Do you ever feel pressured by too much coming at you, or want more out of life than you can actually handle? Do you have trouble saying “No”, setting healthy and comfortable boundaries or letting things go? Does life ever overwhelm you to the point of feeling stuck, and can you slow down at will to enjoy pleasurable moments? How you answer these questions reveals whether your mental health funnel of life is fulfilling and fun or unfiltered and frustrating. The difference between amazing flow and feeling overwhelmed and clogged is more than what life throws at you or your skills to manage it.
Life works like a funnel
The challenge begins when you realise and accept that the stress and pressure of life is like a funnel – wide at the top going in and narrow at the bottom coming out. If you get too much too fast into the top, it creates so much pressure that the draining slows until it becomes clogged and very little comes out. Managing your mental health can feel the same way: too much comes into your life, you feel stressed, stuck and squeezed, and very little gets out or done, and even less of what you truly desire and enjoy. Then, being stuck, you start to build resentment towards your life and the people in it.
Unfortunately, you cannot stop life, or even eliminate the pressure of events coming into it, because that is beyond your control. It is also very difficult to gatekeep by just saying “No” to keep life out. However, with a few tweaks to your perspective and awareness skills, you can become more comfortable and skilful at what you filter out, and more relaxed about facing the consequences of your choices. You can empower yourself to embrace healthy boundaries and relationships.
Attention, focus and concentration are not the same
The first step is recognising that attention is not focus. In our current social media culture, everyone and everything is constantly grabbing at your attention, and society funnels far too many attention seekers your way. The more social you are, the more demands for attention come your way, and then you give it your focus, which creates a problem.
Attention is when you first notice or perceive something, like a stop sign, a greeting, a tweet or an ad. Focus is when you engage with something you have noticed, like slowing down, saying “Hello” back, re-tweeting or considering buying something. Concentration is intense, selective focus, like studying the process and physics of slowing down to a stop, managing relationships related to your availability to engage, creating a social footprint of influence, or weighing the pleasure or pain that buying one more thing will bring into your life.
Each mental state of awareness, engagement and study has risks and rewards. For example, pay attention when you are driving a car, but do not focus too long or too hard on any one thing. Accidents happen when your attention turns into focus on the wrong thing, such as focusing on a naked person on the pavement and crashing into the car in front of you. Likewise, if you are focusing on a dialogue with that naked person, do not let the car accident behind you grab your attention. Stay focused on what is important and let the rest go.
Focus is intentional; attention happens. Focus is a dialogue; attention is a shout. Learn to recognise where you have control and where you do not, because you cannot stop the shouts, but you do not have to listen. Or as I often say, “Just because a donkey brays doesn’t mean you have to listen”.
Intentionally being mindful of your attention, focus or concentration can free up a lot of your time. A useful skill for this is learning to listen to your inner voice that whispers, “I don’t want to pay attention to this”. All too often, though, your whisper is quickly drowned out by your inner shout to keep watching anyway for FOMO – fear of missing out. Life always brings too much, so missing out on something is inevitable, and the question is where you comfortably draw the line. Being intentional with your focus is a useful skill for deciding what to engage with and what to let go, but there is often a fear of letting go, a fear of missing out.
Learning to let go of attention grabbers
The second step is to notice what you perceive and then learn to quickly and completely let go of the attention grabbers you do not want in your life. For this step there are two essential skills – 1) recognising the three aspects of self-esteem, which helps you to 2) evaluate what grabbed your attention and how you will deal with it to maintain your priorities.
The three aspects of self-esteem
Healthy self-esteem begins by embracing the three aspects of whole person self-esteem. 1) Self-worth is the innate value of just being you, without having to do or connect to anyone or anything, so no attention is required. 2) Skill-worth is about building your value by what you can do, and attention can be a useful guide. 3) Social-worth is about how you connect and share yourself in the world, and here attention is a must.
When you recognise all three aspects of self-esteem, you can discover and evaluate how the power of attention is not always useful or essential and can sometimes be downright annoying. You do not need attention to define or build you up. When you truly know your self-worth and that you are incredible just being you, you will discover new choices for managing your focus in life.
Discovering that saying “No” to attention grabbers does not have to decrease your worth or self-image frees up your ability to evaluate and embrace your own priorities. Consider these two approaches to attention: 1) Everything that grabs your attention brings value into your life. 2) Everything that grabs your attention has its own agenda. In the first one, there is an absence of knowing your self-worth, so all attention feels important or essential to living a good life, and you may feel fear of missing out or guilt if you do not at least think about it. In the second, you have value just being yourself, and what grabs your attention is less about you and more about them. You might begin to notice fear or guilt about giving your focus to something that does not add anything positive to your life. Either choice affects your ability to determine and then comfortably set your priorities.
Is it a gift or garbage?
A useful skill for deciding to fully let go of something is thinking of it, metaphorically, as either a gift or garbage in your life. The difference is how it affects the quality of your life. There is no right or wrong answer, but attention grabbers can be evaluated for how they fit into your priorities, beliefs and values. Throw out the attention garbage.
The better you know yourself, the quicker you can decide if attention grabbers are gifts or garbage. That is because only you truly know the answer to the question – Will this make my life better? Mental health is less about what may be harmful or dysfunctional, and more about what is unwanted, unappreciated or despised. People have all different kinds of preferences, beliefs, values and purposes in their life, and you look at the world through your own life-defined lens that brings into focus what lifts you up or brings you down. With that lens, you can learn to quickly let in the gifts and throw out the garbage without regret, fear or guilt.
FAQs
- What is the difference between attention, focus and concentration? Attention is when you first notice or perceive something. Focus is when you engage with what you have noticed, and concentration is intense, selective focus.
- Why can too much attention feel overwhelming? Life works like a funnel: if too much comes in too fast, the pressure slows the draining until it clogs. You then feel stressed, stuck and squeezed, little gets done, and resentment can build towards your life and the people in it.
- How can you filter out attention grabbers? Notice what grabs your attention, then use the three aspects of self-esteem (self-worth, skill-worth and social-worth) to judge how they fit into your values and might impact your life to decide whether it is a gift or garbage. Let go of the garbage without regret, fear or guilt.
Takeaway
Learning to decide whether attention is a gift or garbage creates a filtered life funnel that flows with the joys and challenges you have deemed worthy of being in your life. That flow efficiently throws out unwanted attention and leaves you more time to focus or concentrate on mindfully enjoying what comes your way. Attention happens, but focus is intentional, so the choice of where to put it is yours.
