In studying psychology I gained a lot of insights. One that has stuck with me profoundly is the revelation of how selective attention is. See how you go with this classic attention test:
Video from Daniel Simons.
Sometimes people are criticised for being overly negative – ‘you only remember the bad things’, or conversely, delusional with positivity. The reality is, everything seen by either perspective may well be accurate. In this sense, you will find what you look for.
It’s like this with causes. For example, once someone encounters the reality of the meat industry, they may see no sense in anything other than Veganism. Someone who focuses on the lingering effects of covid, or of the vaccines, may become fixated on those dangers. Climate change, abortion, corporate greed, toxins, poverty … the list is literally endless. Perhaps they all have their importance and it’s by design that each of us have our attention directed at something different?
I reflect on attention often. It’s a sobering and humbling reminder that as logical, fact based and solid as I may often feel my perspective is, there could be something significant that I am entirely missing. This doesn’t mean that you are wrong, or that the things you have paid attention to aren’t real and significant, but it does mean there might be more to the picture than has met your mind’s eye.
We can test our attention. Measure and portion it. Share it. To give your attention to another person is perhaps the greatest gift to give or to receive. To remove or reduce attention is in some cases our wisest move. I recognise also, that not everyone is always entirely free to choose where their attention goes. Life throws circumstances our way that for many comes with limitations and great challenge.
But a great encouragement to take away is that we all innately have some ability to focus attention on what matters to us. The attention we give makes its target stand out above the rest. When you read the instruction in the test video, did it not set you up with a steely determination to follow the white team and focus on the ball? I take hope that the same sense of determined attention can be applied to that which I see is of purpose and value. And should I find myself going astray – or even just as a periodic check-in -I can reassess: ‘where is my attention directed?’
