Thanks for the Advice

According to "The Power of Paying Attention" by Laura Rowley, "If you want to be happy, pay attention."

She goes on, "Perhaps first and foremost, "you have to choose your target." "...If you don't choose a target, your brain will choose one for you -- the brain is out scanning around and saying, 'Let's stare at that screen, let's listen to that infomercial.' When you focus on something, your brain photographs that sight or sound or thought or feeling --and that becomes part of your mental album of the world. So it's important to make those choices count."

That is great advice. Once-upon-a-time my parents helped me with that habit. Teachers were good at it. Babies were the best. One had to pay attention to them or they would remind you what time it was, the younger they were the better. Now, I am on my own with it and sometimes I am hopeless. Some tasks take all of my attention, all of my brains, and a huge amount of discipline. A helper that taps my knuckles with a stick, so to speak, when I dilly-dally only annoys me and I go eat ice-cream.

"What makes you happy is paying rapt attention to something that interests and absorbs you," Rowley says. Paying attention sounds like a no-brainer, but it's similar to the platitude "Live within your means" -- it makes a gigantic difference in your well-being, yet many people can't figure out how to do it."