What You Focus On Grows
It’s a Theme
A focus is a little bit like a theme, I think. When you have a good theme for a project, or a story, or a party, it becomes so much easier to plan. You know what fits in and what doesn’t. It’s much easier to filter through your options and make decisions. Ideas seem to come more readily, and everything tends to fall more easily into place. At least, that’s my experience.
When you don’t have a theme, or one central basic idea, it’s way too easy to become confused, to get lost in the details, to over think and over do. Not that you wouldn’t ever over think and over do, and get lost in the details even with a theme.
- So, what’s your theme for this day? this week? this year?
- How do you even know what the theme is?
My current theme is shirleytwofeathers.com… everything I think about, everything I plan for, everything I do revolves around the website. It’s a big project, a very ambitious scheme, and I am deeply enmeshed in it. To the point of obsession. I have, however, had different themes over the years.
- Playing The Sims Every Waking Moment … that was a fun one.
- My Life is Hopeless… not nearly as much fun as the Sim Game.
- Scrambling for Survival… been there done that, not great fun, but very exciting.
- Self Improvement… all about making me into a better me.
- Home Improvement DIY… short lived because it exceeded my skill set.
There are a lot more of them. But enough about me. What about you? What’s your current theme? Maybe you’d like to change it into something more interesting, maybe you’d like to narrow the parameters? or widen them?
Here are some ideas I thought might be interesting:
- Having Fun Every Day
- Get It Together Or Die Trying
- Stillpoint
- Deep Connection With The Earth Herself
- Paying Debts
- Healthy Living
- Eating Well
- Growing A Savings Account
Whatever your theme is, take a look around, and begin to discard whatever doesn’t fit in with it. For example, if your theme is to “Get Healthy” or “Eat Well” get rid of all the junk food… if the theme is to connect deeply with the Earth Mother, go outside… a lot. Turn off your phone, the television, the computer… If you want to develop a theme of having fun every day, start to eliminate the not fun stuff and adding in the fun stuff.
Dress the part, decorate your home appropriately, focus all of you love and attention on that one idea. Immerse yourself in it. Live it, breathe it, do it.
Adding Fuel to the Fire
Yesterday, I had this realization that simply thinking about something doesn’t necessarily make it happen. You have to be willing to commit time, energy and effort as well. It is a little bit like starting a fire using a magnifying glass and sunlight. The magnifying glass is your focused thought, the sunlight is the energy that flows to where your attention goes. And the tinder, those tiny bits of dry leaves and fluff, is the the beginnings of the effort you are willing to put into the project.
So, today I am thinking about tinder, and fuel for the flame and all the things that help a fire get started, and all those other things that will put it out faster than you can say “boo!”
Here are some examples:
- A wet blanket… do you have one of those in your life? Are you the wet blanket that gets dropped on your fiery little ideas just starting to “catch?”
- Rain… you know that old saying, “Did someone rain on your parade?” Are there people, ideas, or influences that bring you down and ruin your plans?
- Too much too soon… when making a baby fire, too much kindling too soon will quickly smother the tiny flame. Do you get ahead of yourself? Bury yourself with ideas, plans, or tasks before you even get a good start?
- More than you can chew… a nice big piece of firewood is great, once the fire is established, but when it’s a tiny baby of a flame, a big piece of firewood is almost as effective as a wet blanket when it comes to putting a fire out. Suddenly the task is overwhelming, and you just give up… ever had that happen?
- A gust of wind… poof, the tinder scatters in the wind, and you have to start over. Usually when that happens, it means that you didn’t protect your little fire well enough. A baby fire needs shelter from the wind, just as beginning projects and budding ideas need shelter from the winds of change and chance.
- Timing is everything… you can’t start a fire with a magnifying glass if you are sitting in the shade, or it’s after dark. Some ideas, some projects and plans, while they are great and good, just aren’t quite ready to flame into reality. You might have to wait until daylight, or plan for a change in location.
One last thought:
Patience… it takes time and patience to light a fire with a magnifying glass. It doesn’t just happen immediately. The energy has to build. First there is a tiny wisp of smoke, sometimes it doesn’t quite take hold and you have to try again, and then gently you feed it, and nourish it, and help it grow.
Thinking vs Focusing
While it does seem to be true that what you focus on grows, I have noticed that what you think about doesn’t necessarily happen. What’s the difference between focusing on something and thinking about something? If it’s on my mind, it might or might not come to be. If it’s not on my mind, it might or might not come to be.
