Pay attention to your attention. Let’s say that you’re broke. You ain’t got any money, you’re broke. But if your attention is on staying broke, all of your cognition, all of your reasoning, all of your perception is in the awareness and attention of being broke.

Cognition determines your reasoning, perception, and problem solving. Attention is a core mental process and it underlies all of your cognition. If you don’t like where you are in life, it’s absolutely vital that you move your attention. Move your attention to the opposite of where you are. Anytime you’re in a place that’s not empowering, negative, fearful, or worry, stop and ask yourself, “Where’s my attention?” you are where your attention is.

You’re listening to the Transform Your Life from the Inside Out podcast. This episode is titled, Why It’s Important to Pay Attention to the Core of All of Your Thinking. Big topic, paying attention to the core of all of your thinking. Why is that important? Because the core is literally what drives everything else, obviously.

But here’s the thing, your attention. Your attention is the core of all of your mental processes. And your intention, it underlies all cognition. Basically, all brain function comes down to your attention, all reasoning, all perception, all problem solving. Everything comes down to your attention and then where you hold your attention drives your human behavior.

Basically your behavior drives your outcomes. Unfortunately, we live in the age of attention deficit and this deficit is robbing people of quality of life and taking from them what they want in life. So if you’d like to learn more about managing your attention so you can create what you want in life, keep listening. Attention, attention, attention.

Attention is so fundamental to being human that, you know, the crazy thing about your attention is that you don’t even have to learn about attention. I mean, you look at babies, and babies literally pay attention. They pay attention to movement, to sound, to their parents, to their environments. It’s hardwired into us.

I mean, we are just hardwired to pay attention to things. But the question is, is what do we pay attention to? Because what we pay attention to will determine what we do, and what we do will determine what we create in life. And if we’re not creating what we want in life, plain and simple, our attention is in the wrong place.

When it comes to attention, I want to look at this from a couple of different directions. One direction would be a scientific direction. And another direction, which is what inspired this episode, would be a spiritual direction. I talk about this topic over and over and over and over times a thousand and over and over and over again.

And it’s such an easy concept to at least understand analytically that a lot of us dismiss this concept. But again, it’s the core of our cognition. It’s the foundation of our life. So I decided to do an episode on this. I think I’ve done one before, but I decided to do it again.

So when it comes to attention, there are basically two types and then categories of attention. There’s active attention and there’s passive attention. Passive attention basically is just things that happen in the world. Maybe it’s a car horn, maybe somebody shouts at you, maybe you’re sitting here at your desk right now and you’re doing something, listening to the podcast, typing something, and your attention is on that, and then somebody beats on the front door, your doorbell rings, and then your attention moves over there.

That’s passive attention, and then your active attention is directed and purposeful attention. When it comes to active attention, many people, their life, so to speak, the quality of their life is sucked away by their active attention on social media. I was talking to a young friend last week, and he’s talking about all these things that he wants to create in life and how he wants to be, and he is to some degree, and he could do a lot more and become a lot bigger if he chooses, but a digital marketing entrepreneur.

And I asked him about his days and he said, at this point, he didn’t do it anymore after I talked with him about it, but he said that he would listen to some guy on TikTok who was about gaming for a couple of hours every single night. And what I want to point out is we might think, well, that’s no big deal, the couple of hours a night, I could be watching TV instead, so it’s no big deal. But even if you’re watching Netflix four hours per night, that’s where your attention is and you’re using your power of attention to hurt yourself.

And that’s what we wanna turn around in this episode is to have you understand the power of attention and then have you start managing your attention and hopefully have you start mastering your attention. Because again, it’s the foundation of all cognition which determines all the decisions you make which again, determines. It’s your ability to focus no matter what’s going on around you. Let’s say that you’re in a loud restaurant and you hear clanging and plates and noise and people talking and all these kind of things around you, but you’re focused on the conversation at hand.

Well, that is selective attention. Next there is divided attention. And divided attention is what we call multitasking. A little of this, a little of that, go back to a little of this, you know, you do point A, then you go to part B, then over to part C, and then over to D, and then back to part A.

Basically, this attention is divided. The next attention is alternating attention. And that’s back and forth when it comes to task orientation. So for example, you could be talking on your phone right now. Now, of course, or not because you’re listening to this episode.

But as an example, you could be talking on your phone and then you put your phone down and you check your email. And then you go from your email to TikTok or Twitter or LinkedIn or wherever you go. That’s alternating your attention. And then finally, we have sustained attention.

And sustained attention is where you focus and you have the ability to maintain your attention and to focus. And that’s what I want to talk about a little more in this episode. But again, from a spiritual perspective, is learning to cultivate, I should say first, to cultivate, maintain and to focus your attention. Why? And I’m going to be repetitive.

