Whatever You Focus on Becomes Real to You

Post written by Justin Mazza.

One thing that all of us have in common is the ability to focus on external objects or events. Today I was watching my beloved Baltimore Ravens play the Houston Texans for the AFC playoff hunt.

Maybe you don’t care a lick about American Football and I am alright with that, but I want to use this as an example for this post.

Let’s back up for a moment. At 1:00 pm on Sunday January the 15th the Ravens and the Texans played each other for a chance to go to the AFC championship game against the New England Patriots next Sunday. So my wife and I are eagerly watching the game as my son, who could care less about Football begins to watch Scooby Doo on his computer. Wow, great for my wife and I because we won’t be distracted with the 100th comment by my son of, “when will this be over so I can watch ICarly?”

The game has started and the Ravens are winning for a while and my attention is directly focused on the game. No thoughts of money, work , health, relationships or any other thoughts that commonly go through my head. Oh what a feeling to be free of the trivial worries/thoughts that I have daily.

You see, my focus was on one thing and one thing only, the Ravens Football game. After many close calls the Ravens did eventually win the game and will go on to play at New England next week for the AFC Championship game much to my delight I might add.

So for four hours my thoughts and attention were on the game until it was over. My reality for four hours was the game and nothing else other than the occasional bathroom break.

Why am I telling you about the Football game and reality? What you focus on becomes real to you whether it is “real” or not.

When your thoughts are spiraling out of control with fear, worry and stress, yes it happens to the best of us, begin to change your focus on something that makes you feel good instead. The truth is that most worries will work themselves out if you do not add any more stress to it by focusing your attention on them. Trust me, the phrase “Let Go and Let God is around for a reason.”

How to change your focus to a better feeling place

There are many ways that I use to get my focus in alignment with how I really want to feel. Below are some really easy ways that work.

• Do something creative like drawing, coloring, decorating etc to activate your creative right brain.
• Take five minutes and do some breathing exercises. Breathe in for four seconds, hold for eight seconds, and then exhale for four seconds. Do this at least three times to feel more focused.
• Exercise for fifteen minutes. Exercise does not have to be strenuous either. Do whatever feels good, get’s your lungs pumping and get’s your body moving. I’ll leave how you do that up to you.
• Go for a drive. Take the family or go solo for a nice country drive. Before my family and I moved to the Country we would take Sunday drives out here just to relax and get away from the hustle and bustle of it all.
• Get Cooking. I love to learn new recipes and try them out at home. Baking is fun and creative and you can give away the goodies to your friends and family.
• The best thing you can do with your energy is to focus it where you’d like to see further expansion. If you want to see more joy in this world then focus on joy. If you want to see more peace then focus on peace. If you want to see more prosperity in this world then focus on prosperity. Is this making sense yet?

What’s fun about these exercises is that you can train your brain to focus on what you want to instead of allowing every thought and reaction that normally comes your way. What else is great about focusing your reality is that you will gain some sense of managing the thoughts that come through your head each day.