Attention is not a spotlight that reveals importance. It often creates importance.
When something captures the focus—your name, a looming deadline, a vivid image, a pointed question—the mind treats it as the center of the situation. The rest fades, and with it the objections you might have raised.
That’s why the first job of influence is not argument, but guidance of focus. Put the right element in the beam and people begin supplying supportive reasons on their own, because they’re interpreting everything through that chosen lens.
Control attention and you quietly control what feels relevant, what feels risky, and what feels like the ‘obvious’ next step. Lose attention and even the best case collapses into background noise, unheard.