All those things are important but to be able to experience joy and happiness you need something much more basic than that.

You need awareness.

Your awareness is whatever you choose to focus your attention on. And, whatever you choose makes up your experiences, your feelings, your thoughts, your beliefs, your goals, and your quality of life.

So, without your attention none of the above listed items would matter. But, it's not any old attention, you need focused attention.

You might say you need family to be happy but if you're always in a surface level or fractured state of mind (jumping from thought to thought, task to task) not enough of your attention and awareness will be on family to make a difference to your quality of life or theirs.

Today's society encourages fractured attention in that you're being asked to constantly consume more and more information as well as to do more and more. It's non stop. There's never any time when you just sit with your thoughts or be in the moment.

According to Tony Crabbe who wrote the book, "Busy, How To Thrive In A World of Too Much", we're the first generation that doesn't have any idle time.

What he means by that is that we're always forcing our brains to receive more and more info. There's never any time when we just sit with our thoughts. Even when we're driving in our cars, we'll have the radio on or will be listening to audio books or audio lessons trying to cram more and more into every second of our day with the belief that this will help us get ahead somehow.

If you never allow yourself to just "be", your brain doesn't have the time it needs to process all the massive amounts of information it's taking in and that means you're suddenly living a busy life with no meaning.

It's critical that your mind have time to analyze, ponder, and integrate all the information you've gathered so that your life can have meaning.

As Winifred Gallagher says, "Your life is made up of experiences and how you respond to those experiences. So, when you never focus your attention, you're depriving yourself of truly living."

There's also the fact that if you're not in a sufficient enough level of awareness, you'll be unable to feel joy or happiness. Yes, by being in a multi-tasking, frenetic state of mind, you can't feel the emotion of happiness.

On a personal note, I hadn't realized until recently how fractured my own attention had become and it's horrifying to realize how much I could have accomplished by now if I'd only been able to concentrate on complex tasks instead of focusing on basically busy work.

Being in a fractured, multi-tasking state of mind is an addiction and the more you do it, the more you crave it.

It's also far easier to be in a fractured state rather than in a state of concentration.

It makes you feel like you're being productive getting a whole bunch of little tasks done like an empty email inbox but they're lacking any significant meaning.

So, I'm going through a process to retrain my brain to make myself be able to concentrate more deeply and effectively. I'm going to learn how to stop multi-tasking.

Did you know that multi-tasking actually slows you down as far as being able to complete things? Research also shows that it damages your brain. Permanently. How disturbing is that?

Cal Newport who wrote the book, "Deep Work", said, being able to concentrate is a super power in today's world.

Yes, a super power because so few people are able to focus their attention now. But, if you can develop the ability to focus your attention, you'll be the one making a difference coming up with breakthrough ideas and achieving amazing goals but also truly living instead of being in a mindless, stressed out fog.

So, this is something I'm determined to develop. Not only so I can become more effective but because my quality of life depends on it.

If you want to be able to experience joy and happiness, your life depends on learning this skill.

So, this week's article is all about this topic with more facts on why this is so critical to learn but also more on what you can do to start reclaiming your brain.

So, one more time:

What makes up your life?
What makes you?
The answer is,
You are whatever you choose to focus your attention on.

Let that sink in for a moment before you go check your email and facebook posts.

Then go read the article. Your Happiness Depends On This

Read the full article online

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