Why your attention is more important than you think.

The awareness of your mind’s attention is itself a mystery that most don’t understand and yet it largely shapes your character more than you probably realize.

Our brain is continuously evolving which means that our perception of ourselves is malleable as a result. As we consume content, our brains form, prune, create, and update connections between neurons and regions of the brain. I’d like to focus on how attention plays a role in these processes.

The state of attention that we all enter when selectively focusing on some discrete element of information by definition means we ignore other perceivable information.

Here’s a thought experiment to illustrate this notion. Imagine a story that is told to a group of 5 people and ponder the many different segments, details, concepts, and thoughts that each person allocated a different amount of attention toward. For many reasons with regards to our background and experiences, the variable in people is attention. The constant is the material that is delivered. Our attention varies toward different elements of material, we emphasize more weight on somethings and discount others.

Now imagine you are one of those people who is listening to a story. To facilitate awareness you would want to ask yourself questions along the line of:

1. What did I pay attention to at this moment of time? Why?
2. What did I not pay attention to at this moment of time? Why?

The mere awareness of your allocation of attention is not a trivial matter. What you pay attention to is an explanatory variable that describes what you learn from the consumption of material. Many of us fall victim to biases and default states of behavior which make our brain involuntarily decide what it wants to pay attention to. The urge to fight this default behavior should be of utmost importance as control over our attention allows us to have more control over our state of mind, habits, and learning ability.

We become what we pay attention to. We build our mind in each moment. We build routines, preferences, fears, expectations, biases, and insights.

It should never be forgotten that within our power are our opinions, aims, desires, dislikes, thoughts, and actions.

The process of attention is one we take for granted.

Mindfulness is the ability to notice this process with clarity and prioritize what you pay attention to.

Thus I encourage everyone to practice mindfulness. The definition of mindfulness differs from person to person. The constant result behind mindfulness should be to develop an awareness of the process of attention, whatever way possible.

As a result of enhanced awareness, we will have more control over what we pay attention to and as a result, will shape the type of person we become