Focus Scanning Inquiry

Descartes’s phrase, “cogito ergo sum,” which literally means, “I think therefore I am,[1]” can serve to remind us that, our brain is designed to enhance most of what we think about. This, in turn, translates into what popular parlance, including the business world, refers to as, “What we think about most of the time is what we become.” It does not matter whether what we think about is what we really want or is what we least desire.[2] “What we think about most of the time is what we become” is an often misunderstood piece of knowledge. One way to try to explain this is by using the basic knowledge of a thought. Our thoughts are associated with an action potential[3] in our brain circuit. And it is a basic scientific fact that motion in any system is never without an effect. If we understand that our brain works like a computer, then it may be easier to understand such a process.

Do you remember the last time you bought your favorite car? Now, go back to before you began considering that car as the one you were going to purchase. If you look carefully, would you agree that you had barely noticed any car that looked like the one you eventually purchased? Now, let’s get to a few days or weeks after your purchase. Would you agree that you started to notice many cars that looked like yours, more often, more immediately, and those cars started to capture more of your attention?

Because this is such a common phenomenon, we barely give any thought to it. Yet, it may be the most common example that most of us can identify with to explain what scientists call the availability heuristic[4]. This concept simply means that we are more likely to notice, pay attention to, or focus on, and ultimately assign higher importance to, that which is readily available. But “available,” not in the physical term; rather, perceptually. For example, before we decided we were going to own that car, it was not readily available, and our brain easily helped us ignore its presence even when someone else was driving it on the street. In other words, you do know that those cars were always there, even when you were not noticing them.  You do know that it is less likely that everyone who owned the same type of car decided to drive it during the same period. You would agree that the latter situation is less likely to have occurred. Rather, what is more likely to have ensued is that because the car became available to you, in the sense that it started to have meaning for you, your brain got activated to ensure that you now start paying attention to it. And this is all possible thanks to a very sophisticated group of interconnected nuclei located throughout the brain, known as the Reticular formation[5]. In other words, our brain receives about 11 million bits of information per second and can process barely 2000 bits of them. What gets processed and what becomes conscious to you is what is likely to have had some form of a meaning to you. Food for thought?

Many of us somehow know this but our life tends to fail to reflect such a piece of knowledge. This is despite the fact that countless CBT and several cognitive neuroscience studies have shown how perception and focus are the determining factors of our results and identity.  As such, one of the simplest yet most important question we can ask is “what am I allocating most of my attention to?” This is known as Focus Scanning Inquiry. Are we focusing our attention on what we most desire or on what we least desire? And this is the most crucial question of all.

[1] Gottlieb, A. (2006, November 13). Think again. The New Yorker. Retrieved June 2, 2022, from https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2006/11/20/think-again-2

[2] Stevenson, T. (2022, May 17). What we think, is what we become. Medium. Retrieved June 2, 2022, from https://tom-stevenson.medium.com/what-we-think-is-what-we-become-df58a698de99

[3] The action potential: The Brain’s most efficient game of telephone. BrainFacts.org. (n.d.). Retrieved June 2, 2022, from https://www.brainfacts.org/brain-anatomy-and-function/cells-and-circuits/2020/the-action-potential-the-brains-most-efficient-game-of-telephone-101220

[4] Kahneman, Daniel. Thinking, Fast and Slow. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015.

[5] Mangold SA, M Das J. Neuroanatomy, Reticular Formation. [Updated 2021 Jul 26]. In: StatPearls [Internet]. Treasure Island (FL): StatPearls Publishing; 2022 Jan-. Available from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK556102/