You are where your attention is, which you might not have recognized is that also your life, your life is where your attention is. Completely off topic. But I got a new puppy nine months ago, and I did not intend to adopt this little guy. It happened.

Literally, I’m glad I did. He’s an amazing dog. But he is an Australian shepherd. And when I watch him, I watch him watch things. And it’s no surprise to me, which I assume it’s part of the breed, it’s no surprise to me that Australian shepherds are amazing, amazing, herding animals.

It’s not herding, like, hurt, herding, H-E-R-D-I-N-G, herding animals. Because when my dog is watching things like, for example, and she doesn’t like this, the cat, when the dog is watching the cat and the cat doesn’t like it. The dog doesn’t care what the cat likes. But when he’s watching the cat, that dude is laser focused at watching the cat.

Now, he’s a friendly guy. He tries to herd the cat. And trust me, she doesn’t like that either. But when the cat moves across the house, his attention is like a laser beam focused on the cat or focused on someone at the front door. And that’s how we wanna be as people, is we want to learn, and I’m gonna talk about that.

And then I’ll tell you in the secret podcast how I developed this, and how you may also want to start exploring and developing this yourself as well. But we want to learn to master our attention, because anything becomes possible for us when we learn to master our attention. Now where I want to go next is I want to talk about manifestation and creating. Basically, I want to talk about manifestation and creating as they relate to attention.

You’ve probably have heard me say this before if you’ve listened for any amount of time. I learned this from Don Xavier and he has said this. I kid you not, I have probably heard him verbally articulate this a thousand times over the past 30 years. And to be completely, I’m laughing at myself, to be completely up front and candid, it took me a long time.

It took me a long time to really understand the depth and the gravity of the power of attention. And Don Xavier would constantly say to me, “You are where your attention is.” Six words, six really simple words, “You are where your attention is.” I’ll demonstrate that to you in just a bit.

And for many years, I wasn’t dismissive about it, but I was probably along the lines of like, yeah, yeah, okay, blah, blah, more ancient wisdom, okay. And when it really hit me, maybe 15, 20 years ago, I’m like, OMG, oh my God, I’ve got to learn to master my attention. Because as I said, the scientific stuff earlier, you know, I mean, the four levels of the four subcategories of attention, et cetera, that’s all scientific.

But as Don Xavier was teaching it to me, it wasn’t scientific. It was literally about creating and about manifestation, and about literally recognizing that where I hold my attention is what I manifest. So if you look at it, give you a simple example here, when you’re angry, that’s where your attention is. Think about that for a moment.

I’m going to slow down. When you’re angry, that is where your attention is. Now, when you’re angry, that is an emotion. But the attention, meaning the thought is on, I can’t believe what Bob did. I can’t believe what Susan did.

Can you believe this tax bill that Congress is trying to push through. I can’t believe this person did that. I can’t believe that person did that. What the hell are they thinking? And I’m pissed off about it.

Well, you’re pissed off because you’re angry and you’re angry because that’s where your attention is because your attention precedes your emotional states. And if you want to change your emotional states, you’ve got to change your attention. Okay, as I’m recording this episode rarely do I ever edit anything. And I have an engineer and a team and all that, but I rarely, I don’t edit things.

However, I just stopped the podcast and took a break for a second and I was talking to my sound engineer because the light behind me is flickering. And I asked my sound engineer, should I turn the light off? Because I didn’t know how badly it was flickering, but I saw it flickering. And we both agreed, okay, let’s turn the light off behind you.

If you’re watching a video, you see the light on behind me now. And I decided to leave the light on. Why? A little bit of an exercise in attention. Because many times when we’re wanting to pay attention to something, something else will distract our attention.

So I’m leaving the light on in the event that it does flicker while I’m doing the rest of the episode. “Keep your attention, this will be a good exercise. Keep your attention on the audio and what I’m saying.” So again, everything happens for a reason, and I’m doing this to hopefully bring more awareness to this concept.

I remember this woman who taught meditation, and she used to teach it at the, her name’s Byron Katie. I’ve never read any of her work, but I know a lot of people who follow her work. Is Byron Katie a woman or a man? I do not know, I confess, I do not know.

Anyway, I read a story where Byron Katie was teaching meditation at LAX airport. And Byron Katie was saying, I’m teaching meditation at LAX airport because if you can pay attention there and get mindful and slow down at the airport, you can do it anywhere. So the light flickering in the event it comes back on again is my little version of being at LAX Airport.

