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Attention is addictive by nature. It’s normal to want it.
But it’s far too easy to spiral into an unhealthy addiction to it.
Being addicted to attention is a crippling weakness, and it could be holding you back from a lot more than you realize.
The reason for that is because when we feel unwanted, unloved, or simply bored from lack of attention from those around us, we become blinded.
Suddenly, we can see nothing else but our apparent isolation. Our brains conjure up an image much more dramatic than reality, but it feels real enough.
Focusing so much on the lack of gratification we feel we’ve received lately, we are prone to missed opportunities. Our time management skills seem to take a sharp decline, and we can’t focus on anything else until we feel we’ve gotten the attention we want — usually from who we want, too.
Again, it’s normal. Many of us define our value, importance, and relevance on the opinions or interests of others. (Social media is a popular siphon of getting the good stuff, those oh-so-gratifying ‘likes’).
Something incredibly important that we often fail to realize though, is that the majority of value others would see in us doesn’t happen until we see it in ourselves.
