Years ago I learned to ride a motorbike. These days I prefer road cycling, but one memory that has stayed with me is my instructor saying, “Beware. You go where you look”. She was talking about the vanishing point, the point on the road where it seems to disappear into the horizon. If you look at the vanishing point, your bike will follow. Equally, if you look at a cliff edge, the gravel on the side of the road…or whatever you are frightened of, then that is where you will go.

It is a lesson that has stayed with me ever since, not just for the road but also for leadership and life. Wherever our attention goes, we go. It is deceptively simple.

In today’s fast-moving, noisy and turbulent world our attention is constantly pulled in a thousand directions. Every day leaders are flooded with data and demands that can skew toward crisis. It is easy to become absorbed by what is broken, at threat, or seemingly beyond repair, all of which can suggest there is only one ‘truth’ narrowing the path forward.

I learnt this the hard way. Not long ago, I found myself overwhelmed by the weight of global suffering; the wars, the injustice, the uncertainty and the inability to do anything about it. I shared this with a wise somatic practitioner I was working with. He listened, then gently said: “That channel is endless right now.”

In that moment it clicked, there are always multiple channels available. I was stuck in one, but I could choose to tune into another. Not to escape reality but to engage more effectively from a place of agency.

One of the channels I point my clients to is what I call the green shoots or possibility channel. This is where we look for what’s working, the opportunity which is arising and the future we want to help create. Another one of my favourites is the curiosity channel: what can we learn from this? How is this perfect the way it is? How could this make us more effective?

Switching channels does not mean you negate your feelings. It simply means you acknowledge and accept them and then choose where to place your attention, ideally to a place of agency.

Here are three questions for you to play with:

• Where are you placing your attention?

• Are you focusing on where you want to go, or on what you fear?

• Are your questions pointing to possibility or curiosity?

Enjoy training your channel switching muscle.