Paying habitual attention to your attention will be the surest way to transform your life. Here I’ll explain why and the common missing ingredients for using it to transform your life.

It is said wherever attention goes is where energy flows. Attention is the baseline tool for all endeavours and inner transformations and it is operating within a context of identity, situations, emotions, and goals. And so as attention is so fundamental, it gets implicated in a range of issues.

A lack of focus on what we say we want to focus on is a very common problem! So where does our attention and energy often go instead?

• Negative emotions regarding other people, things and circumstances
• What we imagine other people will think
• Desires to satisfy a range of material cravings
• Habitual programmes, like checking our social media feeds
• The past and future, with their close associates, rumination, worry and idealisation

Now it’s pretty common to complain to ourselves and others about the struggles of changing these habits of attention. It seems that conscious intention isn’t enough to transform them, right? Otherwise, people would just think, say and then do things without an inner hitch!

So what’s the problem? Attention’s association with energy; if we’re not paying attention, the saying above gets inverted: where energy flows is where attention goes. Implying a lack of awareness and agency. Our emotionally charged past is influencing us deeply, right now!

To pay attention to your attention is to be present; otherwise, mind-body loops centring on emotional themes and messaging from the past are running and taking us away from what is at hand, and therein is the loss of focus and the chance for a new perspective and transformation too.

So what’s the missing ingredient? Being present with both mind and body. The reason is that emotions that drive thoughts are in the body and then usually register most prominently in the mind. You may have found that just noticing that you’re overthinking, for instance, is often not enough.

So here is a process that serves as both a short-term solution as a tool, but also as a longer-term solution, as a habit that clears energies and allows an easier and less disturbed application of attention:

• Catch yourself: there is always a moment to realise we’re caught up in thoughts and their associated feelings, make catching yourself and realising the present a new habit.
• Now that you’re awareness is in ‘now’, use it to 1) notice your body right now and 2) relax and breathe, focus on these sensations without judgement, notice what is around you.
• Stopping the process here is just fine, but if you feel on occasion you could benefit from linking the mind-body connection fully, then you can ask yourself where these feelings come from, in this space of relaxation: (e.g ‘what is the deeper reason I’m angry with X’?)

Pay attention to your attention, reclaim your presence, the firm ground from which change and transformation can occur, and notice the magic that occurs within and without!