This Is a Priority.

In my last essay, in this series on cultivating the full expression of your nature, 

we explored your most valuable asset in Pay Attention.

Today I’d like to explore what determines where attention flows. 

In this essay I am attempting to compress a large body of work around values that I have developed over the last 15 years into this email, so I will need to simplify it down to its essence.

Aim.

Things become valuable (able to be valued) in relation to an aim.

For example, if I am aiming at becoming a professional basketball player, then the values of athleticism, practice, discipline, and teamwork arise as principles, things that I must prioritise to increase the probability of becoming a basketball player.

Our values are not random. 

They are the principles that arise in relation to what we are trying to become.

The full expression of the nature of the acorn is the oak tree, 

Its in-built aim is to become the mighty oak.

To become that mighty oak, the principles (values) of: Healthy Soil, Rainwater, Sunlight, Conservation are inherent to the aim. 

I personally believe that we are not so different from the mighty oak. Our task is to truly inhabit our nature, so that we can orient our lives towards its flourishing, and in so doing, reveal the gifts and beauty of its full expression. 

The aim-values chicken and egg.

You might then assume that aims are prior to values, but it is a bit more circular than that.

What we value can give rise to our aims.

For example, I might value nature, conservation, ecology, food and agriculture, and those values might inspire the aim of becoming a regenerative farmer.

So what else influences our values?

Conditioning.

When we are born in the world, we are our nature.

That nature is then enculturated (culture added) via impressing upon us what is most valued.

This is done through our parents; what they tell us, but even more so by us seeing what they prioritise and value.

Via our media; we see our celebrities (that which is celebrated). We call them stars because stars are lights in the dark that we have used for thousands of years to orientate ourselves.

Through our teachers.

Through our preachers.

These are extrinsic values; values that came to us from the outside world.

We can name these our inherited values

Experience.

As we grow in the world, we have our own lived experience of what we felt to be of value.

The things that helped us when we had fallen.

That brought us joy.

That filled us with wonder.

We felt the pain of things not being there, and the pleasure of things being there.

This gave us an internal measure and crystallised our intrinsic values; values that came from within.

We can name these our discovered values

These two value systems can wrestle with each other as we grow.

We can feel like we are a house divided against itself.

The shoulds and expectations vs the wants and desires.

Until we find our individuation.

The process of shedding the values we were handed that are no longer true to us, and rescuing the ones that are (salvaging the tradition), and stepping into the values that we have formed and are true to us (progressing the present).

Once we do this, we have an alignment between who we feel ourselves to be, what we prioritise, and what we act out; 

Our true character is: Our nature and culture in alignment.

But why do so many of us struggle to live in alignment with our values?

Why is this natural system breaking down?

Our attention, the central mechanism, is being fragmented and hijacked.

We are often in a reactive, survival state, and from this place, our attention is easily manipulated.

The noise of modernity is drowning out the quiet internal signals that are there to orient our attention in relation to what truly matters to us.

We are tired, depleted and trying to get through.

Ask any parent what matters more to them, their children or their smartphone, and most of them would say their children.

Ask those same parents which is clocking more hours of their attention…

you already know the answer.

To be truly sovereign, we must become the masters of our attention.

We wouldn't walk down the road throwing dollar bills around to whoever shouted the loudest or flashed the most exciting image in our face.

Yet we throw around our attention.

How do we become the masters of our attention? 

We will explore that in my next article:

The Power of Intention

Until the next time,

With peace and love,

Alex