Where you attention goes, energy flows.

This is true with mountain biking. As you approach an obstacle, if you focus on the obstacle, you’ll surely hit it head on. If you instead look past it at where you hope to, you’ll find the best route around it, through it, or over it.

Our attention drives the results we get because it drives what we focus. We must set up ourselves to have attention on the best things:

1. Set our environment/rhythm/structure to direct our attention well. Austin Kleon talks about finding a Bliss Station.

2. Set ourselves up to regulate our emotions (Not control or minimize but regulate). For me, this is mindfulness exercises, keeping a journal, getting proper sleep, eating and drinking well, and making room for regular exercise. Ed Batista says our emotions are attention magnets. Our feelings will draw our attention quickly and readily. They are designed to do this. We shouldn’t try to control this but instead consider how to regulate and build in space and time to process and consider these emotions.

3. Build narratives which honor where we are going. The stories we tell ourselves guide our attention and build out the life we will lead. Ensuring we question the narratives we hear and state keeps this in check. We need an overall narrative that can overpower those minor, negative stories as they arise. This is where a Life Theme comes in. When we claim who we are and where we are going, we squash those other narratives. Of course we claim it as if it’ll be true forever but know that it will change and build in re-evaluation.

4. The comparison of others will steal away our attention. We can’t turn this off but we must keep it in check. There are platforms engineered to draw us into social comparisons. Keep it in check.

A lot of this requires slowness to be built into our lives. We can’t add it all at once. Start with mindfulness practices. Then take on a journal practice. Then build out a Life Theme. Then design a work setting or daily routine that sets you up well. Then quit those social comparison habits not serving you well.

In the end, know that attention is what will help you be who you want to be and it also could pull you away from who you want to be.

These points were based on Ed Batista’s article “A Better Information Diet.”