Welcome to Joy Lab!: Welcome to the Joy Lab podcast, where we help you uncover and foster your most joyful self. Your hosts, Dr. Henry Emmons and Dr. Aimee Prasek, bring you the ideal mix of soulful and scientifically sound tools to spark your joy, even when it feels dark. When you're ready to experiment with more joy, combine this podcast with the full Joy Lab program over at JoyLab.coach
Henry: Hello, I'm Henry Emmons and welcome to Joy Lab.
Aimee: And I am Aimee Prasek. Here at Joy Lab, we infuse science with soul to help you uncover joy. To do that, we focus on building the elements of joy, the positive emotions and inner states that become the building blocks for a joyful life. So the element for this episode is curiosity. And we're working on attention.
That's the second aspect of deep listening and also a skill that boosts curiosity. So Henry, in your book, the Chemistry of Calm, you wrote about this aspect in a really clear way. I'll just read this section here.
"When listening deeply, you are simply placing your attention completely upon the other. If your mind wanders, bring your focus softly back to the person before you. Notice if you are thinking about what you will say or remembering your own similar stories and let go of your thoughts."
So I like this reminder that we can repeatedly return our attention back to the person.
Let go of those other thoughts or judgements, uh, and take the spotlight off ourselves so we can bring attention back to the other person. I think that's a practice of proactive curiosity. We can choose to be a little more curious about the other person's experience than our own.
Henry: Yeah, I, I like to think of this in a couple of different ways. One, I think that there is something kind of magical about feeling truly heard. I think that's the real gift that a good therapist gives to their clients.
But it's something you can give to people in your life too, and folks know when they have been heard. So by doing this deep listening for others, you can become a better parent, a better friend or partner, whatever relationships are important to you.
But that's not the only thing you get when you practice deep listening, because it's also a great mindfulness practice for you. You know, everybody gets distracted.
It's just really the nature of the mind, and I don't think that that's a real problem. I think that's an opportunity because it gives us an opportunity to bring ourselves back to the moment, and it's really by repeating that cycle over and over again, you get distracted and then you bring yourself back. That's how you strengthen your mindfulness muscles.
Aimee: I love that reminder that the muscle building aspect of the practice, uh, is that process of bringing attention back and that distractions are part of the process. Uh, I think it's also really interesting that mindfulness, is often linked up to having fewer anxiety symptoms. So we hear that a lot, right?
More mindfulness, more mindful, less anxious. And as researchers have looked more at this relationship, it seems that attentional control actually explains a significant chunk of that relationship. And it doesn't discount mindfulness or present moment awareness and, the power there, but it's just not the whole story.
So attention is really our ability to select the right things to focus on. And attentional control is our ability to consciously and voluntarily focus on those things and also shift and train our attention. It's like the, the active practice of paying attention and we can get better at it. So I think this is really important given all the sort of, kind of doomsday stories about how humans have a shorter attention span, um, particularly shorter than a goldfish.
Which is that storyline that came from that retail study from Microsoft that found a drop in attention span from 12 seconds to eight and a half seconds for humans over a 10 year period in the early 2000's. Got a lot of press on that one
Henry: Yeah.
Aimee: and I think a lot of kind of worst case messaging has come out of that as well.
Sort of this idea that we all, that we are all victims of this decline and we have no control, we'll be, you know, Less attentive than a goldfish forever, we'll get worse. But that's not the case. We can work on our attentional control and if we practice, we will see improvements.
Henry: I gotta admit Aimee, that headline about our attention spans being shorter than a goldfish, ah, that's kind of compelling.
Aimee: it's pretty good.
Henry: draws you in. But I agree with you, Aimee. We are not the victims here.
Aimee: Yeah.
Henry: I look at this problem with attention as being similar to any addiction. Really, let's face it, a lot of us are addicted to information or things from newsfeeds, entertainment, social media, and the like.
And really just like other addictions, there is something we get from it or we wouldn't keep doing it. But also like other addictions, the payoff is pretty short-lived. You know, we get a little hit of dopamine. then we need to do it again and again. And it seems out of our control until we can see what's happening and acknowledge our part in it, and then reclaim our power to choose to do things differently.
But I think that in order to give this up, we do need to see that there is a better payoff in doing so,
Aimee: Yeah.
Henry: or we won't break the hold that these things have on us.
And I think that the payoff is potentially huge because we do all want to be more present. We want to have more meaning and more pleasure in our lives, more meaningful relationships, and really it's reclaiming the power of our own attention that can get us there.
