Life is fashioned from what you pay attention to and what you haven’t. Or better still, your life is the sum of what you focus on. Ergo, focus on the upside. Take control of your attention.
Bottom-up attention is bright-coloured things that we immediately pay attention to – essentially making it harder to concentrate.
Top-down attention is asking yourself “What do you want to concentrate on?”
Just thinking about concentrating, improves your concentration.
Negativity bias is expressed by us paying more attention to unpleasant feelings because they are more powerful than agreeable ones.
Grow your world by paying attention to positive emotions. Shrink it by focusing on the negative.
Is your response to stuff more important than what happens to you? Following trauma/problem, do not focus on what happened, as this can make you feel worse. E.g. don’t vent
What you pay attention to can alter your behaviour
Paying attention to the people you talk to helps to form solid relationships, common in Eastern culture. In the West, people tend to look instead towards their individualistic selves, and too much attention to objects.
On living with a partner, try to see the world through their eyes
To heighten your attention, choose tasks that challenge you to the edge of your competence, this will heighten your focus
To be really effective at your job, you need to love doing it. In your free time, push yourself to learn something new, as this will help you focus and give you happiness.
When you squander your attention on mind-numbing activities like TV or games, your mind stagnates and life can seem boring
It’s normal that when you start a new job, move apartment or meet someone new that you like you will focus on it. Then, once you become accustomed to it, your mind will be drawn inextricably to the next big thing. Don’t. Kahneman says that ‘ when you anticipate something, you anticipate the memory, not the actual experience ‘.
The focusing illusion is when you exaggerate the importance of something, just by thinking about it. Soon after you acquire it, you stop noticing the pleasure. Moreover, you are more likely to acquire more pleasure from items you consume than appliances such as a 16 MacBook Pro. Go out to the cinema or buy a chocolate bar instead.
When you look at someone you know well, and the spark is no longer there, try looking at something else about them. This will trigger you to find them more interesting.
Your energy goes where you’re attention flows. When trying to hit the metaphorical baseball, you will hit it sooner or later. You may need patience or a different strategy. Don’t focus on missing it, focus on hitting it.