Wherever your focus goes, energy flows

Why well-placed attention improves performance, relationships and well-being

One of Tony Robbins’ famous quotes is “where focus goes energy flows”.

Whether you are into Tony Robbins or not, this is an idea worth paying attention to because it is grounded in solid science. But there is more to it than the quote suggests.

I graduated from Sydney University in 2017 with an M.Sc. in coaching psychology.

Afterwards, I reflected quite hard on what I’d learned. I tried to think whether there was one single, big important lesson or theme that I could distil from hundreds of hours of study, thousands of words of assignments and mountains and mountains of reading.

Of course, I have learned many lessons but the one that came to mind, something that I’d like to pass on to my children perhaps, is this:

The quality of your life, the quality of your relationships and the quality of your performance, is largely determined by where you place your attention.

Attention is a critical component of so many aspects of psychological well-being and adaptive functioning.

Attention plays a key role in mindfulness, awareness, and emotional regulation. Training and directing your attention towards positive experiences and thoughts can help improve your mood and overall mental health.

Developing the ability to focus on the present moment can also reduce stress and anxiety.

Therefore, if we can be intentional with our attention, we can go a long way towards optimising the way that we live our lives.

Energy flows where focus goes

This, it seems to me, is what is behind the idea that where focus goes energy flows. It suggests that when you focus your attention on something, your energy is naturally directed towards it.

The critical point, though, is whether you are directing you attention in a way that works positively for you, or negatively.

Here are some examples.

Coping with difficulties

We probably all cope with difficulties in different ways.

But, on the whole, if you place your attention on solving the problem you are struggling with, rather than on the way you feel about the problem, then, in most cases, you will have more chance of coping better with your struggle.

Focusing on the problem is called problem-focused coping. You direct your energy outwards, onto the actions you can take to solve your difficulty. This gives you a sense of distance from the problem, as well as the satisfaction you can derive from taking action and making progress.

Focusing on the way that you feel about the problem is called self-focused coping. It is likely to result in rumination, which is linked to emotional disfunction and cognitive rigidity.

These states hinder our ability to solve problems. When we ruminate, we get caught in a loop of overthinking that traps us, making it hard to view situations from fresh angles or come up with effective solutions.

The key point, therefore, is to focus your attention on the problem, rather than your feelings about it, so that you can harness your energy in a positive way.

Goals

Similarly, when pursuing your goals, you’ll have more success if you pay attention to the processes involved in achieving your goals, adjusting your approach in accordance with the feedback you receive, than if you focus solely on reaching a specific end result.

When you concentrate on something, you’re essentially allocating your mental and physical energy to it. This enables you to accomplish the task more efficiently and successfully.

So, for example, if you are running up a hill, you will do better to focus on your running style - your pace, your stride length, your cadence - rather than the top of the slope. By focusing on process rather than end result, you can bring about the end result more efficiently and with less self-focus (see above).

You might have experienced being in a state called “flow,” where you’re completely immersed in an activity, and your performance and productivity are at their peak. This is another example of how directing your attention to the task (rather than the goal) can drive your energy to achieve desirable results.

Mindful activity

Placing your attention on the present moment, rather than ruminating on past difficulties or speculating about future unknowns, will help you resist anxiety and stress and enable you make to better choices and more informed decisions.

By being fully present in the moment and devoting your attention to a single task, you can maximise your energy output and increase your chances of success.

Multitasking, on the other hand, can scatter your attention and hinder you from making significant progress in any specific task.

So, whenever you feel dispersed or overwhelmed, take a deep breath, zoom in on one task at a time, and observe the change in your energy levels.

Meta-cognitions

It is our thoughts that direct our attention. Very often our thoughts will drive our negative emotional responses. So paying attention to our thoughts is extremely important.

However, the key to regulating the extent to which your emotions are hijacked by your thoughts (eg, through negative self-talk or limiting beliefs), is to pay attention to the way that you are thinking (your meta-cognitions), instead of attending to the thoughts themselves.

Very often your thoughts will be expressing unlikely worst case scenarios (catastrophising), or will be unbalanced and speculative, based on fear, rather evidence. Paying attention to these kinds of thoughts, and responding to them as if they are true, leads to distress.

What you need to do is become aware of your thoughts as they arise, and evaluate the way you are thinking.

You need to ask yourself: are these thoughts useful, balanced, fact-based, true?

By developing this attentional capacity, you can discard the thoughts that are unhelpful before they trigger a negative emotional response. You can also use your evaluations to dampen down any negative responses that have already happened.

What is more, by placing your attention on helpful thoughts, your energy flows towards more positive action.

Regular mindfulness meditation helped me build the capacity to do this.

Mental toughness

Mental toughness involves dealing well with stressors and challenge.

By being mindful of the way that you think think and by placing your attention on the desired outcomes that you seek, you can begin to see problems as challenges to be solved, rather sources of stress and pressure.

Relationships

You will build better relationships if you pay attention to what others are saying, by truly listening and hearing what is important to them, than if you focus mainly on your own point of view.

This is about listening to hear what is being said, rather than listening to prepare your next response. By truly placing your attention on what others are saying, you will build better connections and be better appreciated.

Even better, when you do respond, you will do so from a position of deeper understanding and empathy because you will be more able to take the other person’s perspective.

Perspective taking capacity

Finally, if we develop the ability to expand the scope of our attention so that we learn to take in multiple perspectives, we open up world of complexity and ambiguity.

When we recognise this, we can see that it is even more important to control the way that we direct our attention. In a world that is inherently uncertain, we need to tread lightly, focus our attention on what we can control, rather than on what we can’t, and nurture our important relationships as we go.

If you can do this, you will be wiser than most and will have reached a level of personal development that does true justice to the human mind and spirit.