You create more of anything you give your attention to. Have you heard this before? If so, have you given any thought to what it really means? Attention sounds like a straightforward concept, but it can be slippery, because attention is something we are using all the time. Most people do not have much control over where they place their attention, and the result of this is that the results they create seem random or haphazard.
We cannot always control what comes into our experience, what our senses perceive or even the thoughts that run through our minds. The element of choice comes up in how much of our attention we give the diverse elements that make up our experience. We may not, for instance, be able to avoid paying attention to traffic around us when we are stuck in a slow lane. We can, however, decide whether or not to make this our main focus for the next ten or twenty minutes, perhaps running the familiar "I'm going to get tense and annoyed because I'm in a traffic jam" program. We might decide to try an alternative, and use this experience to practice relaxing our minds, or perhaps trying to find a creative solution to a problem at work.
Attention is more than just what we notice with our senses. It's also the emotional connection we make to these stimuli. Thus, we can see the same scene every day and change our focal point, or attention simply by changing the way we react to it, as the above example regarding a traffic jam illustrates. Very often, the nature of an issue, whether it relates to your relationships, health, finances or other aspect of life, is defined by how we use our attention.
For example, suppose you have a new technological gadget, say a computer. While many people today are familiar with the basic workings of personal computers, most of us are not experts in every aspect of how a computer works. Suppose you start operating your new computer and find that you can't figure out how to operate one particular program. You may become frustrated at the lack or quality of instructions for this program and find that you do nothing but keep trying the same procedures over and over, and still can't get it to work. You call the support number and can't seem to find anyone who can explain it to you in language you can understand.
It may very well be, if you consider this matter, that the program you can't figure out is really rather trivial. You are perfectly capable of doing 99% of what you need to do on this computer, but if you become fixated on the one thing you can't do, you may find yourself getting nothing accomplished for many hours. I'm not saying you should just give up in such a case, but the point is that if you spend too much time giving your attention to what you can't do, or what presents an obstacle, you will be ignoring the many things that work smoothly. You may be far more productive if you put the problematic issue on hold until you can talk to someone who can help you or find a book or web site that is helpful.
If you put your attention on what is working well in your life, you will find more instances of it. The nature of life is that one thing always leads to another, and usually to something of a similar vibration. If you place your attention on problems, or on things that are not working well, you will attract more such things into your life.
By focusing on what does work, you will find that eventually you will find ways to fill in the gaps on those things that are not working right now.
This holds true for every area of your life. Some things are always working better than others. Certain issues take time to resolve, and to keep focusing on something that cannot be changed right now is only going to make you feel frustrated. By focusing on what is working right now, you will find that more and more of your life fits into this category.
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