Aimee: Yeah, it really is about being present in our lives. Uh, I think it can be helpful as well to sort of get a broader view of attention, maybe get out of this kind of common idea that the only way to pay attention is to lock into something from start to finish. No distractions. A hundred percent attention on one thing. And that's just not how attention works or attentional control works.
It's really dynamic. So let's take an example.
Imagine you are going to run your first marathon. So you start running, you have butterflies in your stomach. Um, you get super hungry. , you're thirsty, then you get bored, then you're nervous again, and then you're thirsty again. You're itchy, and then you're bored, and then you realize the chafing has started and your leg pains start, and then your back starts hurting, then you're hungry again.
So I could continue. But the point is, the point is that I hate running. The second point is clearly. I can't think of anything good from the marathon. The second point is, um, there's one thing to do during a marathon, right? Pass the finish line. That's the goal. So you've got that goal, your task is running.
So it would seem that paying attention to that, to running, a hundred percent would be best. Full attention to that, but it's just not the case, right? So there's fascinating research here to say that placing your attention on your running or the inner sensations of your body while running, like the feelings of your legs being assaulted in that marathon will slow you down and you'll likely feel you're working harder than if you paid attention to something more external, like if you became distracted by the pretty scenery or some good music.
So, you know, between the start and the finish line of that marathon, a million things grab your attention- can grab your attention. And some, like, if your shoe became untied, that becomes the most important thing to focus on. And if you can't switch your attention to that, then you'll trip. And then, you know, if you don't want your legs to hurt so bad, you should probably bring your attention back to those pretty trees.
Or the music in your earbuds. So I'm also now just imagining all those stories of people on their cell phones walking down the street, like a hundred percent full attention on that one thing, their phone, and then they fall into an open maintenance hole. Which is hilarious. But also a great example of not being able to sort of monitor the external environment, right? So you know, whether you're running a marathon, walking down the street, or at work or home, attention cannot be fixed or tense. Right. It is fluid and we can work with it.
Henry: Yeah, I, I think what you just said is the real power of attention, that it is fluid. It's in constant motion.
Aimee: Yeah.
Henry: I love the way neuroscientists talk about attention these days. We are not meant to be highly focused all of the time. The mind has this ability to wander. Which is actually built into our minds for a reason. Probably several reasons, and one of them again, is survival. If we are completely focused on one thing, like your example of falling into the maintenance hole, no matter how important or enjoyable it is, we might miss something else that would be really good to notice, you know, something wrong that needs attending to some danger off to the side. So being able to lightly focus while still being aware of other things in our environment could maybe be lifesaving.
But I think there's another even more subtle reason for this, this, this mind wandering ability, and it has to do with creativity. When we let our minds wander, we are much more likely to come up with a solution to a problem, or simply to see things in a way that we haven't been able to before.
Aimee: Mm-hmm.
Henry: You know, I think it's a big part of creative problem solving. It's that, that deep well of creativity that artists and scientists go to again and again to get fresh ideas or make new connections between things.
Now, this is very different from what we do when we let ourselves get distracted, for example, by all the things that we stream onto our cell phones. When we're doing that, we are simply moving our focus rapidly from one thing to another. We're distracted, but our mind isn't wandering. Those are very different things, and I think it's in this context, it's letting our minds wander that can be so good for us.
Aimee: I love that. That power right there. I think, distracted versus mind wandering. So noticing that difference is really important. So let's get into some strategies on how we can hone our attention and let our minds wander. It just feels good, that space between those. Um, I, I really like some of the tools out of the field of sports psychology around something, the term attentional control training- it's used in other fields, that term as well.
Um, but there's one model in particular from Brick, McIntyre, and Campbell that, even though it's crafted for endurance athletes, uh, I think it applies to this endurance sport that is our lives. So I'll take some liberties, sort of apply it a little bit more closely. Alright, so this model describes four different dimensions of attentional focus.
There's outward monitoring; internal sensory monitoring; and then we've got distractions, which include active distractions and involuntary distractions; and then there's a dimension of active self-regulation. Now, there's some crossover, in my opinion, between these dimensions, but the point is that we can gain some insight sort of in these areas where we might be strong, um, when it comes to attention, and then the other areas that we can improve in.
So let's start with the dimension of outward monitoring. This is our ability to see what's around us; scenery, people, everything outside of us. And there's a sweet spot as we've been talking about, um, where we can sort of assess our environment and we can also be with whatever task we may want to give our attention to.
