1 Stop-Shop to Sharpening Your Attention - Joshua Anoumou Agbenu

Real estates and luxury vehicles are not expensive. Attention is! Attention is the luxury. It is the asset owned by every person.

It is for no mean reason that Kwesi Bronyi, the White Man, chose to monetize ‘attention’ with the verb ‘to pay (attention)’, to indicate, that beyond money, there was an alternative that both the advantaged and disadvantaged had.

In an internet media world of a million voices and a million options, Attention walks with its shoulders high. Real estates and luxury cars are investing billions in advertising campaigns to grab your attention. Brands are partnering mainstream celebrities and influencers to win your attention. Netflix and Amazon Prime cough billions to seek your attention. TikTok, Facebook and Instagram compete for your attention.

Your lover needs your attention. There are marriages that simply collapsed by reason of insufficient attention. The military does not joke with the word ‘attention’. The word leads every parade. God, the Maker of the Universe, even loves our attention! He expresses it by telling us He is a jealous one. He simply craves it.

Do you now see the value attention carries? Many young people have, however, not seen its power. You give a young woman a secretarial task to draft a letter and the output is one of multiple unpardonable errs. A young man claims to be a chef and serves you a dish dipped in a ‘salt mine’. You employ a nurse or a pharmacist to attend to the health needs of patients and they end up attending to their death needs with wrong medications. Lack of attention to details.

We are easily distracted, and people think attention is all about focus. No. It does not end there. I term attention as ‘absolute focus that inconveniences desire and pleasure’. Why? Attention would always require that we, periodically, sacrifice certain short-term pleasures for long-term satisfactions.

Lack of attention is why many fail to strive to be unique. Lack of it is why many endlessly stay envious of others. Why? We have not even paid good attention to ourselves to appreciate the qualities we carry and the possibilities we could birth.

What are you paying attention to? It would do you good to start today, with gentle steps. Spend two hours on a task without that distraction. Break your back. Break your butts. Put positive pressure on the mind. You would appreciate the outcomes. Attention!

#ResettingGhana