We all experience the world differently. Think of the last time you shared an experience with a friend or loved one then talked about if afterwards. Think of, say, a journey, or movie, or a meal in a restaurant. If you both talk to a third person about that shared experience, chances are you will both tell about different parts of the experience and will have felt differently about. One of you will probably have noticed very different aspects of the journey, or the movie or meal, than the other one. This is because we all interact with a shared world of places, people, and phenomena, but we do it from our own, unique, subjective viewpoint. No two of us share an identical experience because no two of us is the same.
What influences these different ways of experiencing a shared journey, or movie, or meal? I read a blog post recently which began with the statement “You are what you pay attention to”. A variation of this idea was a huge billboard I saw in Tokyo – “You are what you buy” – ok, so it’s a similar idea! The point is that what we notice and therefore what affects us most is fundamental to the creation of our individual world views.
I think there are three major foci of attention. Not three separate, distinct, world views, but three dynamically changing “attractors” which create our experience of the world.
- Body-objective. The physical, the shared, external reality. The world of objects, things, facts. The measurable world. You have an experience of who you are within a particular body. The size of that body, for example, profoundly affects how you see the world and how you see yourself in the world. Think of the amount of concern many people have with body shape for example.
- Mind-subjective. What you experience is always personal. Nobody can really know or share your subjective experience. If you have a pain, nobody else can feel that pain. You can try to communicate it, and others can try to empathise (to imagine what it might be like to be you), but they can’t actually experience it. Our subjective experience involves our minds. Without a mind, there is no subjectivity. Yes, there are many bodily sensations but they are all experienced with the mind. You feelings, your sensations, your emotions, your memories and your imagination are all subjective. None of this is measurable.
- Spirit-meaning. We are meaning-seeking, meaning-creating creatures. We continuously try to make sense of our daily lives. For some people, this is the most important aspect of life. It’s a focus on purpose, values, ideas and the reasons to live.
None of these world views is complete and none of them are superior to the others. All are equally valid. If we try to squeeze others into our own personal world view, we’ll find they don’t quite fit and communication will fail. To communicate with, to connect with, to touch another, we have to understand what kind of world they live in and to what extent we can share that world.
My final point is that life is a dynamic process. We move around these foci or “attractors” with different ones exerting different degrees of pull all the time. We can see our lives as constantly moving, continuously evolving and growing as we shift and shade our world views, developing richer experiences as we become more flexible and less fixed in one particular view.
Heroes Not Zombies 
this really has me thinking. So, thanks very much for the post, your thoughts, and taking the time to write it. I really need to make some changes.
ooh, Ester, you should know I’m an insatiably curious person. Now I really want to know what changes you think you need to make! Thank you for your kind comments. I do believe becoming aware of these things makes life richer, opens up our choices and so, ultimately, turns us away from the zombie path to the hero one!!
Curiosity killed the cat, right? But I guess since cats have 9 lives, it’s all good 🙂
Actually, I’ve been doing a ton of restructuring with the way I view life, the way I should be focusing and directing my energy. I’ve been trying to make large scale changes for the past year, and having run across your blog, it’s been even more motivation for me to keep at this, so I really appreciate all the insightful, intelligent thought you post. Up to this point, I’ve been too controlling of my environment, my thoughts are constantly negative, and I focus on the problems, rather than solutions. (This is making me sound horrible, I suppose – and maybe even more of that “focusing on the negative” that needs to change). But I’ve been taking a lot of time to carefully consider the ways that I focus thought, and taking true evaluation of who I am, and how to make myself a better person in whole. It’s such a long journey, and probably one that will never be over, but I can definitely see where the changes need to take place, and that is half the battle.
I just really appreciate your posts, and feel like a lot of what you think and say communicates to me on a deep level, resonating with what I feel is true.
Hey Ester, you’re on the hero’s journey! I really appreciate your open sharing and thank you yet again for your kind comments. I started this blog hoping to extend what I do every day on one to one with patients – help people to become their best, improve their health and just find a better way to live.
Focusing on negatives is what we all do. It’s almost the default strategy. That’s why our health care systems are structured around diseases instead of people or health! So, knowing that doesn’t make you horrible. It makes you normal but with more insight than many people have (those still on the zombie path!) and, you know, that for me is the essential first step – awareness. Change is inevitable I think, so learning to cope with that, to adapt and to even grow with the changes rather than fight them is the second essential step – that’s where creativity starts to come in. We find our own unique ways to respond to change. But your point about focusing on the negative is a really important one. I really do believe that health is a positive experience and you don’t get it only by paying attention to disease.
See that subheading at the top of my blog? “becoming not being”? That’s the essential value for me here. Our whole lives are about becoming not being. Sounds to me like you are on the right track.