Selecting what to attend to

The comedienne Loretta LaRoche advises us to put our attention elsewhere when we are being unfairly balled out.  She suggests that we stand on one foot in a quiet way.  Keeping our balance without making a big thing of it will give our minds something to do instead of buying into the put-downs being delivered our way.  Similarly, the Austrian psychiatrist Vicktor Frankel in his famous book, "Man's Search for Meaning", emphasizes that even in a concentration camp, where a person is not free, that person can still put his attention where he wants.  He can still decide how he wll view his situation and what he wants his reaction to the way he is treated to be.

Mark Epstein in "Psychotherapy Without the Self" says that fixed-point meditation alternates with examining one's thoughts and reactions in the most productive sorts of meditation.  Selecting an anchor for your attention, such as focusing on your breath, and keeping attention there, returning to that anchor each time you become aware that you have begun to attend to something else, is the best way to improve awareness of one's attention.  Improving your ability to notice what you are attending to and placing your attention where you currently want it is a very good way to exert control over sensor input, thoughts and moods.

In "The Inner Game of Tennis", Timothy Gallwey explains how often the thinking, in-charge part of the conscious mind interferes with the best physical action of the body.  When you are crossing the street mid-block, you calculate the traffic coming in both directions to allow yourself to find and use a space that opens in both lanes at once.  During that observation and preparation for crossing, your eyes and body figure out the best way to proceed.  Most people do that best when they do it silently and don't try to explain or talk about it.  So, Gallwey has made videos of people placing their explicit attention on the tennis ball as it passes over the net and strikes the ground in front of them by shouting "Hit" just as the ball hits the court.  Their eyes and feet and balance and racquet arm coordinate quite well when the thinking mind has something to concentrate on and the subconscious, non-language mind is then free to do its work.

Learning to attend to whatever aspect of the current scene you want to can free you from domination by unwanted thoughts and ruminations.