Beyond Emotional Intelligence

6Your Focus Becomes Your Reality

Like a mirror, our attention reflects the object of its focus and quality of awareness. Isn't it true our immediate experience is determined by whatever we place and hold our focus on? Like our emotions, whatever our attention becomes fixated on colors our outlook and how we experience our reality in that moment. If you're upset and someone prepares a tasty meal for you, you're unable to enjoy even a single bite. Similarly, if we have a habit of expecting or looking for particular behaviors in people or situations, how can we see anything other than what we are focusing upon or waiting to see? If we place emphasis on being compassionate and kind, even our gaze and expression will soften and our interactions with others become gentler. As the adage goes, “Be careful what you ask for,” and the correlate here would be “Be careful what you focus on.”  The good news is we can take responsibility for what we focus on, but it requires practice.

How do we train our attention? We train our attention by bringing our awareness back again and again to the object of our desired focus, like our breath, the work in front of us, the person we are listening to, the road we are driving on, and so on. This includes being able to redirect our attention when we realize we have become fixated to the detriment of ourselves or others, usually marked by our mental state becoming the loudest voice in our heads, or our emotions seeping out like toxic waste and impacting ...