The quality of your life right now is determined by HOW you are placing your attention.
Where is your attention mostly, inside you or outside you?
When your attention is inside you, it´s focused on your thoughts and feelings and when it’s outside you, it´s focused on what’s going on in your external reality. Most people have a tendency to be either more inwardly focused or more externally focused.
You know those people who regularly interrupt you, perhaps even finish what they think you want to say (but it’s not what you wanted to say)? How about those disinterested people who don’t seem to listen when you speak? Anyone come to mind? These are “inside people”. They’re inside their heads, responding to their own internal representations much more than to what’s going on out there.
Those whom you feel heard by and those who are not overcome by stress or negative emotions each time a challenge arises, as well as those who always seem to have an objective approach toward people and circumstances are “outside people”.
“Inside people” who rarely check on things outside, can get quite trapped in their mental world. “Outside people” who rarely check on things inside, can become like football fans who have never kicked a ball. The trick is to become aware of where you are placing your attention, and then shift it inside or outside, in order to deal most effectively with your situation.
We train our Coaches, Therapists & ASE Facilitators to sharpen their calibration skills (accurate observations and comparisons), and then check in on their somatic impulses. This is the structure of intuition. One way to get good at it, is to follow a loop of checking out and checking in:
Start by checking out with your 5 senses for all the necessary external information, then check in for your Unconscious Mind’s guidance, then check out again to take action while gathering feedback as you do. Integrating the feedback from your external environment begins the next loop. With some practice, this natural process becomes easy and automatic. It’s an integral part of establishing flow and achieving high levels of success in life, and it also makes a big difference in effective coaching and therapy.
Doing the above reality check from time to time will reveal where your attention most frequently gravitates. The moment that you become aware of being either inside or outside with your attention, is when you become the observer of your internal state and your external reality. This perceptual position involving attention being both inside and outside almost simultaneously is a characteristic of Open Awareness. It is a multi-perspective state that promotes intuition, creativity, resourcefulness and flow.
Written by Jevon Dangeli – Transpersonal Coach, MSc Transpersonal Psychology
