Attention is the willful direction of awareness in a particular direction. Attention is something we "give" to a subject, or "pay" in order to gain some benefit. Attention is the currency of every transaction in a quantum economy. Where attention goes, energy flows.
External Attention
NLP was born by paying attention to external cues emitted from successful people that most people were simply blind to. The blindness stemmed from lack of distinctions between the thought and behavior patterns of successful people vs unsuccessful people.
Robert Kiyosaki has said that one of the first keys to wealth is first getting a vocabulary of wealthy people. Without the vocabulary, the mind lacks the ability to absorb, integrate and transmit information that must be used in the accumulation of wealth.
Internal Attention
The ability to pay attention to the language of the body is critical to the health and longevity of the body. Signals given to the mind through the body and the emotions are increasingly ignored, or blunted in our society.
To open the communication channels between the body and emotions and the mind, try taking a personal inventory. With eyes closed, and in a relaxed and safe position:
- You can slowly perform an internal scan of your inner body through the beam of your awareness
- You can passively and acceptingly notice the internal dialog in your head
- You can notice your sense of balance and position in space
- You can notice the strength and locality of any emotions
- You can notice the noticing of these things, and notice how it is that you notice them
- If you notice any resistance to taking the time to notice these things, you can just notice this too
- You can notice yourself letting go of this internal awareness and notice the transition from internal back to external awareness
