Keep inviting yourself in

Our attention is like an uneasy house guest: slow to take their shoes off; always looking for an excuse to wander to the bathroom and check their phone; looking longingly out the window while you’re talking to them.

Mary Oliver wrote that “attention is the beginning of devotion.” It’s easy to see how this applies to the things we do give our attention to, but we must also be willing to see this in the reverse.

Our culture emphasizes and rewards externality. We are taught to seek money, praise, notoriety, and affirmation from without. And while the opposite of devotion might appear to be hatred, it may not be so blunt. The opposite of devotion is also indifference and disloyalty.

When you let your attention spend so much of its time wandering around outside — moving from one place to another, seeking pleasure from the world but never allowing it to rest — you invite a gradual, growing indifference toward what remains unexamined: feelings, needs, the language of our bodies, and the wisdom of our hearts.

This is not new-age conjecture. Emotional intelligence — or “EQ” — is now considered to be the strongest predictor of performance across a wide range of tasks and skills. People with high degrees of EQ make more money; they are better at time management, communication, anger management, teamwork, and decision-making. They are more empathetic, flexible, and can trust (and be trusted) more fully.

The good news is that EQ is something we can learn. Coaching is a container that facilitates learning, practice, and transformation of our emotional intelligence.

So remember to keep inviting yourself in. If you don’t, you might be doomed to remain the distracted house guest, forever seeking but never truly arriving, not even in your own home: your self.

https://mikefowlercoaching.com