Scientists
John Gaspar and John McDonald from Simon Fraser University in British
Columbia have recently discovered that we have an anti-distraction mode
in our brain (See
an overview here or the
actual study here).
This means that focusing on what matters moment-to-moment is not only
about intentionally paying attention to something, like reading this
blog post or listening to a friend, but also about suppressing all of
the distractions in the background.
Why is this important to us and what can we do about it?
In this day and age where companies spend
a lot of money to figure out how to get our brain to pay attention to
them, we need to understand how to switch those off to reduce our
overwhelm and keep our sanity.
The way technology has been going and is headed is a result of some
highly refined analyses on how to get our attention. When our attention
is fractured over a period of time our stress rises and we become less
effective. For a while now, Los Angeles has had electronic billboards on
the side of the roads. I noticed my vision often going up to them while
I was driving and being more engaged for longer periods of time than a
regular billboard. It felt like a bad idea for road safety. Someone took
it to the courts and now they have been shut off.
“Distraction is a leading cause of injury and death in
driving and other high-stakes environments,” notes senior author
McDonald. “There are individual differences in the ability to deal with
distraction. New electronic products are designed to grab attention.
Suppressing such signals takes effort, and sometimes people can’t seem
to do it.”
It seems to me that another good study would be to take this new understanding and apply it to people during meditation.
For example, a simple practice like mindfulness of breath gives you
an object to pay attention to, the breath. The intention is to bring
attention to the breath and simply experience it as it comes in and goes
out. It helps some people to say, “in” as they’re breathing in and
“out” as they’re breathing out.
This is taught by mindfulness teachers all over the world. I also
teach people this practice in the corporate world through an
evidence-based live online program called
Mindfulness at Work (only
available to corporations through eMindful.com). Thousands of people
have taken this program who are often practicing in cubicles with a
number of coworkers talking next to them. These voices are distractions
during the meditation and also while they’re working through the day.
Needless to say, they’re voices they would often like to suppress.
The instruction is simple.
Consider that in any moment we have
foreground and
background awareness.
The intention is to allow the breath to be in the foreground and the
voices of the coworkers to be in the background. But inevitably the
distracting voices pull attention and they come into the foreground.
That is perfectly fine.
When we become aware of that we are “mindful.” We can congratulate
ourselves for waking up, note the voices and then gently allow them to
go into the background of awareness while the breath comes back into the
foreground.
We can do this again and again, like a gentle dance, strengthening
the brain’s ability to pay attention to what we’re intending to pay
attention to while it gets better and better at suppressing the sounds
in the background (Note: there are also plenty of mindfulness practices
that include being aware of all experience at once, but this one is a
good example about working with focus).
What I’m finding is that neuroscience often tells us things we
already know from experience. The people I’ve taught have noticed that
they get better and better at playing with the foreground and background
awareness and eventually are able to focus better often because there’s
less stress around it.
Whether you are new to mindfulness or have a longstanding practice,
here’s a short mindfulness of breath practice to dip in and play with
foreground and background attention (Note: this a practice in
The Now Effect and
was originally intended for people who have the book. So you’ll notice
in the video that I initially thank people for getting the book. You
don’t need to have the book and the practice will start very shortly
after that).
The ability to focus makes a huge difference at work and at home.
Keep practicing, trusting that over time you can get better and better
at mastering the focus of your mind.
Warmly,
Elisha Goldstein, PhD
PS – Learning how to gain better control over minds and in turn, our lives, is a key reason I created the new eCourse:
Basics in Mindfulness Meditation: A 28 Day Program.
Elisha Goldstein, Ph.D. is author of
The Now Effect
, co-author of
A Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Workbook
, Foreword by Jon Kabat-Zinn, author of
Mindfulness Meditations for the Anxious Traveler: Quick Exercises to Calm Your Mind
, the premier eCourse
Basics of Mindfulness Meditation: A 28 Day Program, the
Mindful Solutions audio series, and the
Mindfulness at Work™ program currently being adopted in multiple multinational corporations. Join
The Now Effect Community
for free Daily Now Moments, Weekly Updates and tips and free access to a
Live Monthly Online Event with Elisha Goldstein, PhD. He is a clinical
psychologist in private practice in West Los Angeles.
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