This is http://www.essayz.com/a9509141.htm Previous-Essay <== This-Essay ==> Following-Essay Click HERE on this line to find essays via Your-Key-Words. {Most frequent wordstarts of each essay will be put here.} ========================================================== %QUALITY LIVES RELATIONS COMMUNITY FOCUS ATTENTION 950914 The qualities of our lives, relationships and communities depend greatly upon where and how we choose to try to focus our attention and the attention of the most significant other people in our lives. We may try to focus attention purely OUTSIDE OF OURSELVES upon: others, what others have done or not done, objects, circumstances, fate, luck, etc. We may be trying to: 1. Be objective, free of reflexive bias. 2. Identify the cause(s) of our problems. 3. Place blame for our problems. 4. Locate an appropriate scape-goat. 5. Make others feel guilty. 6. Generate shame in other people. 7. Divert attention away from our selves. 8. Rationalize our dilemmas and difficulties. 9. Make sense of our confusion. The above focus patterns do not lead to satisfactory, meaningful, successful or respected lives and relationships. Many people regularly demonstrate the futility of trying to focus attention and effort in the above ways. Our lives and relationships are far more likely to be satisfactory, meaningful, successful and respected if we focus our own attention upon the changes which we can appropriately make in our own: 1. Assumptions, 2. Attitudes, 3. Beliefs, 4. Manners of Approach, 5. Conceptual Frameworks, 6. Vocabularies & Images, 7. Values and Ideals, 8. Goals and Intentions, 9. Patterns of thinking and 10. Choice of friends Focusing our attention and the attention of other people outward, always away from ourselves, is not an effective way of dealing with our problems and dilemmas. Such a pattern of behavior makes sense only so long as we believe that everything which happens around us is focused upon us---so that everything which happens to us is caused by what is outside of us. Projecting our problems and dilemmas outward on other people and our environment is a self-centered and selfish way of trying to show that we are not responsible and that we cannot take the necessary corrective actions. We may succeed in convincing ourselves of the correctness of our diagnosis that others are to blame for our problems and dilemmas; and that others should do what must be done to make things right for us. We may even succeed in convincing a few other people that they are to blame for our problems and dilemmas; and that they should do what must be done to make things right for us. We will not succeed in getting others to construct for us lives and relationships which are fully satisfying, meaningful, successful, and respected. Even if we start "up", "in", and energized---we cannot control other people's behaviors in ways which will satisfy us, be meaningful to us, and make us be successful and/or respected people. Much less, when we start "down", "out", and depressed---we cannot control other people's behaviors in ways which will satisfy us, be meaningful to us, and make us become successful and/or respected people. If we have been led to be compulsively objective in the focus of our lives---we are prone to project attention away from ourselves to avoid non-objective relationships which are reflexive and not manageable. If we are trying to be in control of our environment (including the people in it), we are unlikely to be interested in changing the dysfunctional aspects of our own being who we are. Our attention is likely to be misdirected and our efforts futile. We need to repent, turn-around, and focus our attention upon what we ourselves can change: our, 1. Assumptions, 2. Attitudes, 3. Beliefs, 4. Manners of Approach, 5. Conceptual Frameworks, 6. Vocabularies & Images, 7. Values and Ideals, 8. Goals and Intentions, 9. Patterns of thinking and 10. Choice of friends Just as lives which are focused upon the outward projections of self upon the environment and neighbors; are not meaningful, significant or successful---so also it is that the many lives which are focused upon the outward projections of others upon the environment and neighbors; are not meaningful, significant or successful. Focusing upon outward projections by self and other upon the environment does not lead to meaningful, significant or successful relationships and lives. It is not helpful to shift the focus from people to objects. Compulsively objective people pretty much have given up upon focusing meaningful attention upon other people and human relationships---for they cannot be controlled. Such people are likely to focus attention upon objects, objectively; in the hopes of manipulating them successfully in ways which will bring meaning, satisfaction and success to them. A few such people win Nobel Prizes and become "successful" in that way; but not always with the meaning and satisfaction which they had hoped to get out of their success. Many more such people do not win Nobel Prizes and do not become "successful" in ways which bring anticipated meaning and satisfaction. Personal meaning and satisfaction are not rooted in objects or objective manipulations; whether or not the focus is or is not upon people. Personal meaning and satisfaction are reflexive realities and are enjoyed by participating openly and honestly in reflexive relationships; not by success in objective manipulations and control. (c) 2005 by Paul A. Smith in (On Being Yourself, Whole and Healthy) ==========================================================