Where are you putting your attention?
- Becci Godfrey
- Mar 12
- 2 min read
When teaching my current 6-week online Mind Calm meditation course for WayfinderWoman Trust, I asked the group to visualise a big, open, blue sky and then notice how they felt experiencing that vast openness.
I then talked about what happens when a bird flies through the sky, and we stop noticing the sky and start focusing on the bird. We tell ourselves "oh look, there's a bird!" usually followed by "I wonder what type of bird it is?". If we know the answer we'll say, "it's a sparrow". "How lovely!", we think to ourselves, "I'm really pleased I've seen that sparrow". "I wonder what it's doing?", "I hope there's some food in the feeder, it's cold out there today!" "Oh no, I'm out of bird food, I must get some!" "Poor birds!" And now we're feeling concerned.
Here's the thing: A) notice how many thoughts were generated by noticing the bird. B) Notice that the thoughts resulted in feeling concerned. C) Notice that when thinking about the bird you stopped being aware of the sky?
Did the sky stop existing at any point? No, we just stopped paying attention to it and focused on the bird and then our subsequent thinking, instead.
Metaphor
The bird in this story represents our thoughts and the sky represents our conscious awareness.
In my experience, most people are going about their day focusing on their thoughts. This spirals into more thoughts and then feeling their thinking. It makes life a roller coaster experience full of highs and lows, instead of the calm serenity that every client I ever worked with says is the most important thing for them to experience.
To turn this around we need to consciously put our awareness on our conscious awareness. We need to be and focus on the sky that allows our thoughts, feelings and sensations to pass through unhindered.
To do this is to experience the calm serenity that underpins our existence.
Thoughts will come and go but our conscious awareness is permanent, and that feels incredibly nourishing.
Want to learn how to do this? Think it might be a useful skill to free up your mind to do more useful things like creating solutions than worrying ?
Would you like to know you can use your mind when needed, then have the ability to let it rest so you only use it when you need to? We know we need to let our body be still to rest. Might it be useful to let our mind be still to rest also so it can perform at its best?
Get in touch if you'd like to know more!
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