Find Focus in a Distracted World

A great basic that’s always worth coming back to is the connection between personal energy level and the style we pay attention to the world around us. Paying attention to many different things “at the same time” will be extremely draining in the long run; I’ll tell you why.

The underlying principle of thinking about multiple things is a continuous shift of attention. Jumping from one topic to another nonstop will not only increase your stress level but take away the depth of your experiences and willpower. Where does this come from? Making decisions has its price: we can only make so many decisions a day – even scrolling through your social feed means making a decision for every post to engage or not. So does jumping from topic to topic. We decide to pay attention to multiple topics, deciding again and again to come back to them (making a decision every time) we do. In addition, we might think about something that is completely beyond our control and make our minds go crazy with all the stuff we make going on in our own heads.

So what can we do?

We can make decisions that lead to a manageable number of following decisions. In the following lines, I will introduce you to a simple technique to pool and center your focus back into one place. As a starting point, simply become aware of your attention’s whereabouts. I would suggest to imagine tiny versions of you which are made of bits of attention – you can adapt this to your needs, if you like. How many places are your “thought-me’s” currently at? What are they doing? Take a moment and watch them.

Now it’s time to whistle them back to where you are physically. You can whistle silently in your head or physically, if it helps you. Use your imagination; do you see them coming back? If it helps, call them in one by one. Continue until every last one of your “thought-me’s” is exactly where you are physically. If you made it, take a moment to get into that feeling. Feel what it feels like to be entirely in one place – physically and mentally. Feel your energy. Savour your sensation – how does it feel to be in the here and now with all of your being?

If you are fully present, you can either dwell into this state or start to reassign a topic of focus; in my experience it helps to start with one topic and not shifting to another for some time. This helps to calm down and be more productive.  If everything is too much, remember: you can always come back to your center and into your power by calling in your “thought-me’s”.