Paying Attention. Why Do We Only See What We Want to See?

Human brains have a very short attention span.

Unless it’s novel, pleasurable or ensures your survival the chances are you won’t pay much attention to it.

That Inbox of problems you have to deal with? It’s no surprise it scares you half to death when you become aware of it.

What are you paying attention to now?

I bet it won’t just be the words that are here.

Have you already scrolled down and up the page to find some more of those novel optical illusions?

If I’m lucky, you’ll scan a few sentences, you may spot the spelling mistooks, you might read the last paragraph: just so you have closure.

If you want to skip to the last paragraph feel free, I won’t mind, I’d totally understand you can’t help it.

One way I could hold your attention is to instruct you on what to do, such as:

“Read every word here on this page, it will ensure you a lifetime of happiness”

It won’t, but the promise of pleasure like a lifetime of happiness may grab your attention!

Have you ever read messages like these?

‘These Seven Never Before Revealed Secrets Saved This Man Thousands ‘

If you’re in debt, your brain will probably notice that one.

Here’s another: ‘This Woman Lost 35lbs in Two Months, Without Dieting‘

If you’re overweight and hate dieting, yep, you would probably pay attention to that.

Or ‘Business Owners: How to Triple Your Clients Overnight for FREE’

If you’re a business owner with no clients and skint, odds are pretty high that will get through.

Here’s one that grabbed my attention when I was supposed to be focusing on writing this post:

‘We Need Cake Eaters!’

Being a passionate lover of all-things-cake-like, I read!

See how easy it is to be distracted?

All of the above are novel: secrets, without dieting, overnight, cake eaters!

They are also pleasurable: thousands, triple, lost, free, cake!

Are the first three messages true?

Who knows. To the marketers, they just wanted our attention.

Try this: The next time you read a newspaper, open Facebook, watch the news, click on a tweet or ask for advice: wake up, observe yourself, pay attention to what gets your attention.

I bet it’s either novel, pleasurable or to do with your survival.

Is This You?

One way I could hold your attention is to ask you a few questions:

• Have you ever had to rewind a film because you lost the thread?
• Have you ever had to flick back a few chapters of a book because you don’t remember the plot?
• Ever driven from here to there and have no recollection of the journey?

Maybe you answered, ‘Yes! That’s me.’  In which case, I may have the pleasure of your attention for a little longer.

If you answered no, then I better do something else to keep it.

Time for a story?

Once Upon a Time…

There was once a man who was being chased by a ferocious tiger across a field.

At the edge of the field there was a cliff.

In order to escape the jaws of the tiger, the man caught hold of a vine and swung himself over the edge of the cliff.

Dangling down, he saw, to his dismay, there were more tigers on the ground below him! And, furthermore, two little mice were gnawing on the vine to which he clung. He knew that at any moment he would fall to certain death.

That’s when he noticed a wild strawberry growing on the cliff wall. Clutching the vine with one hand, he plucked the strawberry with the other and put it in his mouth.

He never before realized how sweet a strawberry could taste.

Get it?

Do you know what you pay attention to?

Here’s the good (and bad) news: you don’t have to pay attention to everything, your brain has a wonderful little involuntarily regulating system (filter) that does it for you, it’s called your reticular activating system (RAS for short).

In brief, as I’m no scientist, it’s your RAS that determines what events, situations, stimuli, content gets your attention (survival, novel, pleasurable.)

You may think you’re paying full attention, but your RAS is happily working away in the background, I’m sure you aren’t paying much attention to the seat you’re sitting on, the wall behind you, or the noise from the street, are you?

What noise?

Precisely. You aren’t aware of it. Or are you now?

If everything were to get through the filter, you would be overwhelmed by all the information that hits your senses.

You think that’s good news, right?

Well, in terms of overwhelming, heck yes. But without all the information, how can we make the best choices and decisions that we have the potential to.

We think we don’t have any answers to the problems we face.

What if they are there, staring us in the face but because of what we have chosen to let in and leave out we just aren’t ‘seeing’ them.

You’ll ‘see’ the information that fits with how you see the world, confirming to you that your view is correct.

You’ll ‘see’ the information that matches who you think you are, to confirm that you are who you think you are.

You’ll ‘see’ messages that will conform to your own belief and value system.

Why do we only ‘see’ what we want to see?

Imagine you are sending a text message and crossing a really busy street at the same time, a bus is heading straight towards you (assuming you had no intention to be run over), your RAS is automatically on the case (okay, ‘on the case’ isn’t the scientific term, but hey I’m not a scientist.)

Survival!

Filters open, your perception kicks in, your brain notices the bus and observes the speed, the sight, the sound, the smells. Instinctively your neurons fire up, your brain knows that a bus heading at speed towards you is not good (based on all the information you have previously gathered in your life.)  You’re flooded with information.

