The power of giving our ATTENTION to that which is BEAUTIFUL – A short video on how giving our attention to recognize and acknowledge that which is beautiful, we help snap ourselves out old narrow ways of thinking and seeing the world. Through looking for the beauty in our relationships and the natural world we allow ourselves to feel wonder and gratitude for all that surround us.

Transcription of the video

So what I like to look at is this capacity we have as humans to acknowledge, recognize and see beauty in the world. To see the beauty in each other and in ourselves, and the power of using our attention, using our focus, our minds to recognize and acknowledge that which is beautiful. As it’s very easy to fall into this trap regularly, just to stop seeing what’s beautiful and just to see what we project and what we think.

We wake up on a day-to-day basis and for a lot of us, we have the same kind of thoughts that kind of spin around in our minds. Then as we go outside, as we interact often there’s this filter of thinking or just a way of seeing the world, just looking through the lens of those thoughts. So it’s necessary at times to kind of try to break this habit of “we know everything we need to know” or “nothing’s new”, almost like a roboticization of viewing the world and life where there is nothing new. Then for something beautiful to kind of strike us, it has to be there in a bang, in this big kind of moment and we’re taken aback by it.

Yet the reality is on a day-to-day basis there is beauty everywhere if we choose to look for it. If we choose to acknowledge it and it’s one of those interesting things, that when we look for beauty we look for what is beautiful, we do tend to find it and it appears. It doesn’t have to be an extraordinary sunset or a touching moment between two people, it can just be found in the most mundane day-to-day things. As that’s the thing for most of us, our lives are made up of a lot of monotony, a lot of routines. When you get older like me, you have children, your life is dictated by the routine of your kids. You get into very regular habits, you sleep, work, eating ect.. is repeated and rinsed over and over and over. If you don’t have kids, you have work, our lives are regimented to some degree, and with that comes the tendency to kind of feel like we work on autopilot The process of autopilot is like everything’s already worked out and we just kind of go down with this kind of this tunnel vision.

So reminding ourselves on a day-to-day basis, to snap out of that and to acknowledge what’s beautiful. To look for what’s beautiful and to seek what’s beautiful in the mundane of everyday lives. This is an exercise that keeps us alive and it keeps us with more gratitude and a great ability to deal with some of the things that aren’t so beautiful. The ugliness, the pain, and the difficulty that that is in the world.

As there are two areas that I try to remind myself and come back to on a day-to-day basis, to acknowledge and recognize the beauty and that is…

1) My relationships, the people of my in my life, particularly the most immediate people being my wife, kids, family, friends, and community I’m surrounded by.

2) A really basic one just nature. just everything that’s outside you know and to see and recognize the beauty in that.

I think in my relationships it’s reminding myself that I’m just surrounded by really good, loving people, that are all unique, and each of those relationships I have, particularly with my kids and my wife, is a unique relationship. That is full of beauty, grace, intelligence, and wit as well as conflict, tension, and a little bit of drama. It’s full of the human experience and when I see that and I feel privileged to be part of this human experience and I see the beauty in all of that is in the difficulty and the warmth and the humor and the love and the connection. The small little moments I have every day with my kids and my wife gives me a renewed sense of gratitude and a renewed sense of optimism. Because I can feel like every day is different and every day I’m privileged and lucky to be surrounded by and connected to people that I love and care about. As it’s there for all of us. I then extend that further out to my interactions going to the shop, my interactions with friendships, my interactions with strangers and to see that I’m in this very unique you could call it “bizarre experience of being human” interacting with different people. There is so much beauty there, in terms of just the way people are, the way people care for each other, the way people struggle, the way people are trying to move forward and change their lives and do the right thing amid all this difficulty. I think there’s immense beauty in that. So to me to remind myself that to remember to see and look for that sudden suddenly it appears I look for it, I see the beauty

The second area that I feel is something that’s just always available to us, even if you are stuck inside, you can stick your head out the window and just take it in the sky, the sun, the beach (if you’re near a beach) the mountains, whatever it may be we’re surrounded by. This teeming biosphere of life and activity that we have no idea about fully how it works, I mean we’ve got systems that define and categorize it, but just the fact that we’re here in this weird little spot in the solar system, in this Goldilocks zone, that if we’re a little bit closer a bit further away there’d be no life. All these millions of variables, that all have to come together in such a way that sustains life, in itself is awe-inspiring the fact that I’m here living just my own body itself, the fact that there are so many various things that have to happen just to keep me alive, that I have no idea about that happening involuntary. There is an immense beauty in that grace and power that when I bring myself to remind myself of that, it creates this appreciation, a newness. that although I think every day is the same, every day I wake up with some appreciation of the fact that I am lucky to be here. I’m privileged to have these people and to live in this world, with the kind of beauty that I’m surrounded by so to me the power of giving our attention to what’s beautiful is the act of acknowledging the beauty that’s in front of us.

Because there can be always this danger on one level for all of us that there is some future event where I’m going to be happier, where I’m going to do this, or I’m going to have this moment where somewhere in my future it’s going to be better or I reminisce about a time in the past where it was better. Then thing that’s in front of me, the grind of making my kids lunches every day, cooking their food and doing this and doing that. That the mundanity of this life is somehow preparing for some other greater thing, that never happens. That our lives are like this groundhog day, where there’s just this same day happening over and over, and if we don’t find the beauty in the mundanity in our day-to-day relationships in the natural world that’s in front of us, the people that are around us. Then we will never find the beauty anywhere because it’s there hiding in plain sight and for me, the appreciation of life is the appreciation of the mundanity the beauty of life, is the beauty of the mundanity and it is just really really easy to forget

As we’re in a culture and an economy that is all about getting us to think in terms of something else, something more, some other purchase, some other future activity that will give us happiness and to just acknowledge that that’s an illusion, it doesn’t exist and the beauty and wonder of life are right in front of us. all we need to do is practice on a day-to-day basis, moment to moment is appreciating and valuing that. Then a different world opens up to us.

Yet is a practice because it’s the easiest thing to forget. The name of this youtube channel is “remembering love” the name of the book poetry I wrote here is called “Remembering love”. As it’s a remembering process of remembering beauty, remembering love, remembering who we are, remembering our power, remembering our grace. As we do that we forget a little less, we fall less into asleep, lessen the autopilot and we start to have a greater appreciation for just the amazing things and people that are in front of us.

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