What Are You Doing With the Power of Your Attention?
Reclaiming Your Attention To Create a Life That Matters
Have you ever paused to observe how much money, time, and energy goes into creating content, narratives, and sometimes outright spectacles?
Imagine for a moment that you are a sort of anthropologist from another planet or dimension. You are here studying the various forms of life on Earth. You notice all of these stark contrasts between human activity and the activity of all other forms of life on the planet.
One of your observations is that a great many humans seem to spend an inordinate amount of time, energy, and resources trying to get the attention of all the other humans. Indeed, some of the wealthiest and most powerful spend inordinate amounts. How could you even begin to measure this vast amount of activity?
It’s not just social media, it’s ALL media. And it’s not just consumer-facing companies involved - it’s the military, the intelligence agencies, and obviously - the political class.
Adding AI to the Mix
The human mind is not designed or equipped to deal with 24/7 news from every corner of the planet. Nor is it able to deal with social networks of vast numbers of people.
But now things have become even more unnatural and complex with the role AI is playing in the media.
We’re not just talking about people using AI to get attention, like the recent Taylor Swift incident on X. We’re talking here about what AI and algorithms are doing on their own.
We’re experiencing unprecedented levels of activity on the internet that is being entirely generated by AI and Algos themselves. This means that tweet or YouTube video begging for your attention may have not had any human input in its creation or distribution beyond the original act of making the bots in the first place.
It’s hard to separate the love for AI that we see in the media from the current influx of massive investments in AI related ventures. The push is so strong that any resistance to it is labeled as “fear”.
How about just good old-fashioned criticism? How about simply thinking we are on a bad path? Are we not able to call a bad thing bad without it being labeled as fear?
No, instead we’re told that the rise of AI and robots is inevitable, and to think otherwise is simply a matter of losing touch with reality. Never mind the fact that the only thing truly making it inevitable is the idea being pushed that it is inevitable.
I suspect there are a great many of us who are already beyond agitated with having AI pushed on us from all directions. Imagine it would be a much bigger number if more people understood how much of their personal data and activities was being used to feed and develop AI, without their informed consent.
Your Attention = Your Energy
So why all of this activity to get your attention and then control your attention?
You could accurately say that a lot of this is all about money, power, and influence. I mean, we now have a career literally called “influencer”. But there’s a deeper layer here.
What’s really happening?
Where Attention Goes, Energy Flows
As a coach and energy worker, what I see when working with clients is that life energy wants to flow through you. It wants to flow out into the world and give life to important things. Being of the divine spark of creation itself, its natural state is to go and give life to other creations, and to help both you and other beings and creations grow.
We feel and observe this most naturally in how we care for others in our lives - our family members, friends, coworkers, pets, and even our plants.
In its essence - life wants to help life grow. This includes you… first and foremost, it wants to help YOU grow.
When this energy is not flowing through you, in support of life, or when it’s not flowing freely at all, we experience all sorts of issues.
We become uneasy, out of balance, disturbed, and stressed.
We lack inner peace.
Imagine waking up feeling nothing but equilibrium, peace with all beings. Awake, aware, and ALIVE.
Now imagine trying to experience any of that while being TUNED INTO social media, or any media for that matter.
Why are these two things so antithetical to one another?
Because in one state of being, your life energy is flowing naturally towards life. In the other state, it is most likely being pulled and misdirected towards egos, and lifeless endeavors.
Eating food is life giving. Looking at pictures of someone else’s amazing meal from yesterday, not so much.
Looking Out Instead of In
Why do we do it? We think we are learning about what’s happening with others, and what’s happening in the world.
But how true is it that we learn anything real, true, or valuable from the media?
Real life is infinitely nuanced and always changing. For any one facet or aspect of the world projected at you from the media, there are millions of facets that are unknown. It’s as if the media selects a specific grain of sand from the beach and hoists it up in front of a camera and says “look here, THIS is what is happening. THIS is the truth of the matter.”
You see the one grain of sand up close, and because it is presented out of context, a part of you thinks “ah, now I know what the beach is all about”.
Nothing could be farther from the truth.
Whether it is what is happening in the middle east, at the border, or in our very own skies - how much do you really know? How much can you know?
It’s so tempting to think “they know the truth”.
Who is they? That’s where your imagination goes wild - the elites, the cabal, the military, the CIA or some other three letter agency, the scientists, the astrologers, the channelers, the aliens… the list goes on and on.
Believe it or not, I think some people still believe CNN or Fox News knows what’s really happening.
Do any of them know “the truth”? Or is it simply more the case that they all simply know “some truth”?
We inflate the roles of others over and over. We PAY ATTENTION to them, and what they believe, and what they know - at the EXPENSE of paying attention to what we know. We look out instead of in.
It is as silly as trying to only breathe out, and never in. It does not work. You will starve yourself of oxygen. And in many ways, looking outward only for truth does the same - starves your system of the light and energy that can only come from within.
What is the price we pay for this imbalance?
