On Awareness

September 14, 2025

I found, that it’s a common misconception that high awareness or focus, if you will, are something one does. But I have come here to argue, that it is much rather something one allows to happen.

When you try to focus on something, be it something on the outside, like a text you’re reading or a person you’re listening to, or something happening inside your head like coming up with ideas or thinking about one’s own mental state, your focus doesn’t increase by you thinking about focusing.

Much rather, the focus increases by not thinking about something else than the thing you want to focus on. Trying to focus, however, is thinking about something different than the thing you want focus on. When I say to myself “Focus!”, I think about focusing and not about the thing I want to focus on. So, beware of that.

When only thinking about the thing you want to be thinking about, a special-high-awareness-focus-flow-state-thingy appears naturally. It is not forced.

Now the question might arise, how one only thinks about one thing and not about something entirely unrelated. How exactly do you stop thinking about something? Well, I don’t really know, but I can tell you that you definitely don’t think less about something by thinking about how you will think less about it. In the same way feelings don’t calm down by feeling them, thoughts don’t calm down by thinking about them. It’s thinking about something else, the thing you want to focus on, which lets the other thoughts go away.