What are you paying attention to right now?

There is an important difference between the very real problems we have to deal with in life and our thoughts about them that tend to permeate our minds at all hours of the day: when we’re in the shower, out with friends, or on our commute.

You have to get that project done at work, however stressful.

But you do not have to hopelessly latch onto every worry about that project that happens to pop up in your mind.

When you’re at dinner with friends and a worry about that project surfaces, it is possible to acknowledge the worry as a passing thought and gently shift your attention back to what is true of your life at that moment: the people in front of you that bring you joy.

Philsopher Sam Harris offers a nice and succinct take on this, “We’re always solving a problem, and it’s possible to simply drop your problem, if only for a moment, and enjoy whatever is true of your life in the present… [this] requires a change in attitude, it requires a change in the attentiveness you pay to your experience in the present moment”.

The quality of your experience — of your life — depends on what you’re paying attention to right now.