Stress, worry, and dis-ease… and getting farther and farther away from the truth that matters most in our own lives.
Reclaim Your Attention, Reclaim Your Power
If you’re thinking that my advice here is to avoid social media, that media companies are evil, or anything along these lines - you are missing the point.
This is not about what is happening outside of yourself.
Let it all be. Let it happen. Let creators create. Support the creators you like. Let egos spin out. Let the military and the three letter agencies and AI do whatever it is that they are going to do.
What I am speaking to you about is YOU, and how to begin pulling your attention — and thus your energy — back into yourself so that you can do more meaningful and life-affirming things with it.
Imagine you have a daily attention budget… you can only spend so much attention in any given day.
Now, imagine your goal with that spending is to invest as much as you can, so that at the end of the day, you have GROWN something or many somethings. Image that every day, you have developed some part of yourself, healed something maybe, or developed a part of your business, helped a loved one with something, assisted a client, spent time and attention with your animal friends, whatever it may be.
Just ask yourself at the end of the day - what did I spend my attention budget on today? And pay attention to how you feel inside as the answer comes to you.
If you invested poorly, you’ll feel it. But don’t let it suck you down. Tomorrow is another day.
If you invested your attention and energy wisely, you’ll feel that too. And here’s the key: pay attention to your wise investments. This is how you grow more of them in your life.
What’s the Answer?
Seems to me, everyone is here to focus on different things, accomplish different goals.
What works for me may not work for you, but I’ll share a few thoughts that might give you some ideas about where to begin.
Where Are You Now?
Wherever you are, begin with acceptance of self and others. Anything else inherently brings the energy of resistance along with it. Fighting with your awareness is not exactly the way to develop your awareness!
After that, consider developing a mindful awareness of where your attention is going in the first place. Right now, for example, how much of your attention and focus is on this article? How many other things are running through your mind at the same time?
How much more might you get out of this or any article if you were able to focus solely on one thing at a time?
When you wake up in the morning, where does your attention go? Straight to your phone? If so, how would it feel to create a new rule for yourself - go some period of time in your morning without seeking any external media. Not saying it has to be measured in hours. If you’re grabbing your phone immediately upon waking, try 15 minutes of being alive in your own life before seeking info about other people’s lives.
Same deal with your night routine. Where is your attention before you fall asleep? On the news of the day or all of your worries? How might it feel to shut everything off an hour before bed. Where would your attention go? How about thinking ahead to the good things you’ll be sure to create in your life when the next day comes? Or thinking of the kinds of dreams you’d like to have?
Waking Up Inside of Your Life
Most people are on autopilot most of the time. They are automatons, quite literally. This is just an observation.
Unless we wake up inside the dream of our life, we are mostly living from our past. Our body stores so much information about everywhere we’ve been, everything that’s happened and everything we’ve felt as a result. We slip into a trance like response over and over again all day. And on top of that, we carry out a great many actions without any thought or awareness at all. It’s just muscle memory.
This is not inherently terrible. Indeed, it’s your autopilot that carried you somewhat safely through life anyway, so how bad can it be. And I’m not suggesting that you have to be in an awakened state of complete awareness every time you brush your teeth, for example, or every time you put on your shoes.
At the same time, you might be surprised what could come of developing a practice of awareness every time you eat a meal, for example, or take a walk. There are so many opportunities in front of you every day to practice waking up inside the dream of your life.
Where Do You Want to Be?
Once you are aware of where your attention goes, and have developed some degree of mastery over that, and you have begun to wake up inside your life, that’s when the real fun begins!
Where do you really want to be in your life? Now is the time to really imagine and feel that into being. Once you have created space between the outside world and your inner world, that is the time to become the you that you want to be.
This is one of many, many ways you can reclaim your attention, your energy, and your power in life.
Regardless of the way you choose to go about it, the bigger question that you get to explore is what you will do with it!
What will you create? What potentials will you discover in yourself or others? What kind of future will you call into being?
A Quick Bit of News
I am consolidating my coaching and healing work into “Shift Your Energy” coaching. You can learn more about it at RogerOney.com.
Introducing Synergies Studio: as part of my mission of finding creative ways to help us all break out of limiting loops and programming, I am offering services to help other coaches and wellness practitioners who want to maybe start a podcast or create other ways to teach and help others.
As AI becomes more and more prevalent in our life, I would like to invest in those who are who are working directly with others, in the H2H (human to human) economy.
Learn more about this endeavor at https://synergies.studio
What am I doing with power of attention? For me it is understanding how it functions in Contemplation/Centering Prayer.
Otherwise, in your interview with Rebecca Hardcastle-Wright, there are wonderful ‘rabbit trails’ that I’m going to distract myself with :)
I really appreciate this article. When I find myself anxious about the state of the world as described by the media I stop, breathe and remember a phrase from a devotional book I read. “Don’t be agitated by the world and don’t agitate the world.” This helps me to remember that I am here to live my life. Thank you for the reminder to use my energy and attention wisely.