Capture Your Attention

In this episode, we’re talking about how you can capture your own attention and use it to create the things that you want in your life. 

The thoughts we choose to return to again and again are the things that create our lives. So where does your brain return every day, every week, every month? What are those thoughts and stories that are getting your attention?

Where are you putting your attention?

We have a fixed amount of attention. It is also the most powerful resource we have, and we have total control over where we place our own attention.

The thoughts that you spend the most time ruminating on, pondering and remembering are the thoughts that will create your results. 

You want these thoughts to align with the life you want to create.

This is a no-judgment zone. There aren’t right or wrong thoughts. 

Simply observe. What are you thinking about most often? Is it creating what you want?

5 places to stop wasting your attention

Your brain is very efficient, and choosing to think a new thought requires more effort than returning to your old default thoughts. 

New thoughts can be uncomfortable for a while, but over time your brain will become more and  more efficient at thinking the new thoughts and putting your attention there.

These five thoughts are really easy to pay attention to and really easy places for our brain to return to again and again. But they probably aren’t productive or useful. In many cases, they are actually creating the exact opposite of what you really want in your life. 

Feeling disappointed with your body

Many of us learn to judge our bodies at a pretty young age, and those thought habits run deep. 

We can free up so much time and energy for the things that we want to create and do and become if we can stop spending so much time thinking that our body is wrong in the way it looks or functions. 

I like to think that the body God put me in is His business. Whatever characteristics or health conditions I came with are all part of my mission. I can put my attention on deciding to love the vehicle I’m in and move on with doing what I came here to do.

Regret

We spend a lot of time reliving our experiences, wishing they had gone a different way and creating alternative fantasy scenarios. But these scenarios are impossible. We can’t go back in time. We have no power in the past. 

We are trading our attention in the present (attention we could be giving to our future) for spending time with past events we cannot change.

You have more capacity to change something that hasn't been created yet, then something that is already done. 

Other peoples’ business

This is about all the time we spend thinking about other peoples’ choices, feelings and actions. When we worry so much about what somebody else might think about us, we don’t get the things we want. 

What other people think is none of your business. 

And you have no control over other people’s choices, whether you think they’re right or wrong. 

Instead, decide, what are you going to think, feel and do?

Distractions

There are so many things that distract us from the thoughts that will help us move forward. 

How much time do you spend every day on nothing? What are you consuming and using as a buffer to help you avoid negative feelings or distract you from your life? 

Social media and other entertainment outlets are in the business of capturing your attention, and they’re coming for every free second you have. The intent may not be malicious, but it can still have a detrimental effect in our lives. 

They are working for their company's growth. Are you working for your own growth? 

It's worth considering how much attention you’re willing to pay to things that aren't giving back to you. 

Self-doubt

We are spending our attention when we think about how we can’t, how we might fail, how it’s too hard or impossible to get the things we want. 

Are you spending your time thinking about what's not possible? How much time every day do you spend thinking that you can have what you want? How much time do you spend thinking that if you don't stop, you can achieve the results you want in your life? 

I know from personal experience that it is not easy to redirect your attention. Your brain has patterns and habits that are easy and comfortable. It’s going to feel like and enormous amount of effort to redirect your attention. 

Don’t give up.

You can return to the things that you want to pay attention to. Your life and all of your results are simply a reflection of where you have spent your attention, which is actually awesome news because if you want to change any of that, you simply have to move your attention from where it has been to where you want it to be. 

You’ll Learn:

• What makes your attention your most powerful resource
• How your thoughts are like pajama pants
• Why it’s worth it to shift your old thought patterns (even though it’s hard)
• 5 areas to stop wasting your attention on right now

Resources:

Episode 196: When Other People are Doing It Wrong

Transcription

Welcome to the 100% Awesome Podcast with April Price. You might not know it, but every result in your life is 100% because of the thought you think. And that, my friends, is 100% awesome.

Hello podcast universe and welcome to episode 197 of the 100% Awesome Podcast. I'm April Price and hey, every week we are getting a little bit closer to that 200th episode. If you haven't heard, I want to invite each of you to be on that episode, to be on the podcast and share something that you've heard here on the podcast that has helped you, that has changed your life in some way, that has created something different in your life, and maybe it's changed the way you think about yourself or your life or your possibilities or the people that you love. I would love to hear about that. We spend a lot of time here on the podcast talking about me, right? Like you're probably sick to death of hearing from me and I would so love to hear from you.

