Awareness – Perception – Paying Attention

Friday, February 8th, 2008 at 12:00 pm.
by pre.

Pay attention, I’m only going to write this once.

Whether or not you obeyed my instruction then, you at least know what you’d have to do in order to obey it. You can, on request, “pay attention”, focus your concentration onto something, look more carefully at something. So why don’t you do that all the time? Does it actually require extra effort?

Possibly it does, but like anything your mind does, the more you do it the more practised you’ll be. The more you practice it, the better you’ll get. The better you are, the less effort it’ll be. So why not try to pay attention, concentrate, look carefully at what you’re seeing all the time? Surely not because you’re worried you’ll burn too many calories? You’ll end up like skin and bones with no flesh on your frame?

Concentrate on the full stop at the end of this sentence, really look hard at it, count the pixels if you can, take in all there is there to see, look closely.

Was it round? Or square? Was it black, or some kind of dark blue? Was it’s background white, or a mix of red, green, blue, all joined up so close together they look white?

It seems that the main problem with trying to pay attention to the things you’re looking at, the things you’re seeing, the things you’re hearing and feeling and touching, is remembering to do so. Which begs the question: How can you remember to pay attention more often, get the practice you need to pay attention properly all the time?

You are already part of the way there. Just by knowing that you can vary your attention, and by knowing that the higher you can raise the bar there the higher the bar will rest, the higher it’ll be able to rise. Next time you notice you’re paying attention, or not paying attention, you’ll know to turn it up a notch. You’ll remember to look at things more closely, just by knowing you can look at things more closely.

There’s more you can do than that though. You can listen regularly to our self hypnosis file. It’ll help you to understand what it means to focus, to pay attention, and remind you now and then throughout your daily life to notice what you’re doing, what you’re seeing and how you’re feeling. And as you notice it more, you’ll do it more. As you do it more, you’ll get better. As you get better, it’ll get easier and you’ll learn to see what you’re actually seeing.

Ask yourself: Did you pay more attention to this article than the last thing you read? Was the constant reminder to wake up and listen all it really required? If so, you’ve already taken the fist step. Now take the next. Resolve to notice the world around you