This article was first published in Brainz magazine in July 2023
Is Attention Our Most Valuable Resource?
Do you realise how important your attention is? Quantum physics and intuition tell us that energy flows where attention goes. Not only your energy but your whole brain power flows wherever your attention goes. So, what are you giving your attention to? Do you notice that your attention can be easily hijacked by distractions like social media, advertising, news, email, and other notifications? Have you noticed your attention is susceptible to stress, tiredness, worry, and low mood? And have you seen how easily your attention can be interrupted by the constant stream of commentary, analysis, worry, judging, and planning that flows through your mind?
Our Attention Can Be Easily Hijacked
Personally, my attention is weakened by events like a sunny blue sky outside my office window, the desire to eat, the arrival of a new message or doing something I don’t enjoy or lack confidence in. These things invariably break my focus and distract my attention. How good are you at resisting the urge for shiny things and simple wins that flood your brain with dopamine and other feel-good hormones? Can you stay focused on the task at hand when enticing distractions call your attention?
While our individual brains and attention systems function differently, the things that weaken our attention are things we all deal with daily. Advertisers, for example, know how valuable our attention is, exposing some people to up to 10,000 advertisements a day. Therefore, if we want to succeed at whatever we are up to we should know that our attention can be vulnerable in certain conditions and take steps to safeguard it, as we do with other valuable resources.
Attention is a Powerful Tool
The good news is that attention is an exceptionally powerful tool. Like a torch light illuminates objects in the dark, attention enables us to direct the power of presence, or awareness (I use these words interchangeably), on whatever we wish to focus on. Scientists believe that attention evolved because the brain suffered from information overload1. There is just too much information out there, and if we want to achieve anything at all, we need to be able to attend to it. We need to be able to identify and concentrate on what’s important without being distracted by what’s not important.
So, What is Attention?
Attention is not just something that is good to have, it is essential for everything we do, while attention deficit has huge implications for productivity and mental health. Attention is the vehicle through which we wield the power of our mind. By paying attention our brain gathers more information and deepens understanding. Attention is the gateway to all perception, thinking, feeling, sensing, and behaving. Attention enables us to know the world, understand and plan, make decisions, and manage ourself and our emotions in order to achieve our goals.
Attention is an active and complex process that gives us the ability to:
1. Focus our mind on one thing (selective focus)
2. Monitor two events at once (divided focus)
3. Focus for long periods of time (sustained focus)
4. Focus on completing steps to achieve a goal (executive focus)2
Managing Your Attention Is the Ultimate Freedom
Being able to manage your attention means you have choice about how you live your life because what you agree to pay attention to makes up the experiences you have, the life you live and ultimately the quality of it. To control yourself and your life, you must control your attention and yet attention deficit seems to be a collective problem and issue facing a growing number of people.
What we give our attention to appreciates. For example, notice now if you pay attention to your hands or feet, they seem to become alive. Don’t think about your hands or feet but close your eyes and feel them from the inside out. Can you feel the energy in your hands or feet, as tingling, buzzing, pulsing sensations when you give them your attention? And can you notice that if you really feel your hands or feet from the inside out you can’t also be thinking? Your attention can monitor both feet and thoughts, but it can’t give its full, undivided attention to more than one thing at a time.
Meditation and Mindfulness Helps Strengthen Our Attention
We rarely think to reinforce our attention or protect it, but it works like a muscle and can be strengthened with regular exercise like meditation and mindfulness. Mindfulness/meditation practices are like fitness training for the brain, strengthening all four aspects of attention: the ability to selectively focus without distraction, have a broad awareness of the bigger picture, sustain focus for long periods of time and juggle multiple demands, steps, and projects.
Meditation and Mindfulness Helps Strengthen Our Resilience
Strengthening our attentional muscle directly impacts our ability to withstand those things that weaken our attention and builds resilience to pressure, challenge, and change. A strong attentional muscle enables us to be present, find flow, and heighten concentration to unlock our full potential. It improves decision making and productivity in the workplace, increases happiness through reduced mind-wandering and enables us to better regulate emotions and reduce emotional reactivity.
It pays to pay attention to your attention. Notice how you are using it. How is it that your moments are being spent? Is your attention easily distracted? Are you able to choose what you give your attention to or are you at the mercy of distractions, technology, cravings, anxieties, or the many advanced ways our attention can be seized by corporate or political interests? The key question is are you achieving what you ultimately desire or are your attentional wheels spinning on stuff that is not that important?
Here is a short Mindful Breathing exercise to build your attentional muscle.
Sit comfortably in an upright (not uptight), balanced and easy position, with both feet flat on the floor, arms and hands resting comfortably. Once settled, notice where you are and then gently close your eyes or lower and soften your gaze. Feel the chair or surface beneath you supporting your body, holding you up. And begin to pay light attention to the sensations and movements you feel as you breath in and out.
Be really specific and curious about paying attention to your breath. What do you notice? Do you notice the coolness of the air in your nostrils as you breathe in? Or the rising and falling of your chest? Or the subtle inflation and deflation of your stomach as you breathe in and out? Perhaps you feel subtle sensations elsewhere in your body or feel your breath as a whole? Begin to focus with a kind and gentle attention on the feeling of breathing wherever you feel it the most.
Let your attention tenderly focus there on the sensations and movements you feel as you breathe in and out and see if can softly hold your attention there …. No need to control or change your breath or anything else, no need to judge or achieve anything, just observe your breath as it is, feeling it from the inside out, and greeting it as you would a dear friend, exactly as it is.
Pretty soon you might notice that your attention wanders away, drifting off into a stream of thoughts about your day or what you are doing. You attention may become caught up in a memory or imagination or begin to fret about another sensation in your body, an itch, or a pain. Or perhaps your attention becomes distracted by a noise that you hear, or one of a million other possible distractions. This is very normal, and our attention can drift quite quickly. This is part of the meditation to notice that your attention and mind wanders, to reawaken and observe where it is that your mind wandered off to and then when you’re ready, recollect your attention and return it to feeling your breath each and every time you notice it drifts away.
You might think to judge or criticise yourself when your attention wanders, seeing it as a meditation failure, but the truth is that all minds wander and drift, so the best response is to accept that thoughts and distractions happen, and simply keep coming back to feeling your breath again and again and again.
Each time you notice your attention has wandered and you bring it back to focus on your breath you are strengthening your attentional muscle. This is the training. Don’t underestimate how powerful it is. Like strengthen your body at the gym, this is fitness training for the mind. Even 5 mins a day of this practice can start to make a big difference. And the real gold is to notice that you are aware of the feeling of breathing and the wandering of your mind. You are not your thoughts, (emotions), or body, you have thoughts, emotions, and a body. You are the one – the being, presence, or awareness - who is aware of them.
You might set a timer and notice how you can develop this mental strength over time, maintaining a light and friendly approach. Perhaps even adopting a smile each time you catch your attention wanting to be anywhere else except for being with your breath. And then, take a few moments to return to your surroundings, gradually become fully alert again and continue on with your day with a slightly stronger, fitter, and more resilient attentional muscle.
References
1. Lev-Ari T, Beeri H, Gutfreund Y. The Ecological View of Selective Attention. Front Integr Neurosci. 2022 Mar 21;16:856207. doi: 10.3389/fnint.2022.856207. PMID: 35391754; PMCID: PMC8979825.https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8979825/#:~:text=On%20the%20one%20hand%2C%20attention,all%20active%20food%2Dseeking%20organisms%20(
2. Cohen, R.A. (2014). Models and Mechanisms of Attention. In: The Neuropsychology of Attention. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-72639-7_11