So, I want you to know it's really easy to submit a recording if you go down in the show notes of this episode and click the button that says "Share" for the 200th episode. If you click that, it will take you right to a place where you can record a little message and talk about what the podcast has meant to you. You can also text the number 200 to 66866. So, if you are listening to this on your phone and you want to get a link that's just texted to your phone, you just text the number 200 66866. And listen, I know that it can be scary, right? It can be scary to think about like sharing your thoughts with the podcast universe. So, I want to give you a little incentive and just let you know that everybody who submits a recording will be entered to win one of two $100 gift cards to Amazon.

So, if you submit a recording, I will put your name in the drawing and you can win one of these hundred dollar gift card. So, do it now while you're thinking about it, while you're brave, you just need 20 seconds of bravery to push record and do it today. The deadline for submissions is going to be Sunday, February 19th. I would love to hear your story. I would love to hear how things are different for you because of the thoughts and ideas that that we've shared here together on the podcast. So, I'm looking forward to hearing from you.

All right, so today I have a really helpful episode for you. Today we're going to be talking about our attention and capturing our attention and using it to create the things that we want in our lives. And I want to start by sort of framing this with a quote that I read the other day by Brianna Weast. And she wrote, I hope you will begin to realize how powerful the mechanism of your mind is, how your stream of consciousness is offering you a glimpse into a realm of possibilities, and that it is what you choose and what you return to. And what you begin to believe in that will transpire in the most surprising and beautiful ways. And the part that I really want to pull out for today's podcast is that line where she says it is what you choose and what you return to. Like what we return to in our mind over and over again. Those are the things that are creating our lives. And I want you to consider for a moment to just like, think about what is it that my brain returns to again and again.

Every day, every week, every month. What are the thoughts and the stories and the events that my brain just returns to again and again? And where am I spending my attention? And for a few minutes here today, I want you to consider, too, and really think about and evaluate where you spend the majority of your attention every day. Where your mind spends its time every day, every week. And if the way that you are currently spending that attention is creating what you want in your life. So, let's just start by defining attention, really. When we talk about like putting our attention somewhere, we're really talking about our thoughts, right? We're really talking about what are the sentences that I'm paying attention to every single day? Where am I using my mental energy? Like, what am I using it on to return to again and again? And I want you to really think about if that attention that you are spending, the things you are spending your time ruminating about, thinking about pondering, about remembering if those things are in alignment with the life you want to be creating, if they're in alignment with your goals and dreams.

If they're in alignment with what you want out of your life. And I want to be really careful here because I think sometimes we're just like, it's really easy for us to like, create a morality around us and to really say, Well, there are good things I can spend my attention on and there are bad things I can spend my attention on. And that, you know, as per usual from our brain, just creates a lot of shame and can actually keep us stuck. And so as you evaluate, I really want you to avoid putting any morality on it and just look at it from a lens of observation and question, Is this creating what I want?

So, I was thinking about this today when I was at the gym and I was thinking about my son and I have a new athletic challenge that we're working towards this year and it involves a lot of running and swimming. And like when I go to the gym on a regular basis, usually what I'm doing is weightlifting, right? But I have this new goal. And so, part of my time and attention during my workout now needs to go towards those goals, meaning I can't just spend my time lifting weights, I can't just spend my time like on the bench press or on the leg extension, like I have to spend some time running. If I'm going to reach this goal, I have to spend some time swimming, if I'm going to reach this goal. And this new goal requires me to move some of my attention from other areas of exercise to the areas that will help create these goals for me.

Now, neither one of these areas are better or worse, it's just that like if I have specific goals, I need to make sure that I spend my exercise attention on the activities that will move me towards my goal. And it is the same in your brain. Like there are a million things that you can put your attention on and there's not like the right ones. And the wrong ones are. The good ones are the bad ones. There's just really evaluating like, is this in alignment with where I want to go, what I want to create, what I want to become? Because your attention is a fixed quantity, like the amount of attention that you can pay to things is fixed. You only have so many seconds. You only have so much time here on Earth, and the amount of attention you spend on any one activity is fixed. Just like for me, an exercise like if I have a fixed amount of time to exercise and I'm working towards a very specific swimming and running goal, I need to spend my time there, like doing the activities that are going to be able to to build my skill in those areas. Your attention truly is the most powerful resource you have in the creation of your life right now.

