How Shifting Your Attention Is the Surefire Way to Happiness and How To Do it
I flip the book open and slide my bookmark aside.
This one’s called Persuasive Geographies: All the right places, All the right traces. Those were enough words to grab my attention and help me complete a chapter instead of putting it off like I always do.
If you do that too, go ahead and clap this once.
I learned a lot in the 8 pages.
One of the most impactful pieces of content I ever read. I learned that the environment you work in has an influence on how well you do whatever you’re trying to accomplish. Whether that be writing a book, reading a book, working out, or merely sleeping. There’s a massive influence that comes from everything around us that affects the effort of everything in us.
For example, the author talks about how, when he wrote his first book, he caught himself writing very academically as opposed to writing in his audience’s language. He said this was because he sat before a window that overlooked the university he worked at, the other academic institutes, and a library.
However, when we leased an apartment in town, he automatically discovered why his writing style had improved.
When he wrote in his apartment with a window that shows pedestrians walking to work, people socializing, etc., he wrote his first book effortlessly. It did more than that.
By putting himself in that environment, he added that personal touch was missing when he wrote it at his official office using big academic words.
I can really relate to this because I have rearranged my room one too many times to make it fit the purpose I am chasing. To become a more productive writer through consistent practice in hopes of changing someone’s life positively.
So I bought a desk that required 4 hours of work to build. And that’s where I write daily. Motivation no longer matters. It’s just easier to write.
When you set yourself up to be more productive before you start, you will.
Putting a picture of your loved one behind the wheel reminds you to drive safer. By adding a desk to my room where writing would be welcomed smoother into my daily routine, it’s never been an issue finding the motivation to write. You have to prepare pre-suasively to do the things you want to be effective at.
So, as I read this, it made me feel a lot better about what I was doing. Influencing myself before I do something, so it is easier to do it. Kind of like when you rinse your hands with warm water before scrubbing them with soap. Your hands are cleaner.
I also learned about old people.
I know how this sounds, but please stick with me as I lay down the valuable content this part of the book came with that is worth almost millions of dollars to even the noblest man on planet earth.
It is said that a lot of medical students who are learning about the variety of diseases and certain health conditions that exist out there are prone to experience them themselves. How this happens is silly but worth learning about.
Let me quote the book so you can get a detailed explanation of the point I want to drive home here.
“Research shows that 70–80% of all medical students are afflicted by this disorder, which they experience the symptoms of every disease they happen to be learning about at the time and become convinced that they have contracted it.”
Isn’t that crazy?
Along with that, I have highlighted another piece of information I truly believe is the only key to happiness.
Besides everything you’ve read and researched online about what makes you happy and how to be a happier human being, I want to encourage you, like me, to take in every word you’re about to read and hear this out.
I have read every book out there promising a better life as I’ve been in search of it. However, we know there is no such thing as a perfect life. But that didn’t stop me either.
I continued to pick up each book I found that had something to do with being happy. I even recall the 100 ways to happiness books that tell you to do one thing a day, and after 100, you are where you want to be. Maybe it’s just me, but that didn’t work either. It wasn’t until I discovered through consistent learning and exploring the one reason we aren’t happy is because of our attention.
Here’s what I found. I hope this helps you as it did me.
“Medical instructors are continually consulted by students who fear that they have the diseases they are studying. The knowledge that pneumonia produces pain in a certain spot leads to a concentration of attention upon that region, which causes any sensation there to give alarm. The mere knowledge of the location of the appendix transforms the most harmless sensations in that region into symptoms of serious menace.”
Yes, you read that right.
…But wait, there’s more.
What does this tell us?
Inside all of us are forces just sitting waiting for us to give them our attention so they can stand once and for all.
This concept connects us to one challenge many of us face today. It is called the pursuit of happiness. We dig through every bookshelf in hopes of finding the secret inside one of those pages.
We search the web reading all sorts of content that adds value to our life but still doesn’t give us the key to happiness. More and more people are looking, and they pull their hair out because nothing seems to work.
At least we have the ambition to put ourselves on a quest, and we do something other than wait for everything to happen. The problem isn’t that we aren’t as proactive as people. When we want to change in our lives, most of us are quick to do something different to attain that change.
The Problem?
We search for things like happiness everywhere around us except looking within, where it is awaiting our diverted attention. Just like most medical students focus on diseased they study and experience them, so can you experience that of happiness if you decide to focus on it.
It’s not always easy, but it’s truly worth it.
Do you know what else is easy?
The next time you visit your grandparents, hopefully, this example applies to everyone reading this, notice how they usually encourage us to appreciate more of what we have. And to be gladder to be young and live.
One psychologist, Laura Carstensen, explained this briefly in a short conversation with two sisters at a nursing home after she asked them how they dealt with all the negativity that happened around them.
What Blew My Mind
She reported that the sisters were aware of the deaths and sickness around them. Here’s what blew her mind. The ladies she was talking to said they had no time to worry about those negative aspects of life, no matter how unavoidable they are.
The psychologist was confused when she learned they had jobs or duties or obligations. Must they have all the time in the world, right? Wrong. What one of the sisters said next motivated Carstensen to expand her studies on this topic of happiness.
Though it was near their future, the elderly sisters said it wasn’t a matter how much time they had in the day, rather, the remaining time they had left in their lives. So it didn’t make a lot of sense to worry about the negative parts of life we can’t avoid and try to change them.
A lot of seniors are similar to the two sisters. They say the older people in our lives are much happier than they were while they were younger and more able to do the things that we believe make someone happy.
Happiness Can Suck
As we can see, it isn’t a matter of the things you own or what you can do with your body or the music you listen to rather how much emotional contentment you have.
And that starts with where you focus your attention.
You see, when we are younger and abler, we are not thinking about our remaining years as much as our grandparents do. One study conducted by Laura Carstensen was that the elderly do focus on recalling positive memories and making more pleasant ones, and that puts their emotions in a safe place as they enjoy the years to come.
However, younger people are not thinking that way, not yet.
Our primary life goals isn’t that of emotional contentment or recalling good memories. Nothing like that at all. Our focus is directed towards learning new things and understanding how to be successful so we can accomplish more and get the things we want first.
Unfortunately, those kinds of experiences come with a lot of hair-pulling frustration and mistakes we can make and all sorts of experiences that can help us become better.
A little bit of pain, I should say.
Using our attention to shift our emotions can help us be happier people. It’s hard to avoid tribulations as we grow to become the best version of ourselves we want to be.
However, the best we can do is merely focus on necessary elements of happiness, like choosing where we divert our attention.
I hope this helps.
Christian
