Ignore Things: Many Things Do Not Deserve Our Attention
In a recent conversation with a colleague I was complaining and kvetching about a perceived personal slight and a nonsensical decision by another colleague. I ended my soapbox diatribe and awaited my colleague’s response. Their response was delivered with a shrug: “Eh, sometimes you have to just ignore things.” My colleague did not share my sense of indignation, my vitriol, or my desire to point out the rightness of my assessment and the wrongness of the other party. Underwhelming to be sure.
But upon further reflection, I thought that my colleague’s understated and underwhelmed response could have a strong degree of merit. What if the best practice for handling so many of the little things that rankle us at the moment, in the day-to-day hubbub of life, is just to ignore them? Not attempting to change them, no fretting over them; just ignore them and move on. And not to outwardly protest that “we don’t care” or “we’re not concerned” (while we are inwardly seething) but to actually and truly have a mindset of disinterest, truly ignoring a minor thing because…it’s minor.
One of the most valuable skills in pursuing a life well lived is in how we manage our attention, renewing our mind and directing our focus to areas of value. Ignoring certain things, irritating though they might be, could be of real value for us in the long run. It is likely closer to an art form than a prescriptive skill, relying on nuances and experience to help craft that mindset.
Combating Design
We’re not biologically designed to ignore things. We are designed to pay attention to things, to be visually tuned into our environment, as well as listening all the time. This alertness is often beneficial, as in being aware of oncoming traffic while crossing the street, or recognizing one’s name being spoken. We currently live in a world of hyperstimulation amidst an attention-economy. Our already distractible brains are being trained to be constantly distracted. If we attempt to ignore everyday annoyances in life, we will face an uphill battle as we combat both biological and social design. But it is that practice and art of ignoring the bothersome things in life, things which cause us stress without resolution, that could be quite beneficial to us moving forward and help us reclaim our attention and energy, putting both towards our goals and priorities instead.
We Are In Charge
We are in charge of our attention, energy, and time. If something bothers us, and we don’t give it time, it doesn’t take time. If it doesn’t take time, it cannot have our attention. We are the gatekeepers to our own attention; other people, events, and circumstances cannot grab it from us. The issue is that we so willingly give this valuable commodity away for free. We allow all manner of petty annoyances to take up space in our head, hijacking our day, sapping our productive strength. We’ve written before about curbing our negativity and understanding the real costs of a stressed and negative outlook. We are in charge of our time, energy, and attention. There’s no one else who is responsible.
The Greatest Generation
Today we live amidst an outrage culture. Not only can every little personal slight, real or perceived, be documented and broadcast around the globe we have the mindset that it actually should. We need to work on stress inoculation. If something catches our attention and it bothers us; that is effectively a form of stress and stress derails our focus and dampens our aptitude. We would do well to take a cue from the patience and endurance that many of our grandparents’, members of the Greatest Generation, exhibited. One of the lessons we can learn from our grandparent’s generation is how to ignore things. Our grandparents’ generation had real stresses: economic hardship, world wars, military drafts, and social upheavals. Most spent their formative years dealing with shortages and limited opportunities, and many spent their early adult years being sent halfway around the world to kill other people and hold their best friend’s hand while they died in a combat zone. Such experiences toughen people and the snarky comments in the office or on the job site pale in comparison and can be easily dismissed.
The Resurgence of Stoicism
Authors such as Ryan Holiday and Tim Ferriss have been at the forefront of promoting a renewed interest in the philosophy of the Greek Stoics. This seems counterintuitive: why in the midst of our hyper-connected, personalized, sharing economy would a philosophy that boils down to “remain calm and bear it” be resurgent in its appeal? Because the reality is that we recognize that we cannot spend each day in a hyper-vigilant, distracted, and emotionally amplified state, but that we often lack the tools and framework to combat that very same state. The precepts and practices of Stoicism are one avenue for retaking our attention and sanity by ignoring the things we cannot change or moving beyond the desire to have to change everything.
Where Is The Profit?
What’s the end game? Where does giving the annoyance any attention actually get us? Who benefits by our being upset, indignant, and irritated by pet peeves, irksome colleagues, or a less than ideal situation? If we are not willing to address the situation or individual for a resolution, we should not be willing to give it or them any of our time. It does not profit us to do so, and with its effect of bringing down our attitude overall, could easily make us less useful each day. We typically use the terms “venting” and “blowing off steam”, as if we are walking hot water boilers who require a verbal and emotional safety valve. Perhaps if we simply cultivated a habit of ignoring things, we would have less pent-up frustration that needed to be “vented”.
Filling Up
One of the best tactics I have found for practicing the “art of ignoring” is to have a goal, priority, or project that simply overshadows all those daily annoyances. If our goals and aspirations are BIG and compelling for us, they fill us up and crowd out the non-essentials and negative things that can drag us down. When annoyances arise, we should remind ourselves of our priorities and what we are intending to be focused on, playing a positive script in our head which trumps and downplays the negative situation. This isn’t a delusional, alternate reality; it is simply putting the temporary minor annoyance into its proper context. We each daily walk around with a powerful, creative tool sitting between our ears, let’s not squander it on the little, irksome things in life. We’ve got better things to do.
Moving Forward:
Are you able to simply ignore minor annoyances in life (or things you cannot change), not giving them your attention?
What tactics or exercises do you use to do this?
Originally published at fjwriting.com on October 4, 2018.
