Awareness problem

[Tradl3s]

I found out i have a serious problem. I have been aware (no pun intended) of this problem for a while, but i feel like this is a little worse than some of the usual problems Lucid Dreamer have. I could be wrong, but here it is. I am never, ever aware of anything in waking life unless i force myself to be. I am finding it hard for this to become second-nature aswell. It's not just TV, Internet, and Video games that drain my awareness, it is whenever i am focused on something. We're always focused on what we're doing. Whether it is TV, Inernet and Video games, Or if it's something more productive or athletic like chores, sports, or simple physical tasks. For me, during the time that i'm focused on these things, i never become aware of what i am doing, where i am, or that i am even in existence. It's only when i remember to force that thought in. Is this a normal problem? or do i have something wrong with me?

[Burke]

No, nothing is wrong with you. Everyone has this problem and to combat them we just try to keep awareness in our minds. For me, personally, I don't try to focus on everything all the time. Sitting here now, I'm focused on writing this, and though there's a TV on in the background, I tune in and out. That's because our brains can really only focus on one thing at a time. What we consider "multitasking" is just our brain shifting focus back and forth quickly, to make it seem like we're focusing on multiple things at once. I'm actually really bad at multitasking. I'm quite musically gifted, but I can't play the drums for squat. Too much going on. But I try to combat this by devoting several minutes during the day to paying attention to what is going on around me, or, more specifically, jumping around between all the things I can sense. I'll focus on things I see, then things I hear, then things I feel, etc. but I can never really focus on all of them at exactly the same time. I just try and jump around as fast as possible to get as much information as possible. But I'm forcing it as well. That's why I don't spend every moment I'm awake to this; I spend a little bit of time each day to awareness and only awareness. If you did this all day your mind would end up scrambled by lunch time. So no, you don't have a problem and nothing is wrong with you. It's just that we, as humans, can only focus on so much, so for LDing we (I) devote a small amount of time to doing just that: focusing on awareness.