“What you pay attention to grows. If your attention is attracted to negative situations and emotions, then they will grow in your awareness.”
~ Deepak Chopra
As a follow up to last week’s post on languishing and a number of IRL conversations about it, I’ve redoubled my efforts to figure out how to help us all get out of the blah.
I was driving in the car last weekend, where I do a lot of my contemplative thinking, simply noticing my moods. The day was overcast at first and my energy was a bit blah. The sunshine broke through the clouds and I saw patches of blue sky. Immediately my mood was lifted.
I’ve known this about myself for years. I try to get outside every chance I can and I like to have my spaces filled with natural light. Unfortunately I can’t control the weather.
I was also listening to a random assortment of music on my car stereo. The songs reminded me of sad times, good times, silly times. Much like the weather, my moods were matching my music selection.
We already know the impact music and weather can have on our moods and I try to leverage them to elevate me out of the doldrums whenever possible.
The question that ran through my head was If I’m in a blah mood, why would I chose to listen to music that matches my mood? Why wouldn’t I try to only listen to songs that make me feel upbeat, positive and hopeful?
Why would I?
Taking that thought further, Why would I choose to let anything into my life that pulls me down when I really want and need to be uplifted?
There’s the million dollar question!
There is an idea I learned when I was taking my motorcycle training class, Look Where You Want To Go.
For motorcycles, this is the simple idea that your body (and therefore bike) will follow the weight of your head and body. So if you turn your head and look at where you want to go, then you pretty much go there. As I was talking through this concept with my mother (Hi, Mom!) she noted that the same is true for driving. Simple idea.
Look Where You Want To Go.
Tony Robbins, American author and coach, has a saying “Where Focus Goes, Energy Flows”. This is the same principle behind the motorcycle lesson and Deepak Chopra’s quote above. In a lot of facets of life, your energy follows your attention.
A favorite print of mine from Story People is called Dark Thoughts. It beautifully highlights the absurdity of paying attention to dark and negative things.
All of these quotes and ideas rolled through my head in rapid succession, reminding me to remember what I already know. Pay attention to your attention.
If we focus on negative things and indulge our moodiness, it can have the effect of simply growing that area. When we decide we want a different outcome, we can start by paying attention to where our attention goes.
What This Means To Me
Clear Out The Negativity
- I’ve stepped away from social media a lot in recent years already but when I find it’s pulling me down, I am committed to just walking away.
- Stay away from the news. I started this several years ago when I realized that most news reports weren’t relevant to my mental well being (more on that later).
- Stop engaging in toxic and negative conversations. In hard times we tend to commiserate but it feeds our own negative feelings. I am politely refusing to participate in complaining. This includes listening to it. I want to support people but I have some criteria (see below).
- Pay attention to my attention – when I start to go negative I am committed to offsetting each negative thought with three positive ones. These might be gratitudes, affirmations, or observations. The goal is to do this in rapid succession so it gets incrementally easier each time.
Focus My Thoughts
Asking myself (and you) to step away from things which are negative may feel like I’m telling to bury your head in the sand. There are certainly things we need to know. Perhaps I want to find out a particular piece of information and when I search, I know I’m going to pulled into the emotional traps of reading about tragedy or angry people’s opinions. Now I make sure I’m very clear about what piece of information I want and I seek it with precision.
In a world of clickbait and salacious headlines I have to remind myself multiple times NOT to fall down a media rabbit hole. The more often I do it, the easier it gets. I have to pay attention to my attention and monitor it.
Action, Outcome, and Detachment
I find it helpful to focus on action and outcome as I try to cleanse my world of unnecessary negativity. Let’s face it, life has some negative sides to it and maybe some of it NEEDS to be in our life though I’d bet far less than we think.
Let’s say there’s a piece of world news that feels really negative. My first question is, Does me knowing this or not knowing this change anything?
Let’s say there’s a natural disaster somewhere. If knowing about it has no real impact, then I skip it. If it is relevant and knowing it DOES make a difference, then I pay attention to it.
Obviously you have to be exposed to the information to be able to judge. So when I say “pay attention” here I mean whether or not you let the information linger. Otherwise I’m merely letting it go in one ear to determine if it gets any mind real estate or if it passes through to the other ear.
If I have a friend going through a hard time obviously I want to be there to listen and support. My line here is that I don’t want to commiserate. When the opportunity presents itself I want to ask about outcome. Where do you want to be? How do you want to get there? How will you/we take actions to make a change?
If these questions can’t be entertained and answered, then it’s a watch out. I need to be careful not to get sucked into the negativity and I have to practice detachment. That probably means a little distance as well.
Reward Or Goal
Incentive is important for behavior changes so I like to pick some sort of reward or goal. It helps provide a focal point for the attention that has been running rampant these last few months. My reward is adventure so I’m focused on planning trips and outings for the future so I have something clear and tangible to look forward to.
I also bought the most ridiculously sparkly sneakers because they make me happy, they bring a smile to other people, and every time I look down and see them, they remind me to smile. They come in a variety of colors if you want to join me in sparkling up the world!
I’ve been employing these methods very consciously for the last five days and I’m finding that it is making a difference. I am paying attention to my attention and refocusing it on positive things whenever I see it stray. It’s not a total fix but these concepts and practices have gotten me farther away from the stuck feeling of languishing.
If you find these work for you or you have strategies I haven’t tried, please comment on this post. We can use all of the help we can get!
