The idea for this post occurred to me while I was creating this meme below.

 

PAY ATTENTION

 

 

How many of us go through a day on autopilot, it flies by, and we wonder what happened to today? (My hand is raised.) There are literally an infinite number of things to capture our attention: our phones dinging, being on social media, emails, spending time online, watching streaming TV, texting, or playing video games. It’s daunting to see it all typed out. (How the hell do we do it all?) Then add hobbies, books, magazines, and cable TV, all of which have taken up our time outside of working at a job or business.

Paying attention at work has become an endangered skill, with multiple distractions thrown at us throughout a day’s work, much like the endangered orangutans. If the orangutans have people trying to save them, I want to save our “attention” to our lives!  [What do you think of that comparison? Pretty impressive, huh? ;)]

And yes, I acknowledge the irony of asking someone to take the time to read this post. However, even though it could be considered just another pull on one’s time, I believe it’s valuable stuff, so I see that as a good thing to mix into the mold of our lives.

 

BALANCE

 

 

 

My husband has been preaching “living in balance” for years.  Just to be clear, I’m simply suggesting what he meant: having a balance in life, not living in the forest with the fairies, or in a van down by the river, and leaving the electronics behind. Even though I feel grounded, I’ve been out of balance for a long time.

When we’re out of balance, our lives suffer. Seriously, we do. How can there be happiness if we’re under so much stress? Anxiety and depression, I think, are caused by an imbalance, sometimes it’s a chemical one. Sometimes it’s not, but it still creates an imbalance in our lives that causes us suffering.

As human beings, we have the incredible ability to adapt to our surroundings. Sure, we’ll moan and groan when things change, but we adapt, and then it’s like it never happened, right?

We’ve gotten too used to being imbalanced. If we’re tired, we add on more caffeinated stuff. If we’re sleepy but wired from the day or stress, we take something to help us sleep. If we’re upset, we go to our tried and true comfort makers. We like things to be the way we know how to handle them.

I know this. I have been there – tipping the life scale to one side and wondering why the days passed by like the Flash with nothing worthwhile to show for “living” them.

 

SIMMA DOWN *

 

 

If your heading is spinning now, wondering how the frig you’re going to achieve balance with everything going on, join the club.

But now, I want to be in balance. I want to feel good. So, I had to figure out how I could pay more attention to my life.  I thought paper planning would solve that. It’s fun to use the stickers and decorate them, but it hasn’t helped me achieve balance. Then I thought using my phone’s calendar with reminders was the answer. It does help, but not well enough. (Like as I type this, my phone reminder went off for me to stand. I’m still sitting.)

And then, it came to me how we can pay closer attention to our lives and live intentionally.

Relax. Take deeper breaths throughout the day. Focus on the breath, even for just a second. Come back to the present. Be here, not there (worrying or thinking about the past or future). And when you can handle a few seconds of focusing on your breath, ask yourself:

What do I want to be doing right now that will –

1. make me happy?

2. cause the stress to melt away?

3. be good for me?

The answer to that is what you need to do. It will create the balance in your life, and when we are doing things we enjoy, we pay attention.

It’s as simple as that.

Now, I’m not the poster child of finding the balance – yet – but I’m working on it each and every day. That’s what we need to do. If we learned how to be unhappy, we need to learn how to be happy. It takes us to make that change because we are worth a great life.

Thank you for reading this, and I hope I offered something worthwhile. Let me know in the comments. I appreciate your taking the time to spend with me.

To taking back our attention,

Francesca

 

Written by a human for humans.

© 2025 FrancescaME | All rights reserved.

 

NO AI TRAINING: Any use of this publication to “train” generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to generate text is expressly prohibited. The author reserves all rights to license uses of this work for generative AI training and development of machine learning language models.

 

* Simmer is mispelled intentionally because I secretly think I’m a gansta.