01/29/2024
I read this post from recently, and thought it was incredibly poignant.
“What you pay attention to — expands. This law is the basis for some of our most lasting folk wisdom: Look left, go left. See the glass half-full. Keep on the sunny side of life. At the very least these sayings suggest a psychological benefit to controlling what we pay attention to. But many philosophies go even further, and suggest that our attention carries a sort of spiritual power. Some claim that the world will magically serve us more of what we notice. Maybe there has always been some truth to that, maybe not. But it is certainly true now.
Our world has become hardwired to give us more of what we pay attention to. In the last few years this trend has rapidly accelerated. Every time we look at a screen, even if we are just mindlessly scrolling— artificial intelligence is watching what we pay attention to. More than watching, it is studying. More than studying, it is obsessively measuring, training itself, getting better— at giving us more. More of what we pay attention to. It doesn’t care about our weaknesses, our insecurities, our blindspots, our biases, our addictions. It doesn’t want us to be better people in 2024 than in 2023. Admittedly, it doesn’t want us to be worse either. It only wants one thing: our attention.
So as we make plans to control our calories, our drinking, our smoking, our exercise, our generosity, our meditation-perhaps we should begin by controlling what we pay attention to. Because what you pay attention to-expands. You will be shown much more of what you choose to look at. So choose carefully. And if at any point you become conscious that you are not the one choosing — pause. Perhaps the most powerful choice you have left is to turn off the screen.”
And if you’ve come to the end of this post feeling that you might benefit from some help along the way, know that our therapists are just one phone call away.
