I'm watching my daughter learn to ride a bike. She's staring at the tree she's trying to avoid, and she rides straight into it. Classic. We laugh about it, but I'm thinking about all the trees I've ridden into over the years. The arguments I kept replaying. The fears I kept examining. The problems I kept studying instead of solutions. Whatever I gave my attention to grew larger in my experience.
This isn't positive thinking. It's just how attention works. What you focus on expands, not because of magic, but because attention is the gateway to action. When I obsess over what might go wrong, I find myself preparing for failure, making decisions from fear, seeing threats everywhere. When I direct attention toward what I'm building, I notice resources, I take constructive action, I move forward. Same situation, different attention, different outcomes.
The practice is simple and endless. Notice where your attention is. Ask if that's where you want it. Redirect if needed. Repeat forever. There's no finish line here, no point where you've mastered it. Just the ongoing discipline of choosing again and again what you want to feed with your focus.