Where is Your Focus?

I have been thinking a lot about focus lately. 

Going into General Conference a few questions on my mind were:  

What does God want me to focus on right now?  What do I want to focus on right now? This was all in regards to my work, my purpose. What do I want my next twenty years to be about.  I have so many things I want to do and accomplish and sometimes I want them all to happen right now!  I also feel a pull between working toward some goals while also wanting to be present with the people in my life.  So, these were a couple of questions I took with me to conference this time around. 

Well, thinking about these questions and a few others, I had started to receive answers after the first several talks.  It was thrilling and I felt so much love and inspiration.  Interestingly, at one point my son proclaimed, “Every talk has been about the second coming and the priesthood.” 

What?! I had not heard those messages at all!  I mean, I knew he was thinking about the second coming, but I hadn’t heard the messages to much myself. 

What Are we Prepared to See? 

This experience brought to mind something I once learned about sight and how our eyes work.  

You can watch the video if you’d like, but basically the premise is that the eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend.   Scientist Martin Rolfs, shows us that “in order to see one thing we have to not see many other things.” Our brains cannot  process everything in our view, so our visual system has to find ways to pick and choose what we see.   We move our eyes more than 100,000 times per day, our eyes technically resetting the image three times per second (it’s like taking a millions pictures). 

Visual Attention

So, amidst all those short images (or pictures), how do we know what to see? It’s about the brain. What part of the scene is the brain paying attention to? Dr. Rolfs has discovered that our mind prepares before we move our eyes; your brain starts to pay attention to the spot where your vision is going to focus.  

Again, our eyes see only what the mind is prepared to comprehend.  Recently I was having a conversation with my daughter about license plates. “I hate personalized license plates,” she said. “I just think they are so lame.” 

Ever since having that conversation, I see personalized license plates everywhere!  I mean, I used to see a few here and there, but since that day it seems like I see at least one a day. Again, where is my focus? Is my brain subconsciously looking for these special plates? 

Martin Rolfs ends the video by saying, “We only what’s happening in that small moment. It’s a small world.” 

Where is your focus? 

Going back to my questions for conference, while thinking about what I wanted to focus on, what the Lord was asking me to focus on,  I jotted down any statement I heard that contained that word. Here’s what I came up with: 

• The more we focus on the Savior, the more we’ll know and we’ll receive answers for what we need to do in our lives. 

• Focus on the WHY of what you are doing. 

• Focus on the good 

• Happiness in this life is not based on our circumstances, but on where we put our focus. 

I’m eager to study the talks to watch for more on where the Lord is asking us to place our focus. Because what we focus on is what we will see! 

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As we focus on Him and our Father in Heaven…we will become the kind of people President Nelson envisioned: ‘A people who are able, ready and worthy to receive the Lord when He comes again…” 

Milton Carago, April 2023