I have been publishing a Free Personal Development Ezine for the past few years – each Monday and Wednesday morning, articles and short videos – and from the comments that I get I’ve no choice but to believe that there’s an awful lot of people out there who moan about their existence, without taking the necessary steps to change. A majority of people are not happy in what they do for a living but just keep soldiering on. People become numb from the routine of daily life. Many people are unhappy in their relationships. People are dissatisfied with themselves – their body, weight, shyness, low self-esteem, overeating, under-eating, fitness… But what all these people – and chances are that this includes you – don’t understand is that every single aspect of their lives would alter radically if they simply sat up straight and started to pay attention.
Yeah, you heard me – just like what the teacher told you in nursery school! Psychology confirms that your happiness and success is directly linked to how well you pay attention. That sounds weird – but think about it. Successful people are more focused – and focus simply means paying attention. Presence is one of the main hallmarks of success – successful people have presence – which simply means that these people pay more attention to the the reality of the moment. Or, to be blunt about it, successful people take the trouble to turn up for their own lives! They are abnormally attentive to the here and now – they apply their full attention.
Contrast this with the average person who, research concludes, is missing in action! The normal mind is, to quote an Irish expression, ‘not all there’ – you’re all over the place. The normal mind is paying attention to your ‘stored knowledge’ – what you learned during your formative years. Your normal mind is immune to the present and that’s why normal people are stuck on the daily sorry-go-round!
You need to pay attention, focus, get your head in gear. And, in actual fact, it doesn’t really matter if you haven’t decided what you want out in your life (how many of us are?!) – what’s of primary importance is that you pay attention to what’s happening now – you simply cannot tell what opportunities you might spot (which you’ll never spot if you’re not all there!). Paying attention is about the here and now. Focus is about doing what you’re doing without focusing on your self-defeating beliefs (from ‘I don’t like my work’ to ‘I don’t like myself’). Paying attention is about being present, having presence and going with the flow of life.
Has it now occurred to you that all the fantastic things that have ever happened in your life (yeah, even if you’re a desperate person, something good must have happened at some point in time) happened spontaneously? You can rediscover life’s spontaneity, all you need to do is turn up to your own life – in this present moment – pay attention to what’s really going on, not what your weird, normal mind would convince you is happeing.
