control of attention is the ultimate individual power

Click the title of this post to read David Brooks' response to Malcolm Gladwell's new book, Outliers, which contains the quote above. Outliers explores what makes successful people successful and concludes that it's mostly social forces.

Brooks applauds Gladwell for moving us away from the cold rational self-interest model and hopes it will influence policy-makers to focus more on policies that foster relationships, social bonds, and cultures of achievement.

He also takes issue with the book, saying Gladwell has lost sight of the point at which the influence of social forces ends and the influence of the self-initiating individual begins.

This is important. Success is not entirely determined by social forces, in Brooks' opinion.

He points out that successful people have two beliefs: the future can be better than the present, and I have the power to make it so. Successful people also have a phenomenal ability to consciously focus their attention, and people who can focus attention have the power to rewire their brains--a topic of great interest to NLPers, meditators, and others seeking to improve the quality of experience.

As Brooks puts it, control of attention allows people to choose from patterns in the world and lengthen their time horizons, which leads to self-control, resilience, and creativity, something humans can certainly use more of.

This certainly got my attention! Who doesn't want more choices, self-control, resilience, and creativity????? I totally do!

Kathleen this morning told me she realized last night that in 15 years (when the moon is this close to earth again), she'll be 70, and that 15 years is the mere blink of an eye. It's time to truly focus on what's important.

I agree. What is important enough to focus your ferocious attention on?

Disclosure: I haven't read Outliers but have read Gladwell's previous book Blink.

For more on developing attention, see the posts under the label 12 states of attention on this blog.

Also, I'm reading Meditation for Dummies after meditating for a few years with minimal instruction. I'll post a review of that later. Focusing the mind is a key benefit of meditation, which in the big picture doesn't really have any downsides...