About attention, there are many times things that annoy us. And for example, the light behind me would be the perfect, perfect example. So let’s say that it was flickering and you’re trying to pay attention to me and you’re trying, if you’re listening, you’re not seeing the light. But if you’re watching the video, you’re like, oh, that damn light, I wish that light would stop flickering.

Well, where are you giving your attention to? What are you giving your attention to, me or the light? So the thing is, is anytime that we’re in any negative emotion, any kind of internal disturbance, the first thing I say to myself, because I have the emotion and I know I’m getting into it. The first thing I say to myself is, wait, stop, move your attention.

But many of us let so many things in the world annoy us. And you know, as funny as I can see the shadow on my computer screen or the light glowing from the light that was blinking. And now that I mentioned a light blinking in attention, the light is not blinking anymore. But what many of us do, I’ll give you an example and you can fill in your own blank here.

I have a friend that is an amazing, amazing friend. I love this friend so much. The challenge with being around this friend for a lot of years for me was when this friend eats, he eats with his mouth open. And number one is, that’s my belief system, my values.

I don’t want to watch food falling out of your mouth. And what you used to, I’m going to be very transparent here, it’s not going to be a big deal because a lot of you can relate to this. Candidly, it used to annoy the shit out of me when I would eat with this friend and they would smack, smack, smack, smack, because every time they would chew, they would open their mouth and I could hear a smack, smack, smack, smack.

And I’m like, I’m gonna shoot myself. This is ridiculous. And I’ve had to learn over the years, focus my attention on the company and the person, not their really poor table manners, because we’ll finish eating in 30 minutes or so, probably quicker than that. And we can go about our conversation and hanging out and all that kind of stuff, but move my attention from their smacking.

So look out in your life and notice all the things that annoy you. Maybe it’s somebody talking really loud on their cell phone and they, you know, that used to annoy me. That’s why I’m using it as an example when back when, and people still do it, but it’s not as, it’s not as prevalent anymore when cell phones came out.

People would talk on their cell phone in public spaces as if they thought everyone in that public space wanted to hear their phone conversation. Many years ago, it used to annoy the shit out of me. I’m kind of like, what the fuck? Pay attention to what you’re doing.

We don’t all want to hear about your date last night with Bob or Susan or whoever you want. We don’t want to hear that. This day and age, I move my attention. I simply do not pay attention to it because I know and I finally have come to know.

There’s a difference between understanding and knowing. You can understand this, but when you know it, it goes to a whole different level and a whole different meaning. I know that my attention creates my life for me and I know that to create the life that I want, I have to maintain my mastery of my attention, because if I can’t master my attention, I’m not going to create what I want.

I did not think about this prior to the episode, but it popped in my mind. Some people have some neurological challenges, and those neurological challenges, number one, they might be on the spectrum, and I think everyone is on the spectrum to some degree, but secondly, they might have either what’s called ADD or ADHD.

And there are ways to heal that. You may wanna look this up, PSA announcement. I don’t endorse any particular company, but many years ago, I had a client that told me he couldn’t pay attention to anything. And he was a top producing real estate agent.

And he said, “Jim, it’s so hard for me to pay attention that I really can’t even work.” And I said to him, “What have you looked into?” And he says, everything. I’ve looked into everything. Come to find out, he really hadn’t looked into anything.

And I did some research and came up with a link and a process called NeuroField, one word, N-E-U-R-O-F-I-E-L-D, NeuroField. Now, this client, Mike, went to NeuroField for like three months. And basically, they just strap a little cap on you under the affects your brain waves and helps your brain function normally, electromagnetic.

And he said, Jim, I don’t know what happened. But after that treatment, it’s like I’ve never had it. He goes, I can’t even believe the life that I have. His exact words were, after doing the NeuroField, and again, it’s one word and it is endorsed, doesn’t mean anything, but it is endorsed by the FDA in the US.

But NeuroField, and be careful because there’s a lot of people out there hawking a whole lot of crap, but NeuroField, he goes, Jim, it’s like, I never had ADHD and it’s like it just disappeared. Someone waved a magic wand and it was gone. Okay. So back to you.

You want to this afternoon, tomorrow and next couple of days, pay attention to your attention. Pay attention to your annoyances, pay attention to your distractions, pay attention to what pulls you in multiple different directions. Pay attention to how you’re investing your time, because again, for the fourth time, and I’ll say it probably five more times, you are where your attention is.

So survey your life right now. Let’s talk about a couple of examples. Survey your life right now. And as you survey the circumstances of your life, survey your attention.

