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It's a Matter of Attention

“Can I have your attention, please?”

It’s the plea by virtually every public address announcer prior to an important message. It’s the call to order in many classrooms across the country prior to instruction beginning. It’s often even the request of flight attendants leading into the instructions before takeoff. 

Of course, it’s not only the public address announcers, classroom teachers, and flight attendants that are beckoning for our attention. Our jobs, families, and friends all want a piece of it too. That doesn’t even take into account the attention things like our phones, computers, and televisions clamor for.

We have just as many internal calls for attention: our ego, our insecurities, and our emotions to name a few. There’s certainly no shortage of options in which to pour our attention.

This choice, where to guide our attention, will have a significant impact on the direction of our life.

Why Should We Care?
See, what gets our attention grows.

If we give our attention to our job, we get promotions. If we give our attention to our family, we grow our relationships with our spouse and kids. If we give our attention to our friends, we share in numerous experiences together that bring us joy.

If it seems simple, that’s because it is. 

If our attention is devoted to the apps on our phones, Netflix series, or favorite YouTube videos the direction of our life will look starkly different than if our attention is given to serving others, maximizing our potential, or honoring the gifts we’ve been given. We make choices, then our choices make us.

Understanding the simplicity of the matter is important. As long as we remain indifferent, or unaware, with regards to our attention we will be prisoners of our circumstances and the people around us. By becoming intentional with what we choose to give our attention to we take control of our lives and create a consistency we can build on.

REAL TALK - Action Steps
As simple as it seems, directing our attention is very difficult to do consistently. There are multi-million dollar marketing companies with the sole mission of diverting it. The first step to taking control of our attention is eliminating the things that should get none of it. The external ones are fairly obvious, some of which were mentioned above, so we’ll focus on a few of the internal draws for our attention that become unintentional and destructive quickly. Here are a few to begin with:

• Judgment 
  
  • It’s not our job to judge the intentions of others, yet we spend an enormous amount of time thinking about it. Giving our attention to reality and responding accordingly is a much more effective use of our attention. Judgment focuses our attention on others, who we have no control over. Acceptance allows us to maintain our attention and direct it to more productive things for ourselves and others.
    

• Complaining
  
  • So what, it’s raining? So what, it’s cold outside? So what, the store is closed? We give our attention to some of the most random, useless complaints imaginable. No amount of complaining changes the reality. Get an umbrella, put on some gloves, or try another store. But, whatever we do, we need to stop giving our attention to complaints that change nothing. The biggest issue with complaining isn’t usually the complaint itself, it’s the other thing we’re not giving attention to because we’re consumed with complaining.
    

• Excuses
  
  • Excuses only arise when the desired outcome isn’t produced. When this is the case, rather than giving our attention to all the trivial reasons we did not attain the sought after result we would be better served to direct our attention to the necessary changes in the future. Asking what we learned or how we can be better next time is a much better use of our attention than searching for an excuse. Every excuse lives in the past. Attention is a commodity of the present.
    

Our attention is one of our most precious gifts. It’s how we express love and how we demonstrate our priorities. The allotment is limited however, and if we don’t choose intentionally others will choose for us. 

Checkout Surrender the Outcome on Amazon and order The Score That Matters with Ryan Hawk & Brook Cupps before its release in March 2024. The latest blog from Blue Collar Grit can be found here!