What you see in your life is a result of the attention you have paid in the past. And if you are not living the life that you want to be living, if you're not like doing the things you want to be doing, it is really as simple as re allocating how you are spending your attention, how you are allocating the time you are spending on the sentences in your own mind.

Okay, so I want to start with the really good news about like evaluating and adjusting your attention. The great thing about our attention is that it is the place in our life over which we have absolute control. Like nobody else can interfere with our attention ever. You have 100% agency to choose what you're going to spend your time thinking about, what you're going to spend your time returning to. The bad news is that your brain is very efficient. And so over time, the things that we have spent our attention on, the things that we have thought many times your brain has created very fast neural pathways, thought habits, sort of like deeply engraved thought grooves that it like likes to go to over and over. And because of this efficiency, even though you do have absolute control over what you think, your brain is going to make, that choosing hard, it's going to make choosing to think something new feel like a lot of effort because it is not the most efficient. So, I wanted to give you a little metaphor for this.

I have this pair of pajama pants that I love, they are probably five or six years old. One year for Christmas, we all got pajama pants and for whatever reason, they just feel so comfortable. And I wear them almost every single day. Every single day when I change my clothes. I put on these same pajama pants and like they are worn thin and they are so comfortable because they are so worn, right? I have worn them and washed them like hundreds, maybe even thousands of times at this point. And the other day, like, I recognize, like they're just coming apart and there's just a huge hole on my backside, right? And I keep thinking like, oh, I have to break in a new pair of pajama pants. Like, and every time I put on a new pair, I have new pairs. But every time I put them on, they're just not comfortable right. They're just like a little bit resistant, and they don't they aren't as soft and they are as like, conformed to my body. And I keep thinking like, okay, I just need to like, wear it enough and watch enough to kind of break it in. But my body just wants to go back to the comfortable pair, right? Even though there's a hole in it now, like it just wants to go back to the comfortable pair.

And the thought of breaking in a new pair is really uncomfortable. And in so many ways, this is like our attention, Like you have really comfortable places where your attention goes, like your brain is used to being there. It's easy to get there. It feels comfortable. It feels normal. Your brain thinks it almost automatically. And when you think about putting your attention in new places, there's some resistance there. It feels uncomfortable. It's not quite as like, easy, right? And it doesn't feel like you belong in those thoughts like you did in the old ones.

And so, like this, your brain will make it uncomfortable. But I promise you that really deciding where you want to put your attention and putting it in a new place, it will feel uncomfortable at first. But over time, your brain will become more and more efficient at thinking the new thoughts and putting your attention there. And the more you do that, the more the results in your life will change. So, I specifically want to talk about five things that I think are really easy to pay attention to and really easy places for our brain to return to again and again, but which actually probably aren't productive or useful. And in many cases, they are creating the exact opposite of what you really want in your life. And I really want you, as I talk about these five things, to have you consider how much time and attention you place on them. And again, not because they're wrong, but because keeping your attention there, keeping your mental energy and returning to those thoughts again and again, maybe keeping you exactly where you are now instead of where you want to be.

So, the first thing I want you to consider is how much attention you are paying to your body. And especially being disappointed or frustrated with your body. Last year, I heard an interview with Emma Thompson and she was talking about, like, how much time and energy she has spent over her lifetime, thinking about her body and worrying about her body when, like, it just wasn't worth her time and energy, right? Because like, so much of our body is outside of our control, It's it's genetics, it's gravity. It's like time and aging and even the things that we eat and the ways that we've exercised, like most of the time, what we're worrying about is in the past, we can't change those decisions that we've made in the past, and we're just constantly spending our time looking at our body and thinking that it is wrong.

And Emma Thompson was talking about how she said, I just can't look in a mirror without wanting to improve something and just how boring that is. What a waste of time and energy. And she said, our life's purpose. And she said, I think I started hating my body when I was about 14, I think those neural pathways are kind of well carved into my soul. And then Stephen Colbert, who was interviewing her, was like what would you tell your 14 year old self or what would you tell another 14 year old? And she said, Don't waste your time. Don't waste your life's purpose worrying about your body. This is your vessel. It's your house. It's where you live. There is no point in judging it. Absolutely no point. And I really want you to think about that, like how much time you spend concentrating on your body and the parts of it that are wrong. And most of that is outside of your control. Not only that, but even when you make changes, your brain still returns to what's wrong about it.