Your cognition allows you to evaluate your perception (the information you perceived) and make a decision on what you should do.

You would then take action in accordance to what you perceive and what decision your cognition made.

Jump or stay.

Thank your RAS (perception, cognition, and action) and hope that you have enough clock time to get out the way.

What does it mean?

How does this information apply to your life, all this is interesting but how can you take it and make sense of it, so you create the changes that you want to make?

For that, I have to hold your attention and give you some examples and hopefully one of the following examples below will get through your RAS.

Let’s assume you hate your job and you want a new one.

You believe (based on perceptions), to make this happen you have to complete a lot of exercises that you don’t find pleasurable or novel: CV’s job search, application forms.

You perceive (based on your past experiences or conditioning from others) that this is boring work, it’s hard, it’s difficult and time-consuming.

Your brain seeks pleasure, so instead of doing the work to get your new job your cognition evaluates and decides you would be better doing something that is pleasurable. So you take action, switch on the TV and watch a repeat of CSI.

Or let’s assume you want to lose weight.

You pay attention to the clothes that don’t fit, the feeling of shame when trying on clothes in shops (that moment when you struggle to get them off without falling through the changing room curtain.) You decide that you are going on a diet.

Your brain freaks out, it remembers the last time you starved yourself: you ate beans and soya milk for a month.

It was so unpleasant. You hated it. You were miserable and hungry. So your brain automatically thinks ‘we can’t survive this’ – it can’t help it, you taught it dieting was a chore. Instead of finding some brilliant recipes that are great to cook, that doesn’t leave you feeling hungry or miserable. You begin the process of torturing yourself.

Pretty soon your brain takes over. You perceive that this diet is like the rest, your cognition evaluates and says ‘this isn’t worth it’ and reminds you that ‘you only live once and should eat what you want’. Before you know it a packet of crisps have been eaten, a cake and you’ve assed an entire packet of ginger nuts.

What are you struggling with?

Ginger nuts? Oh, no that’s me!

Let’s assume you know what areas of your life aren’t working.

For long lasting change and effect, you may need to ‘see’ differently.

You may need to retrain your brain. You may need to let other information through the filters.

Easy? Not really.

Impossible? Heck no. Totally possible.

Challenging? Yes, in a good way, though, it can be fun.

Time-consuming? Maybe.

It’ll take loads of practice. Remember, your brain has a short attention span, it would be quite happy if you take the easiest route (way out?) and loves it when you ‘stay with what you know’.

1. Seek Truth

We only will ever see a fraction of what is actually available to us.  Some see more, and some see less.

Why, though? That’s another post. However (from my experience) most people only see a fraction of their own potential because of their beliefs.

Answer: question your beliefs, observe them, pay attention to them.

All of them?

Yes, as they come up, one by one.

2. Self Image

You have accepted your current self-image as true. However, a self-image is like a mask, a veneer, a cover up to keep hidden the real you, your true identity.

If images aren’t real, then they can be changed.

Again, pay attention. What categories, boxes, labels, roles, status, programming is your mask?

These aren’t the whole truth.

When people say they have ‘lost themselves’ or want to ‘find themselves again’, it’s usually the removal of the layers that have been added to (sometimes for survival) over the years.

You aren’t lost, the real you is there, it hasn’t gone anywhere just merely tried to fit in and survive!

Wake up your full attention.

See what you are missing.

Your true self isn’t buried or hidden from you.

You don’t need to travel far to find it.

Be passionate. Keep walking. Remove the darn filters.

Deep? Is it buried deep the real me?

Some would say it is. Some say otherwise. But what do your beliefs say?

Quit looking for the symbols and signs that your image is ‘correct’, that you require external influences to confirm you are ‘okay’.

You are okay.

3. When I Change One Small Thing, Everything Changes

I believe that the one small thing is our beliefs. And I also believe that we can work on those every single moment of the day.

If we pay attention to our thoughts and what we say about our lives.

As soon as we make a statement about ‘this is the way my life is’, we can’t see any other information. Everything we perceive will be in alignment with these beliefs.

Grab yourself a piece of paper and try these:

• What do I negatively believe about my life, career, business?
  
• What ‘proof’ or ‘evidence’ have I accepted to confirm to me this belief is true? 
• What language do I use daily to keep the belief alive?
• What do I positively believe about my life, career, business?
  
• What ‘proof’ or ‘evidence’ have I accepted to confirm to me this belief is true? 
• What language do I use daily to keep the belief alive?
• Who has confirmed it for me? What specifically did they say?
• Whose opinions do I listen to? Are they accurate?
• What do I believe? What’s my truth?
• How can I remain true to myself, not what others expect of me?

And you’ve made it to the last paragraph! I have no idea if you will ever look at those questions.

Heck, you may have skipped the lot and just read this sentence!

Here’s a thought for you:

You’re in the process of making choices and decisions right this second.

Do you know who is making them?