Connection Is Worth Everything

I saw the movie The Vow the other night and could see it over and over. The movie tells the true story of a couple who wrote a book about their vow and loved each other enough to live through uncharted medical territory to recoup their lives.

Why do I say I could watch it over and over? I say this because the energetic connection between the two stars was palpable, and that is welcome in a time when more and more people are disconnecting from each other, spending more time on their cell phones and computers than with each other.

I see people show up at dinner, put their cell phones on the table and not say a word to each other. The other night, there was a family - mother, father, and teenage son - across from me at a restaurant, and the only words they spoke the whole time were when they ordered their food. What a pathetic situation. The space around them was so heavy!

I think about the concept of connection a lot, because it means so much to me and it feels so good.

I also think about the state of  'not knowing,' or not being completely connected to someone, and how that feels. I first encountered that with my mother. When my Mom did not know where I was or what I was doing, she felt so out of control, she could barely handle it. I watched and absorbed this. She actually told me that she was going to call the police once, when she felt this way. That was the era before cell phones, but I was an adult and had only stopped at the grocery store, making me a little later than usual in arriving at her home.

So, somehow, I've picked up that energy in my own life and am working to let it go...that energy that makes me uncomfortable when I don't know what's happening in a situation that I'm in, when I don't have all the answers. Even writing about it makes me feel better.

Feelings are feelings, we all have them, and when we're healthy, we honor them. Best of all, we learn to communicate them, so we don't have to stuff them down and drown them with drugs, alcohol or other destructive behaviors. This is all part of my work with The Attention Factor: learning to pay attention to how we feel, how we act and how we call attention to our need for a solution.

If only Whitney Houston, Michael Jackson, Heath Ledger and so many others could have discovered what kind of attention they needed and learned how to ask for it - wouldn't they be alive today? Do you know what kind of attention you need, and how to get it?

Let's welcome our feelings and get this all-important conversation started.

www.TheAttentionFactor.com