What We Focus On, We Feed — Reimagining Our Awareness Rituals

There’s a truth I keep returning to again and again:

We are not passive observers of reality. We are co-creators.

What we pay attention to, we energize. What we speak about, we shape. What we fear, resist, or rally against, we may unintentionally keep alive—not because our intentions are wrong, but because we’ve misunderstood the mechanics of creation.

Take National Anti-Bullying Week, for example. The intention behind it is clear and noble: to protect, to educate, to raise awareness about harm and make space for healing. But what are we truly focusing on when we drape a week in the banner of anti-bullying?

We are centering the problem.

We are speaking the word bully over and over, amplifying stories of harm and creating content, conversations, and curriculum steeped in the very thing we hope to eliminate.

This isn’t just semantics.

This is spiritual law and neurochemical fact.

The Spiritual Mechanics of Focus

Across spiritual traditions—Indigenous, African, yogic, Taoist, and beyond—the spoken word is sacred. It is a tool of creation, not just communication. In many cultures, to speak something aloud is to bring it into form. Words are spells, breath made visible. That’s why spelling and incantation share roots.

What we name, we give life to.

What we repeat, we ritualize.

If we continually center harm, we reinforce its presence in the collective field. Even in resistance, we are feeding it energy.

This is why in Canada, we celebrate Truth and Reconciliation Day, rather than “Anti-Residential Schools Day.” Because we are not just mourning what happened—we are calling forth something new: truth-telling, healing, restoration. The energy is constructive, not destructive.

It’s the difference between fighting darkness and turning on the light.

The Science of Attention

From a psychological and neurological perspective, the brain doesn’t process a negation the way we think it does. Tell someone “don’t think of a lion”, and what happens? A lion appears instantly in their mind. The brain must first construct the image in order to negate it. Meaning: to “not” do something, we still have to feel and visualize it first.

When we rally against bullying, we must imagine bullying.

When we resist racism, we must call up the pain of racism.

When we wage war on drugs or terror, we focus on—yes—drugs and terror.

And what happens to the body when we focus on these things?

Our nervous systems activate. Cortisol rises. Fight-flight modes engage. Compassion narrows. We are literally less available to love, create, and connect when our focus is dominated by what we don’t want.

So what are we left with?

We become more familiar with the patterns of harm than the visions of healing.

We begin to organize our systems, education, advocacy, and governance around what we don’t want—instead of what we are here to build.

The Cost of Anti-Framing

We’ve seen this across history:

• The War on Drugs didn't heal addiction. It criminalized poverty, disproportionately harmed racialized communities, and fed a carceral system that profits from human suffering.

• The War on Terrorism didn’t bring peace. It justified mass surveillance, endless foreign intervention, and the rise of extremist ideologies.

• Even Anti-Human Trafficking campaigns, while vital in exposing hidden violence, often fail to address the systemic poverty, gender inequity, and economic conditions that lead people into vulnerability in the first place.

Awareness without transformation becomes repetition.

So What Can We Do Instead?

We must become intentional in our creation. Not just in protest, but in vision.

Here are some ways we might reimagine these social rituals and campaigns:

From Anti-Bullying to a Culture of Kindness

• Celebrate a Week of Kindness, Courage & Connection.

• Invite students to share acts of bravery and empathy.

• Create safe circles to practice conflict resolution, listening, and boundary setting.

• Model inclusion, rather than only warning against exclusion.

From Anti-Racism to Radical Belonging

• Host a Festival of Culture & Community.

• Invite storytelling from elders, artists, and youth.

• Teach histories of resilience, not just oppression.

• Fund joy, not just surveillance.

From War on Drugs to Paths of Healing

• Invest in Trauma-Informed Recovery.

• Legalize and regulate with safety.

• Decriminalize survival.

• Create dignity-based programs for housing, employment, and reconnection.

From Resistance to Resonance

• Align our movements with the energies of life.

• Celebrate what we are for, not just what we are against.

• Build rituals of remembrance that empower, not retraumatize.

• Create language that opens futures, rather than reinforcing wounds.

What We Speak, We Shape

We are not here to fight forever.

We are here to birth something new.

The question is not “how do we stop the harm?”

The question is: What do we long for instead?

What kind of world do our children deserve to inherit?

Let us speak that into existence.

Let us name that in our calendars.

Let us ritualize that in our communities.

Because what we focus on, we feed.

Let us be creators of life—not just critics of systems.

Let us become the remembrance of a more beautiful world.

And may every word, every thought, every campaign be an offering to that becoming.