With subtle prompts or loud callings everyone claims that attention is the new currency. You either master capturing it or risk irrelevance. Right.

But this begs another question: If attention is currency, what are we spending ours on? Every moment of focus is a transaction, every click a vote for what we consider valuable. And like any investment, these choices compound over time.

Is it really about having others paying attention to us, our story, our way?

OR

Is it about what are we paying attention to?

Think about what you’ve been inadvertently funding with your attention over the past week, month, year. Social media platforms, news cycles, and entertainment industries have built entire business models around capturing and monetizing our attention. They’ve turned us into day traders of our own focus, constantly buying and selling moments of awareness for hits of stimulation.

So, what do we purchase with our attention?

Fear? Other people’s opinion? Distractions? Comparison? Urgency? Complexity?

Information that makes us feel informed, the feeling of being up-to-date while our wisdom account runs empty. We’re spending attention on fear and we feed it until it becomes the dominant voice in our heads. We’re purchasing a version of ourselves that exists only in other people’s minds, while our authentic self goes undernourished.

We purchase the illusion of productivity while our ability to concentrate slowly but surely fades. We fund envy, resentment, and the endless sense that we’re falling behind in some invisible race. We pay attention to whatever screams loudest, purchasing a life lived in reaction rather than intention.

We fund chaos over calm, emergency over importance.

It’s sobering to write about this. And it naturally leads to yet another piercing question “At what cost?” Yes, the price of our attention. But then in the small print you find the real price: Missed subtle signals and needs of your body. The half -attention we offer in our relationships while checking the phone or scheduling the following week. The principles we say matter to us but rarely examine. We say we want to learn and evolve, but how much attention do we actually invest in reflection, in questioning ourselves, in uncomfortable self-examination? We fund past regrets and future anxieties while the present gets whatever scraps of attention remain.

We’ve become attention-poor because we’re spending it on everything and nothing.

Instead of asking “How do I get more attention?” what if we asked “What deserves my attention today?” It’s a question that opens up a different relationship with focus. It assumes that not everything deserves equal attention, that some things are more worthy of our awareness than others.

But here is exactly where things get complicated. Because even when we try to choose what deserves our attention, we’re still seeing through distorted lenses.

Imagine you are wearing glasses with a special lens that blurs everything except what confirms your long-held beliefs, a way of seeing that’s designed to gather evidence for stories we’ve already decided are true. It’s what happens when our attention becomes filtered through unhealed wounds.

We don’t just seek attention. We pay attention in wounded ways. And it all comes with a complex trap: this wounded attention doesn’t just selectively notice things – it magnifies and distorts them and it completely filters out or denies evidence that contradicts the original stored story.

You might achieve incredible success, but your attention will only notice the moments of failure or the person who doesn’t applaud you. You might be deeply loved , but your lens will automatically zoom in on the moments that your partner doesn’t have you as the center of their attention. You might accomplish something that deeply meaningful in your career, but you will immediately shift to identify what’s missing or what’s next.

We become masters of finding what we are looking for, confirmation bias on steroids.

We scroll through social media to gather evidence of our superiority or inadequacy, to get a hit of validation or confirmation, to find something to cling to, to feel better about ourselves or lament about our circumstances.

We chase. We hustle. We perform. We strategize. We optimize.

We measure everything except what matters and somehow we convinced ourselves that external achievements will heal internal wounds.

The one who felt invisible thinks that fame is the answer and becomes obsessed with followers and engagements metrics. The “not-good-enough” imagines that perfection will make them feel worthy. The one who felt stupid becomes addicted to being the smartest person in the room. The one who felt powerless or helpless gets fixated on status symbols and dominance display.

Perhaps the most devastating aspect of all is how this pair of glasses creates what I call “value blindness.” We vaguely know our values, we get side-tracked by wound maintenance tendencies. We lose sight of what actually matters.

We say we want to do meaningful work, but we drift to what brings titles and attention. We say all we want is deep connections and strong relationships but we drown everything in unreasonable expectations or we perform for approval. We say we want to make a difference but we focus on recognition and the bank account. We say we want peace and love, but we are drama generators.

And in the thick of it all we forget to ask the questions that make a difference: Why do I want this? What would this actually give me? What am I really seeking underneath the seeking?

As I wrote this final piece, I realized this series might end like those movies that don’t provide neat answers but leave you questioning everything you thought you knew.

Shared with Love,
Gabriela

This article is part of a series exploring different angles and dimensions of this topic. You can read the previous articles here, here, here and here.

I don’t pretend I KNOW. I write from my experience and from my heart, hoping that what I share will be the support someone needs on their journey. I reserve the right to be wrong and change my mind as I grow in my own understanding.

Have questions, comments or suggestions? Please never hesitate to reach out, I always reply to messages gabriela@experiencetruewealth.com

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