In the term's specific usage in corporate awareness methodology, cognitive shifting is a performance-oriented technique for refocusing attention in more alert, innovative, charismatic and empathic directions.
Gradually over the 1990's and 2000's, cognitive shifting has become a common term among therapists especially on the West Coast, as well as in discussions of mind management methodology, and has begun to regularly appear in medical and psychiatric journals.
Decades ago Rollo May taught the process of conscious choosing and cognitive shifting at Princeton in his psychology lectures.
In meditation: Among the first references to the general mental process of focal shifting or cognitive shifting (the term cognitive is a relatively new term), the Hindu Upanishads are probably the first written documentation of the meditative process of redirecting one's focus of attention in particular disciplined directions.
[citation needed] In a recent NPR interview with Michael Toms,[4] and elsewhere in his writings, John Selby attributes his initial introduction to the process of cognitive shifting to Jiddu Krishnamurti, whom he considers his early spiritual teacher, and also to his training with Rollo May at Princeton.