What You Pay Attention To

We like to believe attention follows importance. We decide what matters, then we look at it. But in truth, it works the other way around.

Watch a practitioner obsessed with submissions. Ask them what matters and they will say "the submission," and they mean it. The submission feels vital because it is where their attention lives.

Now observe another practitioner who has been caught in bad positions a few times. Their attention shifts. Suddenly it centers on frames, grips, and hips. Ask them what matters and they will say "position." Their response is equally sincere, and just as shaped by where they have been paying attention.

This is the point. We do not choose our priorities as much as we inherit them from our habits of attention. Whatever we look at most becomes what we believe matters most. So the question is not only what is important. It is what you have been focusing on, and whether that is by choice or circumstance.