The Art of Noticing - How to Rediscover What Really Matters to You

‍What have you noticed lately?

I ask, because I don’t think we pay enough attention to what we notice.

Yes, our subconscious does a great job at detecting stimuli, sorting it and reacting to it in a way that feels autonomous.

But how often do you stop to make note of that input?

How often do you think about what goes into your mind, what plays in your ears or lingers on your tastebuds?

When was the last time you took a moment to process that information, chewed on it?

Can you tell me what you did yesterday, without simply listing the activities in a chronological order?

What did you think about? How was it different than the day before? Who did you speak to? Did you learn something about them? About yourself? Did you reconnect with a distant emotion? What ideas did you have? And what progress did you make? Was there anything in particular you noticed? Does it matter to you? Should it matter? Do you care?

So many of our days become a simple tick-box on our calendar, it makes me wonder whether we’re really living, or simply passing time.

Take a moment today to notice where your mind wanders, what it fixates on or passes over.

Notice it, study it, question it.

A life is not truly lived without the art of noticing.

“It is not that we have a short space of time, but that we waste much of it. Life is long enough, and it has been given in sufficiently generous measure to allow the accomplishment of the very greatest things if the whole of it is well invested. But when it is squandered in luxury and carelessness, when it is devoted to no good end, forced at last by the ultimate necessity we perceive that it has passed away before we were aware that it was passing.”  
— Seneca