Essentially, we don't fall down the maintenance hole. Yeah. If we're on our phone. Or if we realize that the environment is too distracting. Maybe we just can't focus, you know, because of some loud bootcamp class is happening or something. Or the, or the environment feels unsafe, right? So our stress is up and we can't focus on something else.
So the goal here is to create a good balance, and that's really essential for attention. Uh, I actually find mindful movement practices to be really helpful here. You have someone you need to bring your attention to. You have your own movements. And of course the environment.
And so this practice of bringing attention back to the person and then your physical movements also while calming the stress response, I think can be super helpful. And then as you get better, you could take your mindful movement practice to someplace that has more stimuli, you know, an outward monitoring experience that might grab your attention.
You can continue to practice bringing it back to your body and perhaps a person instructing you. Now, internal sensory monitoring, the second dimension, this is the attention that you have to what's happening in your body. So I think this dimension can be really helpful because it's a reminder that our inner sensations, so how we're feeling in our body, can help us pay attention and connect more deeply, I'd say.
And it can also tell us, like when a task is done for us, you know, maybe it's too much. Maybe there's a triggering conversation that's too much, um, that's not helpful right now. So this dimension of attention can let us kind of know that information. We talk about this a lot here at the podcast, how that sensation of tension or something can give us some good information. That body wisdom.
So to practice this dimension, I really like body awareness practices, We have a great one in episode 34 that you can try. So now let's move to this dimension of distractions. So we have involuntary and then we have active. Involuntary distractions are probably what you're guessing.
Those are the things that just catch your attention. Internal or external. You do not consciously choose them. They just keep popping up. I really like short and sweet breath meditations to work on this, right? So focusing on the breath and just returning again and again to the breath after these involuntary distractions pop up.
We work a lot with thought distractions, specifically in our Joy Lab program, with our loosening the grip of thought experiments. So that's a great spot to practice to really start to work with this dimension.
Now, active distractions are when we choose to pay attention to something unrelated to the task at hand, in an effort actually, to support the task, just like I was describing with the marathon running.
So I see these active distractions as an example of at what's the, the next dimension, which is active self-regulation. So we'll talk about that dimension. So active self-regulation, in this context, is when we take our monitoring these dimensions of attention and work with them in such a way that hopefully promotes our attention and I'd say also promotes our wellbeing.
I really like this dimension of self-regulation because as we're saying again and again in this episode, It reminds us that paying attention is a dance of moving between the internal, external, the distractions, and then using these skills that we can continue to practice to help us get better at that dance.
So these skills, these self-regulation skills, are what we do all day here at the podcast. So you have lots of tools, right? Stick with us.
Henry: You know, I think anyone who's ever taken a meditation class knows from their own experience that the mind wanders constantly. We simply lost in thought.
And maybe it's a discomfort in your body, you know, that takes your attention. Or you start thinking about all the things you have to do, and then you start feeling restless and you know it begins to feel, for many people, as if you're just wasting your time just sitting around.
Aimee: Yeah.
Henry: And I think, I think that folks who are just learning to meditate often think that they're doing things wrong, but they're not.
This is how you learn to be present. By repeatedly going through this cycle. So first, You try to keep your attention on something that you choose. This active attention, like your breath or maybe your thoughts, but inevitably your attention wanders. Eventually, you will become aware that your attention has wandered and that you are no longer present and that is exactly what you want. That is your moment of mindfulness. That moment of awareness that you are no longer present. Then you can bring your mind back to paying attention again. And it's really just through this cycle that repeats again and again that you learn to be mindful. And in a much bigger way, you know, when you're not meditating, but you're out in your life doing things, you go through a very similar cycle.
It's just in a, at a bigger scale and maybe has more, more at stake. Um, but eventually, it extends beyond your practice time and you, you become able to, to do this, to bring yourself back whenever you choose. You've taken charge of your attention and you can place it where you want, when you want.
Aimee: Well said. I love this empowered approach to mindfulness and attention. We can place our attention where we want, when we want. Perfectly said Henry. Um, and it's practice, you know, like those dimensions of attention, those distractions, if they're popping up, hey, you're doing it right. Like that's a dimension of attention.
We're just gonna keep practicing on sort of harnessing. So keep practicing. To close our time today. Uh, I want to look to who other than Mary Oliver. Another co-host, I'd say for the Joy Lab, she comes in at the end quite a lot. She is just the expert, I think when it comes to practicing this kind of mindful, flexible, nourishing attention.
I love reading her words and it's just like the core of attention. She gets right to the essence of these beautiful things that we see every day. Um, so here's what she wrote:
" To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work."
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