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Hacking Mindfulness: Learning to Pay Attention to your own Attention

Peter Baumann | 4:25

Transcript

The most difficult we have today is our attention gets hijacked. There is so much happening in our lives that we pay attention to, and, and quite frankly, you know, the little devices that we carry around don't help very much because our attention gets totally absorbed, uh, into that, uh, attraction from these little devices.


And we get a little bit of dopamine all the time when we go, oh, information, information is valuable. Instinctively. So we wanna know what's happening and what's going on, that it's truthful gossip and it's truthful why we watch the news. Uh, but the problem is that our attention is so much absorbed in that, that we rarely, if ever, pay attention to just being present.


And that is really what mindfulness and meditation is trying to balance out a little bit so that when the mind quiets and you actually are at home in your body, that that that distraction fades away and you actually get in touch with that underlying happiness that Greeks call you. Ammonia, I think. To begin with, it would be really valuable to become aware of attention and how it auto automatically shifts from one to the other.


And it can happen in lightning speed. Uh, when if suddenly there would be a huge loud noise, we would all try and wonder what is it, you know? And our attention is immediately hijacked and attention at its core. Was also a very important evolutionary adaptation, uh, because, uh, what happens with attention is it either goes to the highest opportunity or it goes to the highest threat that we perceive in our environment.


So suddenly there is something that we, you know, in the hunter gather time, something that was valuable to eat, and then that's where our attention goes. Or there's something like a dark shadow moving, and then that's where our attention goes. And it, it's automatic. And the reason that we have attention is to pay attention and then summon all of our resources to either take advantage of the opportunity or to avoid the.


That's really the purpose of attention. So we, we zone out everything else. We kind of blank everything and just focus on one thing that in that particular moment is of highest value or potentially the highest threat. So attention is a wonderful capacity. You know, for instance, little infants, they don't have attention.


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