And I think we can free up so much time and energy for our real life's purpose. We can free up so much time and energy for the things that we want to create and do and become. If we can stop, like spending so much time thinking that our body is wrong. And I think this applies not only to how your body looks, but to the way that it functions and the health that you have. All of that is like, as I say, it's God's business. The body that he put me in is his business.

Like whatever characteristics it has, whatever health conditions that I came with, that was all part of my mission. Instead of spending my life wishing it was somehow different. Like I can put my attention on just deciding to love the vehicle I'm in, love the house I'm in, as Emma Thompson says, and move on with like doing what I came to do. Like we needed a body to be able to have this experience. But then, like, we spend so much of our time here, so much of our visit here on Earth, just worrying about the vehicle that we're in, the body that we're in with, that was never the point. You can decide that your body is exactly as it should be. You can decide, how am I going to take care of it, but you can really give up how much attention you spend. Worrying about the things that you cannot change.

The next thing that we spend a lot of attention on is our past. We spend a lot of time and regret. We spend a lot of time reliving our experiences. It's not changing them. We're just reliving them and wishing they had gone a different way. And we spend a lot of time creating alternative fantasy scenarios in our head, fantasy scenarios that are impossible because we can't go back. We have no power in the past. But here we are trading our attention in the president and the attention we could be giving to our future, spending time back there in the parts that we cannot change. And again, it is a waste of your time and energy. I really want you to think about like your past as like a rock. Meaning like, I can't change that. But I have clay in my hand and instead of is trying to, like, form the life in front of me or form my future and, you know, with the clay in front of me, I'm back there trying to, like, manipulate the rock.

And like another example I was thinking about, like, cement, right? Like cement that has been poured and dried. Like, there's no point in trying to change it. Like it is cement, right? In the present moment, you're standing there in front of wet cement, which means, like you, you can manipulate some things. You still have some choices, you can move things around. But even more powerful is to recognize, like, if I'm intentional, I can create like a future in which, like I design where the cement goes, I have like more capacity to change something that hasn't been created yet than something that is already done. When you find yourself returning again and again and putting your attention on the past, like I want to invite you to the place where you have some ability to change things, which is here in the present and of course, in the future.

The third thing that we spend a lot of attention on is what I call other people's business. And that just means other people's choices, what other people think and what other people feel and what other people do. We spend so much of our lives like not getting the things we want because we're so worried about what somebody else might think about us. And that is none of our business. We spend a lot of time thinking about like how other people's choices are the right ones or the wrong ones, or how they're impacting us instead of spending attention. Where we have some control, which is in our own lives deciding. Okay, but what am I going to think? What am I going to feel? What am I going to do? We spent a lot of time talking about this last week in the podcast, so you can go back and listen to that. But it's just important to remember that like, it's so much more useful for you to put your attention on your own thoughts. Thoughts that will create love for them instead of noticing how they're making it impossible. I want you to notice that, especially with these first three things I've talked about your body, your past, other people's business. Notice how your brain is spending its precious attention where it has the least amount of control, right? In some cases, it has zero control.

It's zero control about your past, and it has zero control about other people and their choices. And yet how much time and attention are we spending there? And if you want to empower yourself, you have to spend your attention differently. You have to spend your attention where you have control. Okay, I have two more areas of consideration. I want you to think about how you're spending your attention.

So, the fourth one is to really consider how much attention I'm paying to things that that don't matter, that are just a distraction. Especially when it comes to like social media and entertainment. And there are just so many distractions for our attention. I want you to just think about how much time and attention do I spend every day on nothing and things that aren't creating, that are just consuming, where I'm just using those buffers and that entertainment to like, help me avoid feeling negatively or to distract me from my life. And I want you to think about how your attention is so valuable. It is the new currency. There's a guy named Bo Burnham who kind of created his career on YouTube, and he was on this panel talking about companies that make money trying to get our attention. He said, they're coming for every second of your life that's what these companies are coming for. And it's not because anyone is bad and it's not because anyone in this company has evil plans or is trying to do this or even doing it consciously it's because these companies like Twitter and YouTube and Instagram, they went public and they went to shareholders. So, they have to grow their entire models are based off of growth. They cannot stay stagnant. Twitter grows four or 5 billion last year, and it is in the red. It is unprofitable. It has to get more of you no matter how nice it's trying to be. All that they're trying to get is more engagement from you.

