W. H. Auden once said: “Choice of attention—to pay attention to this and ignore that—is to the inner life what choice of action is to the outer.” The poet’s words of long ago might as well have been written for us today. From the time we wake up to the time we go to sleep, we make important decisions on what we will pay attention to. I am not talking about the attention we pay to our work and our clients—the things that are vital to our organization’s success and our economic well-being. I am talking, instead, about what Auden refers to as our inner life.
Our inner life expands or shrinks in direct proportion to what we focus on. It’s an existential choice; that is, we are responsible for how we spend our time. This is important because our inner life ultimately defines who we are as a person—independent of titles, job functions or which seat we occupy on the corporate success bus. Jobs can come and go, businesses can start and end, but who we become in the process is what lasts a lifetime.
It’s true that in our highly charged, digital existence, there is, realistically for most of us, only a small amount of time left for discretionary attention. And in this life crunch, the thing that often gets pushed aside is the fitness of our inner life—our family, our personal relationships, our health and our spirituality.
Whether we realize it or not we create a 'construct' when we connect a state of mind to an external event. Our basic contracts revolve around our very own happiness, value, self-acceptance, or security - and to these emotional states we usually attach the achievement of very specific goals. Pay attention. How much valuing or lacking does your mind engage in every day?
Connect with Frederick at +1 (614) 827-5427, [email protected], FrederickEntenmann.com and on Skype frederick.entenmann8.