And never mind that voice you heard

What we focus on, expands.

The more attention we give to something, the more powerful it becomes.

It’s like the monster that used to live under our bed. We didn’t realize it as kids, but its power source came solely from our fear of it. The monster needed us to feed it with worry in order to survive.

But without our constant attention, it ceased to exist. If we simply directed our thoughts elsewhere, all of the sudden there was nothing under our bed that could eat us alive.

Metallica was onto something when they sang, hush little baby, don’t say a word, and never mind that noise you heard.

Who knew metal songs gave such great mental health advice?

And yet, even as adults, people still devote too much of their attention to monsters, both the mental and physical ones. Despite living in the safest country at the safest time in human history, our current epoch has been named the age of fear. Here’s why.

Glassner’s sociological research on fear reminds us that there is a lot of power and money available to individuals and organizations who perpetuate these fears. Fear is big business. We always have to ask that crucial question, who benefits?

Because our collective terror is worth billions to mass media, insurance companies, big pharma, advocacy groups, tech startups, lawyers and politicians. And thanks to our prehistoric brains, we’re very easy to manipulate.

In fact, when human beings are emotionally stirred, they’ll fear devastating outcomes, even if those events are highly unlikely to happen.

The official term for this called probability neglect. It’s a type of cognitive bias where we disregard probability when making a decision under uncertainty.

Like when a terrorist attack leads to increased airport screen measures, which results in people avoiding air travel and taking more road trips, and ultimately dying in car accidents, since they are six hundred times more likely to be killed.

Isn’t fear a bizarre emotion?

Unfortunately, our idiotic notification culture isn’t helping. It assures that we receive word on our every device the moment disaster strikes, which gives us a false sense of involvement.

The question is, can this monster be killed? Confronted? Befriended? Avoided?

My vote is on the latter. Not completely, sorry to say, but certainly the volume of attention we focus on our fears could do wonders for reducing their power over us.

My recommendation to everyone is, simply disable all notifications on phones and devices. Right now. All of them. Abstinence is cheaper than moderation. Shut off everything except texts and calls, even your precious email, apps, social media, and amber alerts.

Doing this is the only way to completely suppress competing stimuli, block out distracting noise and stay present with what matters most. It’s the fastest path to stop being so disrupted and distracted all the time, and refocus your attention on what’s most important to you.

You’d be surprised how hard this exercise is for the vast majority of people. Recent mobile data shows that only about fifty percent of users opt out of their push notifications. Fifty percent. I’m shocked the number is not significantly higher.

Guess fomo is simply too strong with our culture. The addiction runs too deep.

But if what that was all just another monster under our collective bed? What if this was the perfect opportunity to stop giving our attention to something that is already too powerful?

Remember, the fear needs us to feed it with worry in order to survive. We can reduce our focus on it and redirect our attention elsewhere.

Shifting our energies from what we don’t know about tomorrow, to what’s possible for us right now.

Hush little baby, don’t say a word? That’s not a fairytale, that’s the best mental health advice given in decades.

Is your attention on creating and accomplishing satisfying things, or on how bad everything is?