Continuing with last week's theme of intention, it's hard to overstate the importance of where you focus your awareness and energy and how the choices you make affect the quality of your everyday life.  Our inner sense of reality is qualified by the "frequencies" at which we resonate, with the images, sounds, and words that fill us, with where our mind resides when we're not caught up in a particular activity.

A metaphor I've shared before, for how we choose where we focus our attention, is a radio.  When we listen to the radio, we choose a particular station and tune it in.  On the frequency taken by that station, we encounter whatever music, talk, or shows we have chosen to listen to for that time.  Some of them may inspire us; others may frighten us.  Some may uplift, relax, or charge us up, while others may leave us uninterested and unengaged. 

Whatever the frequency, we can only receive what's related to that particular radio station's programming policy and lineup. For example, we won't find country music on a station dedicated to hard rock.  No matter how much we may want to hear something country, when we're tuned into the hard-rock frequency we're going to get hard rock and nothing but hard rock.  We need to make the decision to change stations if we really want to listen to country music.

It's the same way with everyday life.  What "stations" do you tune into during the course of your day?  What frequencies do you choose as the focus of your awareness?  What activities, focus of attention, input and qualities nourish and support you throughout the day, or stress you and pull you down?

For this week's experiment, I invite you to notice the "stations" you habitually attune to, and then to play with changing them to offer yourself different qualities and input.  For example, if you have a habit of catching up on every piece of news and you find that this sometimes fills you with anxiety, notice what happens if, instead, you decide to listen to an inspirational speaker, or download a podcast of something that is either uplifting or educational in a way that won't generate anxiety or fear.  Or, if you have a habit of orienting to highly-stimulating activities and input, notice what happens if you take a few moments now and then to attune yourself to soothing and calming images or sounds.

As with all the experiments, there's no right answer for this one, no right way to do it.  There's just this present moment and the opportunity it offers to notice how much your focus of attention affects the quality of your internal and external life.  We tend to respond to the world with the same qualities we feel on the inside, so where you focus your internal awareness impacts not only your felt-sense of yourself and your everyday activities, but also how you engage the outside world in real-time. 

Remember to bring along curiosity as your constant companion.  The goal here isn't to generate any "shoulds".  Instead, it's an opportunity to offer yourself evidence of the fact that how you tune your "radio" of awareness has a lot to do with how you feel about yourself and your world.  Give yourself an opportunity to experience a week of input that inspires you and notice the effect it has on you.