Paying Attention to Your Inner State

As 2024 was coming to a close, I shared a post on LinkedIn about the one thing leaders can focus on for 2025. At the end and beginning of the year, there’s a lot of advice on goal setting. But I find it can be very mechanical, geared to the mind, not accounting for one’s whole being. I don’t think people set themselves up for success. The one thing that can help us achieve our aspirations is prioritizing our inner state. We must pay attention to it. It doesn’t matter what goals you’ve set if you don’t know what’s going on for you. Everything you see and act upon will be coloured by what you lack awareness of. 

Your inner state consists of your mood, emotions, and all that you carry from the past including deeply held beliefs. When you lack awareness of what’s there, you’re not in control of your conscious experience. Ignoring or not paying attention to what’s going for you can creep up in a few ways. You might feel physical symptoms such as tense muscles and tiredness. Or you might feel stressed, disengaged, or off-balance from your normal self. The challenge is this affects how you perceive the moment and what you think is reality. Unfortunately, you can end up with faulty thinking, poor decisions, and inability to cope with daily demands. 

So we need to learn how to pay attention to ourselves on a daily basis. Check in with yourself to see how you’re doing. Don’t push aside whatever comes up. Once you have awareness of what’s there, you can move past it. If you notice you’re distracted or feeling overwhelmed, get out of your head. That means you need to do an activity that immerses your attention and body. Your thoughts need to match actions. Get out into nature, exercise, play sports, or engage in one of your hobbies. This gets you out of the mental chatter and gives you space to better understand your inner state. Perception is imperative to the conscious experience. So we have to know what’s going on inside if we are to understand the outer world.