Choosing Your Focus

When I told people I was moving to Seattle, several of them said, “You’ll hate it there! It rains all the time, and it’s so GRAY.”

I would just smile and reply, “It’s not for everyone.”

And while it does rain quite a bit in Seattle (especially this time of year), and the sky can be a dreary shade of gray, there’s also something more.

Green.

There is so much green here, from the green grass to the bright-almost-neon green of the mosses, the blue-green of the blue spruce, the Kelly green of the ferns, and the deeper shade of green in the Western Hemlocks. (Not to mention all the blue and green around town in support of the Seattle Seahawks.) When I walk through the forest, I’m awestruck by the lushness and the beauty, the evidence of life in everything around me.

Yes, Seattle is often gray. And, Seattle is very green. I think it’s a perfect example of the power of our ability to focus.

Our brains naturally look for the negative – being on the lookout for danger is a survival instinct we’re hardwired for. However, we can shift our perspective by consciously putting our attention on the positive. And what we give our attention and focus to grows. Are you focusing on what’s wrong? Or on what’s right? Which do you want more of?

Seattle also has several large bodies of water. There’s the Puget Sound, the Salish Sea, Lake Union, and Lake Washington. And when the sky is gray, the water reflects the gray. But when the sky is blue, the water becomes a beautiful shade of blue. Sometimes, we are like this. We unconsciously reflect back what we experience around us in the world. When people around us in the workplace or in traffic are stressed and angry, it’s easy to get angry and short with them as well.

But there’s another option. You can choose to be like the green growing things that are found throughout Seattle. Choose how you want to show up, no matter what the weather is like around you.