You Become What You Notice

Dear Friend,

If it’s true that ‘you are what you eat’ then I am made of sugar. Just as my dog is part poodle, I could be part peanut butter cup.

While the ‘you are what you eat’ adage may not be a literal truth, the idea makes intuitive sense. We all know that what we eat affects our health and our mood. Garbage in, garbage out. The same is true for what we watch on TV or ingest through social media. We become what we pay attention to.

Which leads me to my current proposition, a new adage that I think might help us:

‘You become what you notice.’

I talk a lot with my clients about what they are noticing. A little less depressed this week?

Notice that.

Walking the dog helped release some stress?

Notice that.

You felt anxious when you got in the car to go to work?

Notice that.

It turns out that most of us go through our lives without noticing much about our own experience of the life we are living. We’re like the walking dead with better hair and make-up.

The trouble is that those things – the mood, the stress, the anxiety - affect our lives whether we notice them or not. But if we notice them, then we can respond to them and live with more intention and agency than we ever thought possible.

The same is true for our spiritual lives. Do we notice God as we go through our day?

Better yet, do you notice God noticing you?

A friend of mine calls them God-winks, those little moments that feel like a reminder that God sees you and He cares. Maybe the perfect song comes on at just the right moment to help you get some perspective. Maybe a friend reaches out just as you are starting to lose it and says, “I feel like God put you on my heart today and I’ve been praying for you.” I don’t know what your God-winks have looked like, but I bet you have noticed a few.

How many do you think you never noticed?

It’s so easy to believe the lie that God isn’t paying attention. One unanswered prayer and I can convince myself that God is uninterested in my mundane existence and bored by my redundant prayer life. But that is a lie. God did not knit you together in your mother’s womb (Ps 139:13) and send His Son to die on the cross for you (John 3:16) just to be apathetic about your existence. He is deeply interested in every facet of your life. And the more you notice the ways He demonstrates His affection, the more you will see your faith grow.

So this is my call to you to pay attention today. Pay attention to what you experience throughout your day and pay attention to what God might be saying to you today. If we become what we notice, then let us be people who notice God’s faithfulness and become full of faith ourselves.

Don’t believe the lie that God is not interested in your life or that He has better things to do.

Notice God noticing you.

We’re in this together,

Laura