How to Pay Attention for a Better Life

Choose Your Target with Care

Attention’s basic mechanism is a process of selection. When you focus on something, your brain highlights or “photographs” that bright red cardinal or brilliant insight, which then becomes part of your reality—your mental “album” of the world—and can affect your behavior: your thoughts, feelings, actions. In contrast, what you don’t pay attention to might as well not exist, at least for you. So choose your targets carefully.