Attention attention attention4/16/2023 ![]() True, whatever gets our attention flourishes, so if we lavish attention on the negative and inconsequential, they can overwhelm the positive and the meaningful. The grandfather answers, “The one I feed.”īut that’s only part of the picture. The other wolf is loving, compassionate, generous, truthful, and serene.” The grandson asks which wolf will win the fight. One wolf is vengeful, fearful, envious, resentful, deceitful. A grandfather (occasionally it’s a grandmother) imparting a life lesson to his grandson tells him, “I have two wolves fighting in my heart. You may have heard the old story, usually attributed to a Native American elder, meant to illuminate the power of attention. The content and quality of our lives depend on our level of awareness-a fact we are often not aware of. It lets us be discerning in our dealings with the world, responsive in our intimate relationships, and honest when we examine our own feelings and motives. Attention determines our degree of intimacy with our ordinary experiences and contours our entire sense of connection to life. The ability to summon and sustain attention is what allows us to job hunt, juggle, learn math, make pancakes, aim a cue and pocket the eight ball, protect our kids, and perform surgery. “Only those items I notice shape my mind.” At its most basic level, attention-what we allow ourselves to notice-literally determines how we experience and navigate the world. “ My experience is what I agree to attend to,” the pioneering psychologist William James wrote at the turn of the twentieth century.
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