Focus is Action

Focus

Focus is about where we place our attention. How we look, what lens we look through, where we look, and what we choose to look at has a huge impact on what we see. Where we focus our attention significantly changes our quality of life. If you are looking for things to be grateful for, you will be far happier than when you are running the cranky side of “ain’t it awful.”

What we choose to focus on is about the intention of how we want to live our life. If you want to be feel victimized, then all you have to focus on are all the wrongs that are done. If you go looking for them, you can find them. If you want to feel strong and uplifted, then you have to purposely go looking for your strengths and remember your successes. It is far easier to react than it is to focus and have an intent of looking for the best in people and the best in life, and the best in yourself. But it can happen. You can do it.

Enjoy the following inspirational quotes on Focus.

Hope springs forth from new dreams as last year’s unfulfilled ones fade away. But this isn’t about defeat, for you don’t have the luxury of focusing your attention on something that didn’t reach fruition. Forget about the past; look ahead toward a successful future. Although it may take a while yet for you to feel as if you are gaining ground again, don’t lose sight of the prize.

Rick Levine

It does seem to be true that whatever we focus on tends to increase. Have you ever noticed that if you learn a new work you suddenly hear it everywhere? Or your friend introduces you to blue lobelia and you suddenly notice it blooming all over?
Exactly why this happens is something of a mystery, but I believe it’s because everything is around us all the time. We are choosing, mostly unconsciously, to notice certain things and not others because we just cannot pay attention to everything. As we change what we pay attention to, we notice that more. Scientists have proposed that something more amazing is at work-that reality is open to the mind’s causal influence and is, in the words of David L. Cooperider, “often profoundly created through our anticipatory images, values, plans, intentions, beliefs and the like.” This suggests that we actually positive or negative imagery.
In either case, the more we are grateful, the more we will have to be grateful for. Even if nothing more or better happens, our eyes are opened to the gifts that were always there. As Susan Jeffers notes, “When we focus on abundance, our life feels abundant; when we focus on lack, our life feels lacking. It is purely a matter of focus.”
-M.J. Ryan

There are lots of magic tricks and scientific studies that prove that if we expect to see something, we will pretty much see what we expect, even if it’s not really there. The same thing happens in our lives: we see the same thing every day, and we shut off the part of ourselves that’s on the lookout for the new and interesting, so sometimes we pass it by altogether. Can you vow to see something new every day?
Addie Johnson Life is Sweet

I took classes once with a brilliant clown named Michael Fields, who told us to always look at the horizon-to get our eyes up off of the ground and put our focus far out in front of us. He meant it in the context of being on stage, but I’m sure he knew the value of this perspective shift in everyday life as well. Of course you can’t keep your eyes fixed off in the distance, you’re going to look at other things, make eye contact with a passerby, notice something shiny on the path ahead of you. But make the horizon your default position, and you will interact with the world in a different way.
-Addie Johnson

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