Paying Attention
An anthropologist once said four things are required to live a good life: show up, pay attention, do your best, and don’t get too concerned with outcomes. Paying attention, I think, is a very important ingredient – to enriching our life experience, to being successful, to having close relationships, and to dealing with potential dangers.It is important for us to observe, study, consider, and really absorb things in our inner and outer lives: our own feelings and reactions, patterns in others’ behavior, funny events, beauty, nature, ideas, role models, music, our own and others’ mistakes, heroic and inspiring actions, toxic people and situations, our own defenses, changes in ourselves, and our individual values and goals.For example, research has shown that simply writing down each evening three positive things that happened that day – big or little – significantly raises a person’s happiness rating.And not just because it feels good to remember these positive events, but because the daily writing assignment programs the brain to pay attention and take notice of positive happenings all day.Remember, we each get only one life, so we can try to live it to the fullest – and use our incredible brain to appreciate and learn from our life events as much as possible.