Because guess what? The circumstances of your life, 100% correspond to where you hold your attention. So let’s say, for example, that a circumstance of your life is that you don’t have any money. Well, where is your attention? See many people think they are mutually exclusive, meaning the external world in the environment and the attention.

They are not exclusive because your external world can be in one place, but your attention can be in a different place. So let’s say that your bank account is broke. You could have your attention on I’m broke, I’m broke, I’m broke, I’m broke, or you could have the awareness that you’re broke and don’t have any money in the bank, but your attention is on, okay, I don’t have money in the bank, but where do I keep my attention today to become a person, to start doing things, to start creating, to have money in the bank tomorrow?

So the circumstance is one thing, and the attention is another. Most people make them one thing when they’re not. One thing, they are two things. This is where mental mastery comes in. We have to learn, number one, to have the awareness, which is what we’re doing here, but we have to master our attention.

So let’s talk about real-life scenarios. And I hear these things all the time from people. Let’s say that you, and this is partly brain-based and fairness to people listening. Let’s say that you want to give up alcohol at dinner or at night, and then you start talking about it to yourself a little later like, hmm, sure would be nice to have a glass of wine.

Notice the longer you keep your attention there, the easier it is to get that glass of wine. What we want to do is move our attention, meaning if it were me and that scenario pertain to me, I would say, okay, my attention is on now that I’ve had a trigger. The trigger is dinner. And at dinner, I have, I don’t know, two glasses, three glasses of wine.

I’m making that up as an example. So if my attention would normally be dinner and wine, okay, I’m still going to have my dinner. But I move my attention to every day I get healthier and healthier. Every day I stay a non-drinker. And the reason why is that I’m building the body of my life.

You move your attention from wherever the distraction is. Now, what kind of distractions do we have? Where do people keep their attention? Number one is watching porn a few hours a day. If you’re watching porn a few hours a day, that’s where your attention is.

And where your attention is, is where your outcomes are. As I alluded to earlier, what about if you’re angry? If you’re angry, that’s where your attention is. And where’s your outcome from the anger? If you’re obsessing about US politics at the moment, Trump did this, Trump did that, the big spending bill, Elon Musk, all this crap that’s manufactured in the world.

If you’re putting your attention on that and you’re obsessing about that, where’s your attention and what’s your outcome? For one, your outcome is gonna be anger, it’s gonna be misery, and probably for a lot of people, it’s going to be fear. I mentioned this one earlier, angry at someone. What if you’re angry at someone?

Where’s your attention? Your attention is on that someone. Let’s say that you’re driving and you were pissed off at Bob, you just left his office and you are pissed off at Bob. And you’re thinking about Bob and how mad you are and what Bob did and all these kind of things.

Now you’re in a near-miss car accident and all of your attention moves to the accident. Notice you’re no longer thinking about Bob because you moved your attention to the accident. You can move your attention, boom, just like that. Anytime we find ourselves in a place that we know we should not be there mentally, that is our automatic cue to move our attention.

I talked about money earlier. What about notices? Notice people that don’t have money, that’s where they keep their attention all the time is on not having money. If I didn’t have money, I sure as hell wouldn’t keep my attention on not having money.

I would move my attention to, okay, how do I produce? How do I generate? How do I manifest? How do I co-create money? I’m keeping my attention in the place that’s going to serve me, not in a place that’s going to hurt me. But when people literally are worried about the economy or worried about their money, all their attention is there.

And the way I came to this epiphany and realization for me, I read a quote one time and that quote and if you find yourself in a hole, stop digging. And I look at attention that way. If you find yourself in a nasty place with your attention, stop digging. Plain and simple, move your attention.

Because again, the attention affects all of your cognition, that affects your thinking, your reasoning, your rationality, that affects what you do and what you do affects what you have, which is your outcome. Here’s a big one for a lot of you guys. Are you worried quite often? If you’re worried quite often, that’s where your attention is and where your attention is, is where you are.

So remember that I said earlier, that attention is a core mental process and it underlies all of your cognition as I just alluded to it, I’m saying it for a third time. Cognition determines your reasoning, perception, and problem-solving. So, problem-solving. Let’s say that you’re broke.

Well, then you’ve got a problem, so to speak. You ain’t got any money. You’re broke. But if your attention is on staying broke, all of your cognition, all of your reasoning, all of your perception is in the awareness and attention of being broke.

That’s why I said it’s fundamental that we literally learn to move our attention, because where we move our attention to is going to affect our outcome. Let me simplify this even more. I’ve not listened to this being in probably 15 years. You may or may not have heard of this being called Abraham-Hicks, and I’ve once heard Abraham say something along the lines of, “When you’re feeling bad, you are miscreating.”

