical in every situation as well as the fact that it was mostly learned. I learned it when I was growing up, at home, and at school in my peer group and it had never occurred to me that I could choose something different. By paying attention to my responses to myself, others and situations I experienced, I realised that there was another way of approaching things. This may seem like something silly, the fact that I didn’t know that I could choose my approach, that I could change my approach to myself, others and the events in my life.

How could I have any idea that things could be different? I was surrounded by people who thought the same way as I did and none of my responses were ever challenged. Life hadn’t given me any feedback about what this way of thinking and feeling was doing to me and my life. I am not a big fan of people saying ‘you just have to think positively’ when in fact changing one’s perspective is not as simple as that. Changing one’s perspective – which has all kinds of benefits in one’s life (something that I will be writing about at a later date) – is something that must be done through a process of pay full attention, monitoring our thoughts and feelings, so that we can move quietly and slowly in the direction of a softer, kinder, more generalised response.

I spoke in absolutes and I said things like, ‘I am NEVER speaking to him again’, or ‘I ALWAYS say stupid things like that’. Using words such as never, always, nothing or every (one, thing, where) were preventing me from seeing alternatives. My all or nothing approach caused me pain until I started to look for less extreme responses. When I spoke about things I began to give myself time to consider what it was I was really feeling and thinking, not giving the extreme version but instead allowing myself the grey area, I gave myself permission to say things like ‘I don’t know’ and ‘I’ll have to think about it’ when I was thinking about situations and when I spoke to others. Although I probably came across as more unsure of myself, I began to feel more relaxed, more in touch with the ebb and flow of the feelings that I was having and I became kinder to myself and to others as a result.

Paying attention to the way that we think and feel and then slowly moving in the direction of a different viewpoint, new and alternative responses can bring many, many benefits to our lives. All of these are things that can bring more peace of mind and calm to our lives.

#selfacceptance #lifestyle