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Giving the Gift of your Attention in 3 Steps

Think of all the requests for your time, attention, and focus. Do you give yours away, wasting this precious resource?  We all feel it – the constant demand for our attention, the feeling of not having enough time.  We risk feeling overloaded, distracted, or just stressed out.  But our attention is our own precious resource. Do you notice where you spend yours?

Of course you have to spend your focus, your attention, on the daily requirements like your job, your commute, the things you must do. And there is no denying that keeping your bills paid and your boss happy does make the world go around. 

But in those other hours, the time you can call your own, is your attention focused on what is important to you?

 Do you reserve some focus for your relationship?  Or do you find you are distracted, spending time instead on social media, primetime’s latest thriller, or guilty pleasures like Sudoku or updating your choice list on Netflix?

If the time you spend on things defines you, have you defined what is important to you? There are just a few steps to making sure you decide where your focus is spent, and not have other attention grabbers defining you without your conscious decision.

1.  Limit the attention grabbers. Whether it is reading the latest news, browsing blogs, or updating facebook, make yourself choose how important it is in your life. Cut yourself off at 5 minutes! Make a choice for what is important.

2.  Choose what defines you. Real conversation with your spouse says a lot more about what is important to you.  Consciously decide that focused conversation with each other is important to your relationship.

3.  Become aware of distractions. Notice what pulls you away from what you decide is important. Have you stopped going to the gym together?  Not enough time to share each other’s day over coffee? Be aware so that you make a conscious decision to change and not let a missed promise to each other turn into a slowly changing, unnoticed distraction habit or pattern.

So give yourself a Time Out for your Relationship!  Notice your daily frantic pace, distraction or lack of focus. Spend your most precious resource on what is important to you – focus on your Relationship!  That daily point of focus –on each other — can give meaning to your day, so that all the other frantic attention grabbers of your day keep their place!