When you’re feeling bad, you are miscreating. Well, when you’re feeling bad, guess what? That’s where your attention is. And where your attention is, is what you are creating. So if you’re feeling bad, and you keep your attention there, you are miscreating, and you’re basically creating what you do not want.

And that goes to a very simple phrase that I learned, I heard many years ago from a guy named Joe Clark. And that was keep your attention on what you want and keep it off from what you do not want. Keep your attention on what you want and off of what you do not want. One more time, keep your attention on what you do want and off what you do not want.

I’m not gonna go into it in this episode. But if you remember me talking before, and if not, look it up, you can find it on YouTube or anywhere, the Double Slit Experiment. Double Slit Experiment demonstrated that our reality basically bends to our consciousness, meaning where you hold your consciousness, physical reality is going to correspond to that.

So if your attention, which is your consciousness is on being broke, your physical reality is going to correspond to that. Now, let me share a trap with you here as well. The modern world is a mortal enemy of the mental mastery of attention. The modern world makes its money, meaning Zuckerberg and people like that, make their money from capturing your attention.

The most important thing in marketing this day and age is attention. Attention is a commodity this day and age, and marketers know this, Zuckerberg knows this. Why do you think they do things to engineer Facebook to create dopamine releases when you’re using Facebook? Why? Because a dopamine release has you feel good while you’re on Facebook.

Now your brain neuro associates Facebook to feeling good and dopamine, and you want to go back to Facebook. Now Facebook puts ads in front of you again. Now you got Facebook ads making Mark Zuckerberg more and more billions of dollars. The modern world, TikTok, Instagram, social media, Facebook, these things are made to literally own your attention.

And the way I look at it is, do I want to live my life for me, or do I want to live it for Mark Zuckerberg? You know, to share a thought with you off topic, the Jim Fortin community, all of my programs now, we used to deliver on Facebook, meaning we had private communities on Facebook. We now have the Jim Fortin app and everything is on the app.

I have not been back into Facebook in months. I literally loathed Facebook, the toxicity, and the attention of all the people on Facebook yelling and screaming and hating and all these kinds of things, I am not taking my attention there. I can’t tell you what to do, but I’m telling you we’re living in the age of attention deficit.

Companies are making tens and hundreds and hundreds and tens, whatever, multiple billions from your attention, and I’m going to manage my attention and not let the world manage it for me. All right, I’ve already alluded to this, but how do you use this concept? I’m gonna slow down here.

Anytime you are in a negative, fearful, or place where you’re worrying, anytime you’re in a place that’s not empowering, negative, fearful, or worry, stop and ask self. Where’s my attention? Because you will notice your attention is like your best friend right there with you beside you, waving its hand going, you know what? You’re worried and I’m attention standing right next to you.

And the reason you’re worried is because that’s what you told me to bring with me. That’s where your attention is, on the worry. Any time you are into any kind of self-doubt, self-disbelief, worry, fear, anger, negativity, I guarantee you 1,000 percent, be assured you are in that emotional state because that’s where your attention is.

Okay, so how do you use all this? Your transformational takeaway is really simple. I’m gonna actually share it with you. I’m gonna segue for a second and then come back to your transformational takeaway. So your transformational takeaway is you are where your attention is.

If you don’t like where you are, I don’t care, like in the physical world, wherever. If you don’t like where you are in life, it’s absolutely vital that you move your attention. Okay, you might have heard me talk about the secret podcast before. The secret podcast is over on the app in my private group.

It’s called the BeDoHave Insiders. And if you’d like to hear, I’m going to share with you how I learned, one of the ways I learned to move my attention. I share it with you in this secret podcast episode. Go to jimfortin.com/insiders, jimfortin slash insiders. And I share with you a way that you can use technology to literally start mastering your attention.

So back to your transformational takeaway. Is your transformational takeaway again is if I find myself anywhere that I don’t want to be in life, money, health, relationships or whatever it is, I find myself where I don’t want to be. I’m there because my attention is there and I have to move my attention. Next, where do you move your attention to?

You move your attention to the opposite of where you are. So as I alluded to earlier, let’s say that you’re struggling with money. You’re struggling with money plain and simple because that’s where you keep your attention and your attention comes from your subconscious identity. I’m not gonna go into that in this episode.

That’s where your attention is and you’ve gotta move your attention. And that’s where the mental mastery comes in because you’ve got to train your brain to keep your attention off from what you don’t want and keep your attention on what you do want. So your transformational takeaway is you are where your attention is. If you don’t like where you are, then move your attention.

And I’ll pick up and share some more tidbits with you over on the secret podcast. Thanks for listening and I’ll catch you later. Bye-bye.