Attention

Ever notice how the same place can feel totally different depending on where you focus your attention? I recently went on a bike ride to clear my mind, only to return home and discover I'd lost my wallet. In the midst of panic, I realized how often we let worries weigh us down. But when I found the wallet, everything shifted. It was a reminder that what we carry inside determines how we experience the world. The sun rises, the breeze blows, and life keeps moving. The question is: Where is your attention right now?

Once again I accepted the challenge this month and so far it is going well. This time around feels easier because it mostly has involved re-committing in some areas where I had started to allow some single-use plastic into our house. For instance, I'm back to more consistently peeling carrots and making my own hummus rather than buying bags of baby carrots and plastic containers of hummus.

I have been thinking a lot about attention recently. "Reclaim Your Attention" is the title of my article in the current issue of MN Yoga + Life Magazine and the workshop I will be offering at the MN Yoga Conference next month. With both of those, I focus on using techniques such as yoga, meditation, breathwork, and chanting to improve attention. Here I'd like to mention one way I have been using software to help pay attention.

Medieval monks had a terrible time concentrating. And concentration was their lifelong work! Their tech was obviously different from ours. But their anxiety about distraction was not. They complained about being overloaded with information, and about how, even once you finally settled on something to read, it was easy to get bored and turn to something else.