After meditation,  we talked more about the power of attention. You’ve likely heard the phrase, “Where your attention goes, energy flows.” It’s true. You only have so much attention to allot and whether you’ve thought about this or not, your attention is a powerful currency, after all, you pay attention.

Your attention connects you to everything you are aware of.

In fact, your attention is your superpower. You have the ability to take advantage of this superpower by training yourself to pay attention on purpose. And when you do, you learn to pay attention to what truly matters to you, and this can transform your life.

I refer to attention as the “currency of love” because what you attend to, you enliven, nourish, and encourage to thrive. The poet Rumi once wrote, “Love is the bridge that connects you to everything else.”

Consider this: when you offer your unconditioned, gentle attention to someone or something, you are sending a very powerful message: “I see you. I hear you. I love you.”  Every living being, from people and animals to plants, and even molecules of water, respond to attention. This not only creates a deeper connection between you and everything else, your deliberate attention can also enliven your relationship to yourself, your body, your passions, your projects, and ultimately, your entire life.

Unfortunately, many of us squander our attention without even recognizing its value and its power. We can become mindless, rather than mindful. That’s because attention is so subtle. It can easily be overshadowed by competing interests and distractions.

Technology and the media hijack your attention, often without your permission. Your mental musings, including your compulsions and obsessions, can also distract you from what is important to you, too. Some of us have the habit of paying partial attention: not truly engaged, but kind of half listening, half distracted, or easily thrown off focus because of the demands from to-do lists.

If you’re not aware that you’re distracted, then your connection with the people and causes you care most deeply about will suffer.

But you can change that. You can deliberately make it a point to regain control of how and to whom you direct this powerful currency, simply by paying attention. Remember, your attention enlivens what it is directed toward.

Notice what literally captures your attention. What are you paying attention to? Is it something that is happening now? The activity you are engaged in? Or are you lost in a dream world of the past or future? Or is it sidetracked by a personal obsession or compulsive thought? Just by paying attention to your attention, you can become more intimate with it.

You can become ridiculously in charge of your attention and how you focus it through the practice of meditation, specifically mindfulness meditation.

Meditation is something everyone can do. You don’t need a special form of concentration or a particular belief system. In fact, it is your birthright to meditate.

In order to do it, you need these three things: 1. Your resolve to do the practice. 2. a gentle, nonjudgmental attention, and 3. a focal point for your attention such as a sound, sensation, or visual focus. There are many different styles of meditation. Experiment and find one that feels most natural to you.