For example:
It never occurred to me that my lawnmower would break down and even if it had occurred to me as a remote possibility, I never once thought that nobody would be able to figure out what was wrong with it and just fix it. And yet, here it is. My new reality, something I never once focused on.
I have a constant recurring fantasy that I win big in the lottery, and proceed to buy a huge family compound at the end of a dead end road, way out in the country, further south where winters are warmer, off the grid, self sufficient, with a nice big lake, separate houses for each of us, we are all debt free, and get to do whatever makes us happy. I think about this a lot. It hasn’t happened yet.
Suddenly I have an infestation of ants. Really? Ants? I keep killing them and killing them and killing them. Did I focus on ants and now the population has grown by leaps and bounds? No. Do I sit around and obsess about ants taking over my home? No. I just go buy more poison. Do I visualize them gone? Yes. It always surprises me when they show up again someplace else.
What’s up with that?
Despite the above situations, I do find that what I focus on grows. And I think this must be because when I focus on something, I focus more than just my thoughts. It occupies not just my mind, but also my time, my energy, and also any resources I have at my disposal.
I could think about my website all day long, but if I didn’t sit down at the computer and do some actual work on it, if I didn’t research and write posts, if I didn’t pay for web hosting, and spend hour upon hour trying to improve it, I don’t think it would be growing at all. It would just be a pipe dream.
It also occurs to me that if I put my money with my mouth is, did some research, put in a fair amount of elbow grease, consulted some professionals, and did a bunch of leg work, my ant problem would be resolved. And here’s the thing – I just don’t care about it that much.
And yes, winning the lottery would be really awesome and fun, but I have yet to buy even one lottery ticket. Not even one!
So, maybe what you focus on grows if you put your money where your mouth is, and put the pedal to the metal. Energy flows to where attention goes, but only if you’re willing and able to harness that energy and put it to work.
Positive thinking, creative visualization… these things are great. And they do seem to work really well some times. And I’m thinking that those times when they are effective tools are also the times when we actually use them to get ourselves moving and doing.
A True Story:
All day yesterday, I thought about this next post on the project. I thought and I thought, but when I got home, and it was time to sit down and actually do it… well… I didn’t. And again today, all day at work, I was thinking about it… focusing on it… it didn’t suddenly appear just because I had it in my mind. I had to actually sit down at the computer and do the work.
So, these are my thoughts and experiences. What do you think? Have any thoughts, insights, experiences, or ideas to share?
Some Color Therapy
The color turquoise stimulates the higher Heart Chakra, increases intuition and sensitivity, enhances the ability to focus and concentrate, assisting with clear thinking and decision-making, and the development of good organizational skills.
Maybe it would be helpful to add this color to your work space, or any other area of your life where you want to be able to focus clearly and intuitively. With that in mind, here is a nice little collection of images featuring the color turquoise:
For more information about the healing qualities of the color turquoise, you can visit Color Therapy.
A Perfect Illustration
Love this.. it illustrates our current project perfectly!
What Do You See?
Look around the room… What do you see?
When you walk into a room, and everything is clean and neatly ordered, the colors match, the pictures on the wall are straight, and nothing is out of place, it just feels nice. You might even look around and appreciate it. But take that exact same room, and hang a picture crookedly, or let a small pile of clutter accumulate, and what’s the first thing you see? I bet it’s not the 90% clean and cozy all around… I bet it’s the one or two little things that aren’t quite right….
If you’re like me, all you can see when you look around your home is the stuff that needs to be done, the stuff that isn’t quite right, all the things you’d like to change, move, upgrade, or throw away. In my experience, I don’t easily see what is right, what is beautiful, what is orderly, or what is wonderful in my home, because I’m so busy judging myself for all the other.
Yesterday, I tried this little exercise where I looked around the room and tried to mainly focus on everything that I liked about it, the things I love. And it was really really hard! So much easier to see all the other stuff. Maybe that’s because there is a lot of it. And maybe that’s because it really bothers me on some unconscious level. I don’t know. What I DO know is that I do the same thing when I look at myself in the mirror.
It occurs to me that this must be a survival mechanism, to notice that which is disruptive, uncomfortable, or ugly. This is really helpful, if you are noticing and then right away taking steps to remedy the situation. But it isn’t at all helpful when you are overwhelmed by the sheer volume of stuff that needs your attention and help. Nor is it helpful when there isn’t anything you can do to make things better.
So, if it’s true that “what you focus on grows,” and if all I focus on in my home is what’s wrong with it, does it follow that more clutter, disarray, and chaos will follow? And if all I see when I look in the mirror are faults and flaws, does it mean that this is what I will continue to portray?
