What are you doing with your attention?...are you putting it on creating what you most want? ...are you putting it on resisting what you least want?...are you hedging your bets and doing a little of both?
A conversation with a friend of my husband's today illustrated for me once again exactly how powerful our attention is...how whatever we put our attention on becomes more real...how as we increase our amount of attention on something, we increase our conviction that it is real...how, with enough conviction, we can make anything real...
This is a great thing when people command their attention to create what they most want...and the opposite is also true...which leads me to this friend...
He reached out to me because he believes we have similar issues with our elderly parents...and we do...he wanted to know how I was handling them because he feels like his situation is killing him...and it may be...because for each situation and solution he examines, he sees only different, and bigger, problems...and he feels this way every waking moment of his life...
So guess what he has created?...exactly...different and bigger problems...and today was truly the perfect day for him to show up in my life with this powerful reminder that what we resist, persists...
Don't get me wrong...he is truly suffering...and how could he not be when all of his attention has been going to the many reasons why his life is not working...the many reasons he has that it will never change...the many pieces of evidence he has gathered that he will die before he has a chance to live his life the way he wants...and here's the thing: the more evidence he gathers, the more conviction he has...ergo, the belief that solutions hold only different and bigger problems...
What do you think would happen if he stopped retelling his woeful story?...interrupted the constant flow of attention to it?...put an end to his suffering?...
"It's a decision"...
