Always Remember, Your Focus Determines Your Reality

Jedi Wisdom for Real Life

Star Wars is full of great philosophy and personally, I’ve had a blast discussing and debating it with friends ever since I first saw the Classic Trilogy on VHS back in 1995. In the early 2000s, I extensively played the Star Wars D20 roleplaying game (it was basically Dungeons & Dragons…IN SPACE) and my favorite non-core splatbooks were the Dark Side Sourcebook and the Power of the Jedi Sourcebook. Honestly, I barely used any of the material from those books in my games, but I read them cover-to-cover for all the fantastic philosophical fun on the Force.

We may not have the Force in our universe, but as I’ve worked hard to cultivate morals like courage, patience, and mindfulness, I’ve found ways to be Jedi-like in real life. One way I do this is reminding myself of Qui-Gon’s admonition to Anakin in The Phantom Menace: “Always remember, your focus determines your reality.”

What we focus on in our day-to-day affects our behavior and emotions more than we might care to admit. We should take particular heed of that in our Information Age as we constantly seek for new inputs from our pocketed supercomputers. Whether it’s doomscrolling about the crises du jour, or just whiling away time witnessing other people do activities we like to do, overindulgence in these inputs fosters bad outputs.

I don’t mean to say that we should just turn off the Internet forever. If you did that, you’d lose the sagacious insight of my wonderful page here. You’d probably miss some other things, too.

No, I’m not an Anarcho-Primitivist demanding we return to monkey. I just think we could all use less scrolling and more doing. Heaven knows that I do. And if your honest with yourself, you probably need it, too.

Time and again I’ve found myself scrolling through Instagram admiring other people’s work, whether it’s fitness, cosplay, or miniatures painting. Certainly there’s nothing wrong with that, but when I do it too much, I’ve surrendered my personal opportunity to work out, craft a new costume or prop, or finish one of the myriad half-painted figures that inhabit my workbench.

I can scroll through news feeds and lament the disastrous state of things in politics and society, or I can focus on what I can accomplish at my home, family and locality, and clean my room before trying to set the rest of the world in order.

When I focus on being active like this, and being patient with myself and others while doing so, life is a whole lot better. Far from perfect, but it’s better. It’s beautiful in its difficulties. Full of opportunities to grow from challenge. It’s far more fulfilling to strive out in the field than to be a perennial spectator in the stands who tries to live vicariously through others.

This my challenge to anyone who cares to listen. Hunt the good stuff. Pray for the grace to accept what you can’t change and the strength to change what you can. Think about who you could become in five years if you pushed just a little harder today.

Always remember, your focus determines your reality.