During a conversation with a colleague, she shared with me something she had noticed recently. She found herself in a challenging situation that had a number of not-so-fun elements in it and recognized that she was rapidly developing a bad mood about the whole thing. Then, it struck her that in all the unpleasantness, there was probably something that wasn’t quite as bad as everything else. As she focused on what wasn’t quite as bad, she noticed that her mood began to improve and that she was able to move through the experience with greater ease.

Our conversation got me to thinking, again, of the importance of where we put our attention, of the things we focus on as we move through a day. We have an opportunity, in each moment, to take a look at what’s in the foreground and what’s in the background of our awareness and experience. In each of these moments, we have a choice about where we’re going to place our focus. In this instance, the foreground was all about not-so-good things. Sitting right in the background was the ever-present benevolent observer, that part of our consciousness that notices what’s happening without judging it as good or bad – it just is what’s happening. Once we shift into the observer awareness, we open up the possibility of choice. For my colleague, the choice was to actively seek out what was least bad in the situation and to focus on that. It was a big choice, even though it may seem obvious and not so important. By deciding to focus on what was least bad, she allowed herself to shift from being caught up in the foreground of distress and to drop into the background of noticing what was happening from another vantage point.

For this week’s experiment, I invite you to play with noticing what is the least distressing thing about a distressing situation and then noticing what effect that has on your experience and state of mind. The key here is to remember that you have a choice about where you put your awareness during any kind of experience. It’s true that there are many times we can’t leave what’s happening, and at these times the only real power we have is to decide what we want to emphasize about that experience.

Be sure to bring along curiosity as your companion and, please give yourself the gift of compassion and a willingness to drop judgment. The goal isn’t to shift from distress to delight. The goal is to explore what small shift might be possible that allows you to feel just a bit less distressed and then to notice what happens next.

And, if you find that you can’t shift from focusing on the worst part of the distress, simply notice that – bring your gentle awareness to that fact. Awareness itself is an agent of change because, once we are aware of something, it isn’t the same anymore, even if we don’t have a clue as to how things may have shifted. And so, if you find it difficult to shift from the worst thing, notice what happens next as you simply accept that fact without judging it.

As always, there are no right answers for any of the experiments. Rather, they are a constant invitation to become more aware of how we move through our lives, a constant invitation to live more consciously.