We Are What We Attend To
Those who engage in deep inner work, whether through meditation, spirituality, therapy, or journaling, will eventually notice a unifying thread running through all of these practices. It is contained right there in the name itself: inner work. At its core, every one of these paths invites us to look inward.
But what does that actually mean?
At first glance, the phrase seems simple enough. Yet for years, I overlooked something subtle but essential. To look inward implies that there is a looker, a conscious observer, and that what is being observed is somehow separate from the one doing the observing. That framing feels natural, yet it is not quite right.
For a long time, I believed that the “inner” consisted of my thoughts, emotions, and sensations—the endless activity of the mind that creates the movie of inner life. But through meditation and patient self-observation, I began to see that these things are actually the outer layer. The true inner realm is not the thought but the awareness that observes the thought. It is the quiet consciousness that watches everything else unfold.
This awareness feels paradoxical. It is more intimate than our most private thoughts, yet it also seems vast and expansive, as if it extends beyond us. I cannot fully explain it here, nor do I intend to. For now, it is enough to say that I have spent many years practising the art of watching my own mind from this deeper place. Some refer to this as witness consciousness, the act of sitting still within oneself and seeing from a pure, unconditioned awareness.
This practice brings many benefits such as greater calm, emotional balance, and self-understanding. Yet the insight I want to share here is something simpler, though it took me years to truly grasp it. It is an idea you may already know. Still, there is a great difference between knowing something intellectually and living it as truth.
The insight is this: we are what we attend to.
It sounds obvious, perhaps even cliché. Much like the saying “you are what you eat,” it is an idea that most people accept but few apply. We know that unhealthy food harms the body, yet we often eat it anyway. The same principle applies to what we feed our minds and spirits. The thoughts, images, and messages we consume shape our inner world, and our inner world shapes who we become.
If being human means anything, it is to live consciously, to let our experiences shape and refine the soul. Our lives are not random sequences of events but opportunities for growth and awareness. In this sense, existence becomes a kind of spiritual harvest. Instead of gathering fruit from the earth, we gather experiences that nourish the greater consciousness to which we belong.
In recent years, I have become increasingly mindful of what I choose to consume. This awareness began when I noticed a growing discomfort with a genre of film and television I once loved: action. I came to realize that what “action” often means is violence. It is people fighting, shooting, killing, or competing for dominance. When I open Netflix and look at the top ten most watched shows, many revolve around murder, war, or conflict. Stories about detectives chasing serial killers or entire nations at war seem to dominate the cultural landscape.
I used to enjoy this kind of entertainment. I do not judge those who still do. I simply found myself unable to engage with it any longer. It began to feel unsettling, as though I was inviting chaos into my mind.
This aversion soon expanded to other forms of media, especially what I call Anger Content—videos, podcasts, and posts designed to provoke outrage or moral division. It also began to include a type of content that once inspired me most: self-help. That shift surprised me. For many years, I consumed self-help material with great enthusiasm, always looking for the next idea that would help me grow. Yet at some point, it began to feel tiring and counterproductive.
The deeper reasons for stepping back from self-help deserve their own essay. For now, it is enough to say that all of these forms of content—violent, angry, or even self-improvement oriented—share one common effect. They fill the limited space of awareness and compete for our attention.
And this brings me to what may be the most important realization of all: our attention is finite.
We cannot attend to everything. Attention is the most limited and valuable resource we have. Because of that, each moment of awareness demands a choice. Every time we attend to one thing, we turn away from countless others.
Think about what you might say to someone you love if you knew it would be your last conversation. Or what you might choose to buy if you had only a few dollars left for food. Scarcity clarifies what matters most. The same is true of attention. Realizing that it is limited forces us to decide what deserves it.
Everything we focus on competes with everything else we could be focusing on. If given the choice between:
Violence, controversy, outrage, fear, self-criticism, and cynicism,
orMy inner voice, nature, creativity, love, beauty, and stillness,
I choose the second.
Some will say that it is possible to engage with both, to stay informed and entertained while remaining centered. And they are right—it is possible. I have done it myself. But to attend deeply to the second, to live from that place of quiet and creativity, requires reducing the first. It requires discernment and a willingness to let go of the noise.
More and more, I treat my attention as something sacred. I imagine it as a kind of receiver that picks up frequencies from the world. The question I now ask myself is simple: what signal do I want to strengthen within me? Because whatever I tune into eventually becomes part of who I am.
We cannot always control the world, but we can choose where to place our awareness. That choice, repeated daily, shapes not only our inner lives but the collective consciousness we all contribute to.
And this, to me, is the essence of Project Intrinsic. It is about reclaiming attention as an act of creation. It is about recognizing that meaning begins within and radiates outward. Each thought we nurture, each conversation we choose, each moment of presence we offer to another becomes part of the larger story of human awakening.