Nothing in life is as important as you think it is while you are thinking about it.

This was written by the author of Thinking Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman.

And what he's referring to is a cognitive bias known as the focusing illusion. Pretty basic idea means that we elevate the importance of things that we

think about while ignoring other aspects of our lives. By thinking about something, it suddenly matters more to us.

And while it's easy to interpret this disconnect between our thoughts and reality is alarming,

there's also an opportunity here to use this to our advantage,

right, to further become the captain of your ship.

I've heard my entire life, think positive thoughts. We all have.

But there's value in understanding why that's true.

Otherwise it just feels like a meaningless ritual.

So, Connman talks about a study with college students where they were asked about their overall level of happiness, and then they were asked about their dating lives.

And the answers they gave, there were really, you know, there was no correlation between the two answers.

But when the order of the questions were switched, when the students were asked about their dating lives first, and then their overall happiness, the correlation between the two answers increased.

The answer they gave about their overall happiness mirrored however they said their dating lives were at least to a much

greater extent why well because dating became the variable or the framework that they used to measure

their overall happiness even though perhaps they didn't know it, right? But by focusing on it, it

became more relevant. It bled into other aspects of life, right? You get what you focus on.

It's that simple. And the truth is, as I mentioned earlier, nothing is as important as we think

it is. Everything is magnified, kind of blown out

a proportion in our minds. So the question is, why not use that as an advantage? Why not let that

become our strength, realizing that if simply thinking about something can change the trajectory of how we view the world,

it can be transformative to simply minimize the bad thoughts and focus on good ones.

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