Freedom of focus | Seth’s Weblog

Tonight, whenever you’re off the clock, what’s going to you hearken to, watch or learn?

I think about that almost all of us would agree that it is a free selection. To observe a foolish video on YouTube, learn a ebook on Greek philosophy from the library or scroll your feeds. We’ve got time (surprisingly referred to as “free”) and we allocate it to focus our consideration on one thing.

Whereas it would look like a free selection, well-paid folks and highly effective forces are working to shift our focus. Many methods are constructed to govern us into specializing in issues that profit them, not us.

When you’ve ever felt awful after doomscrolling, you would possibly query how free your free time truly is. It takes effort to regain our freedom of focus.

We are able to take this one step additional. We not solely make selections concerning the media we devour, we additionally make selections about our inside focus. Till you bought to this sentence, I’m guessing you weren’t spending a lot time enthusiastic about your highschool commencement.

We don’t want analysis to indicate us that the interior narratives we deal with shift our angle and shortly turn into our actuality. We’ve all skilled it. Quickly after we cease the damaged report, issues get higher.

Maybe it’s not a free selection, although. Maybe the tales we relentlessly deal with are merely the byproduct of our mind’s chemical reactions, a response to the world inside us and round us.

And but… many individuals have realized to shift the tales they rehearse.

Step one: change the exterior focus. Change the folks we work together with, the media we devour, the eye we provide. Not unexpectedly, however as a behavior, a persistent follow of being conscious concerning the triggers and amplifiers we devour. When you’re not pleased with what your consideration is bringing you, you possibly can change it.

Aristotle stated that we turn into what we do, however earlier than we do, we focus.

And the liberty and accountability of that focus belong to us.

March 19, 2026