I wonder what would happen, and how different my experience would be if I focus only on what I love about my home, and ignore the rest, and how would I feel about myself if I took the time to look in the mirror every day and find something beautiful to see?
Optical Focus
While researching for ideas for our current project, I came across this tidbit from Wikipedia. It’s from a short article about optical focus:
An image, or image point or region, is in focus if light from object points is converged almost as much as possible in the image, and out of focus if light is not well converged. The border between these is sometimes defined using a circle of confusion criterion.
Real lenses do not focus all rays perfectly, so that even at best focus, a point is imaged as a spot rather than a point. The smallest such spot that a lens can produce is often referred to as the circle of least confusion.
I found this interesting… and thought provoking. I love it when science converges with our projects. Here’s what I think is interesting about this:
- If bringing light in to a single point is optical focus and brings image clarity ~ it follows then that turning the light of our awareness onto a single point will also bring focus and clarity.
- If the light is not well converged, the image will be out of focus ~ could that mean that if our attention and awareness is not well converged, our results will be fuzzy and out of focus?
- Even in optical science there is a “circle of confusion.” Isn’t this interesting?
- Real lenses do not focus all rays perfectly, and so a point is imaged as a spot rather than a point ~ could we take that to mean that we do not have to be perfectly laser sharp in our focus as long as the “spot” is well defined and condensed to it’s smallest aspect?
- The Circle of Least Confusion ~ I love that idea!
So these are my random thoughts this morning. What about you? Any thoughts, ideas, or insights? Is it really true that life is like a camera?
Finding Beauty in Every Freakin’ Moment
I found this article in Zen Habits, and thought it might be worth sharing. Particularly since I’ve had a pretty tough week, and was finding it really hard to focus on anything other than the shit hitting the fan. So, here it is, in its entirety. Enjoy!
Finding Beauty in Every Freakin’ Moment, No Matter What
~By Leo Babauta
How often are we anxious, frustrated, looking forward to something coming up, unhappy with ourselves, unhappy with others?
How often are we not happy with what’s going on in this present moment?
What if we could, instead, be completely in love with this moment?
What if, no matter what happened, we could find the beauty, joy, and gratitude in the moment as it happens?
Let’s make it so.
Rejecting the Experience
There are lots of very good reasons to reject our current experience:
- We have too much to do, and it is overwhelming.
- We have been hurt by someone else.
- We have deep doubts about ourselves, and wish we could be different.
- The situation is filled with uncertainty and fear.
- Someone is being inconsiderate and rude.
- There is injustice in the world.
- We are faced with discrimination, racism, sexism, prejudice, ignorance.
- We are poor, deeply in debt, struggling.
- We are lonely, alone, with no prospects of finding a partner.
- We are in pain.
- We have chronic pain or a terminal illness.
- Those are hard things. In fact, if we contemplate some of these horrible situations, it doesn’t take much to see that the smaller problems of our daily lives don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world.
Given these kinds of difficulties (and more), how can I talk about finding beauty in the present moment?
The problem isn’t the situation. We’ll always face difficult situations in life, some dire and drastic, others small and irritating, but we can’t rid our lives of difficulty, pain and struggle.
The problem is that we reject whatever we face. It’s not good enough, it’s not wanted, it’s not welcome. I don’t want it that way … I want it that way.
That’s the problem: we reject the parts of our experience we don’t like, and wish for ideals instead.
Again … we can’t rid our lives of pain and difficulty. The problem isn’t the external situation, which will always be less than ideal. If we wish for an ideal life, free of our problems, we’ll be wishing until we die.
Given that we’ll never have the ideal situation … can we make the most of what we’ve been given?
Can we stop rejecting the gift of the life we’ve been given, and find beauty in it instead?
Let’s see how.
Finding Beauty in Pain
What good is there in someone angry with us, and us angry with them? How can we find joy in something as sucky as that?
Try this:
- Pause, and notice how your body is feeling.
- Stay with the feeling in your body with curiosity.
- Welcome the feeling. Invite it to tea.
- See that you are both suffering through pain, difficulty, fear, and tenderness in this moment. See that you’re connected through your pain and tenderness.
Make a wish for relief of difficulty:
“May I find peace. May they also find peace.” In this way, you are finding compassion for yourself, which is beautiful … and compassion for the other human being, which is also beautiful. It shifts you from worried about your self-concern, to wanting to ease the pain of the both of you.
Find gratitude for what you do have:
You are alive, you are connected with other human beings, you can love and appreciate flowers, music, the clouds and the gentle breeze and sunlight.
