What is attention?

Energy flows where attention goes. That's one of the basic tenets of energy healing — so becoming the master of your energy passes through becoming the master of your attention. My favorite way to picture it: you're carrying a flashlight in your mind, and whatever you point it at becomes focused, becomes clear, takes up more room in your psyche. Everything outside the beam — it's almost like it doesn't exist.

The aperture is yours to set

Just like a flashlight, your attention can be diffuse — moving everywhere quickly, which tends to leave you feeling scattered — or it can be really narrow and pointy. You get to play with that aperture. But whatever you focus on is what grows in importance. Knowing that you get to decide what you focus on is everything here.

Why gratitude journals actually work

This is what makes a gratitude journal so powerful. You shine the flashlight of your attention on everything that's going well — everything that makes you feel relaxed, lucky, expanded. All of that takes up more room in your energy simply because you placed the flashlight there.

What you feed your attention becomes your reality

Deciding what media you consume matters for the same reason: what you place your focus on is what your brain interprets as reality. Unintentionally, it's easy to fall into rabbit holes that are designed to be like crack for your attention — you just want to know more, and more — even when those rabbit holes have little to do with the actual, scientifically demonstrated reality we all live in. That can be fun. There's nothing wrong with it. But you want to be intentional, because right now, in this age of information, our attention is what's most recruited. Our devices are built to grab it. Social media gets paid by how long you stay, how much attention you give the advertising. Taking your power back when it comes to your attention is a radical act of independence.

The local Facebook group

Here's an example from my own life. There's a local Facebook group I'm part of — very local, my actual neighborhood, lots of trees and nature, genuinely beautiful. And when I scroll through it, it's people complaining, and complaining, and complaining. If I look at that too long, my attention absorbs it and expands it, and I start thinking of my neighborhood as run-down, as a terrible place to live. That is not my observable reality at all — it's just where I placed my focus, and it expanded. So I use discernment. I changed the channel. I don't go there very often now.

The Instagram account that changed how I see my own body

It works on the positive side too. Like a lot of women, I've struggled with body image — I generally love myself, but there are angles of myself I hope nobody ever sees. I found a woman on Instagram with very much my build, Dutch like me. She posts pictures where in one she's the most glamorous woman in the world, and in the very next one you see all her rolls, her triple chin — and it's hilarious, and she's modeling total comfort with every angle of herself. Because I place my focus there, that comfort expands in my consciousness too. That not being okay with the rolls and the this and the that — it gets to expand right along with it.

Taking your power back when it comes to your attention is a radical act of independence — and it's where you get to truly create what you want for yourself.

Do a social media audit

So here's my invitation: look at where you place your attention and ask whether it's creating what you actually want in your life. Start — or restart — a gratitude journal. And in the day-to-day, build the capacity to ask yourself, is this really what I want to be focusing on right now? Say you're on a walk, ruminating about a conversation — I should have said this, I can't believe they said that. You can let the thought continue, but you can also check in and choose. Put your focus on the trees, the song of a bird. Ask yourself a different question, like what lunch can I make myself that will make me feel divine. What you place your attention on is what flourishes in your life. This isn't an easy habit to build — and it's also completely doable.