We used to colonized land. That was the thing that you could expand into. And that's where money was made. We colonized the entire earth. There was no other place for businesses and capitalism to expand into. And then they realized human attention. They are now trying to colonize every minute of your life. That is what these people are trying to do. Every single free moment you have is a moment. You could be looking at your phone. They could be gathering information to target ads to you. And that's what's happening. So, like, as much as we want to have really good conversations and try to humanize the conversations, the mechanism of the business is rolling towards that just because of the market it's coming for every free second you have. And I think it's just so powerful to recognize that and to see that the the intent is not malicious, but it can still have a detrimental effect in our lives that in fact, their growth is based on getting more and more of your attention. And I want you to think about they are working for their company's growth. Are you working for your own growth? Are you putting your attention towards the things that are going to create your growth? You are the one that has to decide and you are the one that has to fight for it. It is so easy. To put her attention in places where it doesn't matter, where it doesn't give back to us where it's just consumption. And that doesn't make us bad or wrong. But it will impact the results we are able to create in our lives. It is worth considering how much attention. I'm willing to pay to things that aren't giving back to me.

The last one that I want you to think about and to consider is how much attention you give, self-doubt. So, like, it is February, right? And I always say that January is the season of self-improvement, and February is the season of self-doubt. And like, we have such great plans and goals and dreams in January and by February, like all of our attention is just focused on how we can't have what we want. And listen, I've been in this boat like, so much recently, like I have spent the last few weeks having, like, spending so much attention, questioning my ability, questioning my decisions, questioning like, the things that I've decided to create this year and like, and really questioning, like, whether or not I even can.

And I think it's so important to, like, point out like that I'm just I'm using my attention and I'm returning again and again to focus on how I can't how I might fail, how it's impossible for me to get the things that I want. How it's too hard, and even the things that I'm working on and making progress on. And I notice how much attention my brain gives to being critical of that, critical of the things that I produce and create. Like, I'll work all day, and then at the end of the day, my brain is just like, all of that was terrible and it was a complete waste of time. And we are spending more of our attention noticing how we can't how we never been able to do it, how we might not be able to do it, how we might fail, how impossible it is. And I want you to think about that for a minute and ask yourself, are you spending more of your time thinking about why you can't or about why you can? Are you spending more of your time thinking about what's not possible? Or more of your time thinking about what is. You have to intentionally choose where you put that attention. How much time every day do you spend thinking that you can have what you want? How much time do you spend thinking that if you don't stop, you can achieve the results you want in your life? How much attention are you giving your doubts? And even if you can just shift that 10%, 10% this week, 10% next week, those shifts in attention towards your possibility will make a difference in what you create in your life.

So, those are the five things that I want you to consider moving your attention away from. All right, our body, your past, other people's business, our consumption of nothing, and self doubt. So, you may have other things, you may notice you're putting attention on other things that I didn't talk about here. But look around your life and notice what you are putting your attention on. And if it is creating what you want or not. I just want to offer you one word of caution. This sounds so easy from behind the microphone, but I know that is not I am trying to do it in my own life. And I know that it is not. It is not easy to redirect your attention and put your attention on things that your brain doesn't want to notice. Your brain loves efficiency. It has patterns. It has thought habits. It has attention habits as places that are easy and comfortable. And it's going to feel as you move your attention, it's going to feel like an enormous amount of effort to redirect that attention.

Your brain is going to want to go back to what is easy, but don't give up. As much as your brain returns to the things that it wants to pay attention to, you can return to the things that you want to pay attention to. This is one reason why I love having a coach to remind me where I want to put my attention and to help me when it feels like my thought habits are just too easy and that like purposely putting my attention somewhere else feels too hard. Like your attention is the most powerful resource you have because it is creating your reality, your life, and all of your results are simply a reflection of where you have spent your attention.

It's actually awesome news because if you want to change any of that, you simply have to move your attention from where it has been to where you want it to be. And that, my friends, is 100% awesome. I love you for listening. Don't forget to share your own story on the 200th episode of the podcast by clicking the link in the show notes or by texting the number 200 266866. You'll automatically be entered to win a $100 Amazon gift card. I would love to hear about you and the thoughts and stories and ideas we've shared here that have helped you in your life. I love you for listening and I'll see you next week.

Thanks so much for joining me on the podcast today. If you want to take the things I've talked about and apply them in your life so that you can love your Earth life experience. Sign up for a free coaching session at Aprilpricecoaching.com. This is where the real magic happens and your life starts to change forever as your coach. I'll show you that believing your life is 100% awesome is totally available to every one of us. The way things are is not the way things have to stay. And that, my friends is 100% awesome!