Every moment, even the most painful, have some kind of beauty, even if it is the simple fact that you are connected to all others who are in pain. You can feel the tenderness of your heart under your fear frustration and pain, and this tenderness is connected to all other human hearts. Everyone, around the world, has this good, tender heart too. This connection to human lives is beautiful.
Every moment is filled with learning, with strength, with love underneath the fear.
Yes, if you are unsafe, get yourself to safety as an act of love for yourself. But you don’t have to have hatred in your heart for the sonofabitch who has hurt you. They are suffering too, and though you don’t have to put up with their abuse, you can wish them peace, for the sake of the peace of your own heart. Take care of yourself, and that includes moving from fear and hatred to love and compassion.
Yes, if you are in constant pain, this is not easy. No one is claiming pain is easy. Who signed up for an easy life? By taking on your pain with patience, forbearance and strength, you are a shining example of love for all others. By taking on this pain, you are developing a capacity to help others with their pain. By taking in pain, you can find a place of joy in the midst of pain, a place of joy you can share with others.
Take the pain and turn it into art, into caring for others, into a heartrending song of life.
The Commitment to Live Fully
When we reject pain, sorrow, anger and loss … we are saying we don’t want all of our lives. We only want the good parts.
What I’m suggesting is that we fully engage with each and every moment. We don’t run, reject or avoid.
We embrace life fully.
We live fully in the groundlessness of our uncertainty and loss, the groundlessness of our anger and sorrow, the groundlessness of our pain. Instead of wishing for a stable, perfect moment … we learn to love the groundlessness and uncertainty of the moment we actually have.
We allow ourselves to fully feel whatever we’re feeling, without rejecting it, seeing this groundless tenderness as the enlightened energy of our lives.
We see this tenderness in our heart, in the midst of groundlessness, as goodness that is in us and everything around us.
We become fully present with an open heart, in full surrender to everything we experience. We reject nothing, and embrace everything.
We see everything as the path to joy and beauty. Everything is filled with goodness, if only we learn to see it as such. If we don’t see it, we only need to look closer.
We see every difficulty as our teacher. Every struggle has a lesson, every loss is a master class in becoming open and letting go of attachment, every pain is a way to touch our tender hearts. Any struggle and any difficult person is a teacher, if we embrace them as such.
Whenever we find ourselves wishing something were different … we use this as a touchstone to coming back to the moment and being fully with it, not rejecting it. Coming back and finding the beauty and goodness. Coming back and seeing this as our teacher.
When we begin to live each moment fully, we start to open up to a vast spacious awareness and beauty. It’s as if we wake up out of a dream to see the incredible mountains that have been in front of us the entire time.
It’s love, this thing in front of us. We just need to step fully into it, and feel the heart-breaking beauty of this love that we call life.
Something To Focus On
I talked to Go Daddy today, and they think the website will be completely migrated by tomorrow noon… So let’s all focus on how great it is that shirleytwofeathers.com will be a secure site, and how awesome it is to get back to business as usual… I definitely need some help with this, because I’ve been obsessing about how inconvenient it is … and bla bla bla… so… maybe if we all focus some good vibes they’ll get it done.
On a side note:
The site is apparently complicated and unusual, and they are having to do the entire migration by hand… and then they have to check all the gazillion links… manually as well, I think… so… hey, those guys need some good vibes !
Update:
The migration is now complete, but there are still some minor issues that need to be resolved. Thankfully, the site is up and running and I can post on it again!
Resistance
What you resist persists! What are you resisting?
What you focus on grows! What are you growing?
I have been resisting this whole having to put posts on Facebook instead of the blog because it’s still being migrated … I wonder if I am prolonging the agony with all my resistance… What about you? What are you resisting? Is it persisting?
- Radical Self Care Project Overview by shirleytwofeathers - No Comment
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me: Make Your Own Violet Fire
Abdulrahman: Money Chant – Very Fast
Shirley Twofeathers: It’s A Wrap
Daniel Knirs: It’s A Wrap
Our current project began on July 4. We are exploring the concept and practice of Radical Self Care . Feel free to join in at any time!
Interested? You can visit our current project page, or you can take a look at the About The Project page if you are curious about the concept.
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Please feel free to join in at any time! No experience necessary.
- Money Chant - Fast
- Money Chant - Slow
- Prosperity Plan
- Amazing Creator
- Cause and Effect
- I Am That I Am
- Spirit Rap
- Lakshmi Spirit Rap
- PowWow Spirit Rap
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I think it's time to go shopping... maybe even buy some really cool stuff at my online shops!!
