"Our thoughts create our reality - where we put our focus is the direction we tend to go"
About this Quote
McWilliams is selling a kind of mental steering wheel: not the dreamy claim that you can wish your way into a mansion, but the sharper idea that attention is destiny in miniature. The line works because it collapses “reality” into something you can influence right now - not through mystical vibrations, but through the brutal economics of focus. What you rehearse internally becomes what you notice externally, what you pursue behaviorally, and eventually what you can plausibly call your life.
The intent is pragmatic and slightly defiant. McWilliams spent years writing about living on the margins (including chronic illness and medical marijuana advocacy), and the quote reads like a tool for staying upright when institutions, bodies, or public narratives are trying to write your script. If you can’t control the world, you can still curate the lens. That’s not naïve; it’s survival strategy.
The subtext carries a warning: focus isn’t neutral. It’s a pipeline. Feed it fear and you’ll start building a world that confirms your fear - through avoidance, catastrophizing, self-sabotage, picking fights with shadows. Feed it possibility and you’re more likely to take the awkward, unglamorous steps that make possibility real. The phrase “tend to go” matters because it dodges absolutism; he’s describing momentum, not magic.
In a culture addicted to distraction and doomscrolling, the line lands as both pep talk and critique: your attention is being fought over, and losing that fight quietly determines where you end up.
The intent is pragmatic and slightly defiant. McWilliams spent years writing about living on the margins (including chronic illness and medical marijuana advocacy), and the quote reads like a tool for staying upright when institutions, bodies, or public narratives are trying to write your script. If you can’t control the world, you can still curate the lens. That’s not naïve; it’s survival strategy.
The subtext carries a warning: focus isn’t neutral. It’s a pipeline. Feed it fear and you’ll start building a world that confirms your fear - through avoidance, catastrophizing, self-sabotage, picking fights with shadows. Feed it possibility and you’re more likely to take the awkward, unglamorous steps that make possibility real. The phrase “tend to go” matters because it dodges absolutism; he’s describing momentum, not magic.
In a culture addicted to distraction and doomscrolling, the line lands as both pep talk and critique: your attention is being fought over, and losing that fight quietly determines where you end up.
Quote Details
| Topic | Motivational |
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