'Intuition to Action' Series - Attention

Originally published on LinkedIn · November 13, 2024

"Attention is like a fire" -- Jiddu Krishnamurti

For me, this line stuck with me from many years ago, as I was listening to Jiddu Krishnamurti's talks.

𝐀𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐢𝐬 𝐨𝐧𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐠𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐬𝐭 𝐠𝐢𝐟𝐭𝐬 𝐨𝐧𝐞 𝐜𝐚𝐧 𝐠𝐢𝐯𝐞 𝐭𝐨 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐨𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫.

𝐖𝐡𝐲 𝐬𝐨?

Attention alone is the real experience of yourself with full congruence of bringing all your senses with full presence of body, mind and spirit.

An all encompassing realness happens when we are able to live in the moment, give the fullest attention to the task, as he fully explores to this line "No task is boring if you pay real attention to it".

𝐖𝐡𝐲 𝐝𝐨 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐧𝐞𝐞𝐝 𝐭𝐨 𝐩𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐜𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐬? 𝐈𝐬 𝐢𝐭 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐨𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐬?

No, it's for yourself first and then for the others, and hence it's the greatest gift that both giver and receiver mutually benefit from.

This kind of practice to stay present in the moment is tied to all the other virtuous and desirable qualities of:

• Self-awareness,

• Good understanding and comprehension,

• Active listening,

• Effective communication,

• Knowledge acquisition and wisdom creation,

• Powerful perspective building,

• Qualitative learning method,

and many more second level derivative qualities....

This practice of "attention" in turn leads to 𝐯𝐚𝐥𝐮𝐞 𝐜𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧. In whatever craft or skills you are good at, with this element of "attention" enhancement, it makes 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐛𝐞𝐬𝐭 𝐚𝐭 𝐰𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐝𝐨 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐰𝐡𝐨 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐚𝐫𝐞. A step closer to living your uniqueness.

𝐀𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐢𝐬 𝐥𝐢𝐤𝐞 𝐚 𝐟𝐢𝐫𝐞 𝐛𝐞𝐜𝐚𝐮𝐬𝐞 𝐢𝐭'𝐬 𝐑𝐄𝐀𝐋, 𝐭𝐚𝐧𝐠𝐢𝐛𝐥𝐞, 𝐞𝐧𝐥𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭𝐞𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠, 𝐞𝐟𝐟𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐞, 𝐜𝐮𝐭𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐫𝐨𝐮𝐠𝐡 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐭𝐚𝐬𝐤 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐡𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐦𝐞𝐭𝐚𝐩𝐡𝐨𝐫, 𝐟𝐢𝐫𝐞.

Let's anchor our practice of "attention" with a daily life relatable example:

(a) A conventional frame of mind:

In the somewhat noisy world with a lot of words, buzzwords, selling an idea or product or service / marketing, conventional wisdom says, you have to say What's In It For Me (WITFM) mapped to the other person or your audience. This is the default mental construct.

NOTE: I'm not focusing on the math, finances and other profit margins you must have computed as benefits for yourself on the backend. That's a business strategy and I'm not touching that tangentially also. This is quite intangible in the true value at the spiritual fulfillment in what you do towards high-gear value in terms of joy and fulfillment for everyone involved.

(b) A transformative frame of mind:

However, a new age thinking and my perspective on attention as it relates to doing it well, is to bring the self-awareness to the self, know why you are saying/asking/doing what you are doing before you carry out the selling point.

It helps you become ready to listen while you have your side of truth, honest expression well chalked out. I'm tying our "attention is like a fire" to the self first and hence this is practiced well when we work with others.

How is the new transformative method more effective than the conventional method of thinking?

It's transformative and not just incremental. When we do this self-exercise to map the same WITFM and fill that out for ourselves, we are better equipped to bring our intellectual honesty, stay authentic, stay grounded, be more thorough in taking any follow-up questions, more readiness for rebuttal or clarify and many more as I am thinking...

How is it ineffective when we fail to do the WITFM for the self first?

What I'm bringing is a perspective I built, practice and found it to be beneficial in successful persuasion of my idea exchange to the ideal/intended audience. And I have validated how it's ineffective when this transformative approach of self-exercise is missing.

An assumption made: We each are aspiring to move towards spiritual growth and hence the most possible value creation in what we do:

• Lowered misplaced expectations.
• Reduced disappointment
• More self-confidence
• More preparedness and readiness
• Honest and authentic dialog / selling your point
• Instant takeaways and learnings if it fails
• Iterative attempts become enjoyable as you know what you need to fix and retry

The conventional method of mindset is ineffective because our readers or listeners are tuned to your true selling of WITFM as you speak / put it in words but you are invariably in the convincing business than connecting with the other human. There's a world of difference in connection versus convincing.

We do not want to force the other person to take our idea or approach or our expected outcome or join our journey on our timeline and schedule as there's hidden urgency that the other can't see with a clear line of sight etc. etc.,

We want our ideal audience to take our idea / approach etc., as it truly connects, aligns with their goals/mission/values or their path. And this match criteria met categorically alone will not sell your idea. We may run the risk of coming off as forceful, annoying, nagging persistent follow-up without a clear connection or full scope of the idea established. This builds a resistance in the connection, makes it harder as you pursue your goal. You may avoid it entirely by following the other transformative method.

Hope I sold you on the benefits of "attention" with a self-exercise of mapping WITFM in a spiritual setting using the transformative mindset well. :)

DIY exercise for you:

• Are you able to bring a quick example in your mind as you read this perspective? If so, how well did you track to this already and if not, why?
• Is there an element of bringing this mindset to your daily life exchanges regardless of the example presented here? Do you clearly see the benefits?
• If there's one active thing that's in works, can you bring this mindset to your practice more consciously and see if it works?

Thoughts? Questions? Drop them in the comments, we'll explore.

About the Author:

I’m Veda Konduru, a former AI tech founder, data scientist, technology product architect with an academic excellence in science and technology with an overall 20+ years of subject domain career experience..

Inspired by some events in my life, I set myself off on a quest for exploring the role of natural intelligence, the human mind’s underpinnings, in the age of AI, and made significant strides in the past few years and I’m here to help others on a similar journey.

In short, An artificial intelligence architect NOW turned into The Mind Explorer.