How do we elevate the quality of our attention?

“If we’re looking for moments of joy or levity, we're more likely to report having a lot of them in our lives.”

Dear Friends, 

What are you thinking about right now? 

If you’re like me, your mind was likely elsewhere. This is why my conversation with Amishi Jha, PhD, Director of Contemplative Neuroscience and Professor of Psychology at the University of Miami, was so impactful. Her work centers around our most precious resource—our attention—and how we can reclaim it. In her book Peak Mind, she shares that we miss 50% of our moments because we aren’t present. I was startled by this. Still, the lightbulb didn’t go off until I realized that I was thinking about dinner in the shower. I suddenly recognized how often my mind wanders, often to unhelpful places. 

The combination of Jha’s teachings to view our attention like a flashlight and Susan David’s, PhD, on ruminating sparked a question that has become my central focus: How can we direct our attention in generative ways? This exploration offers me peace of mind and I’m thrilled to share the perspectives that continue to shape it (with the conversations linked below). I hope they’ll be equally nourishing for you. 

“We talk about this mindset of levity as navigating the world on the precipice of a smile; looking for reasons to be delighted rather than disappointed. There's a psychological principle called the priming effect that says, in essence, that our brains are wired to find what we set out to look for. So, if we’re looking for moments of joy or levity, we're more likely to report having a lot of them in our lives.” — Naomi Bagdonas 

With love, 

Jenna 

Author Susan Cain on rituals for creating beauty 

“Beauty connects us with our best selves. In that newsletter, I talked about C.S. Lewis posing that question: How can you think about beauty when we're living on the precipice of so many horrors? Humans have always lived on that precipice. It's the fact that we're always thirsting for a more perfect and beautiful world that propels us to create things and connect with each other. Beauty is the great catalyst to the world we all desire.”

Journalist and Entrepreneur Maria Shriver on expanding our sense of possibility 

“I think the question for all of us is: Why am I here? The answer isn’t just about me. It’s about the larger Earth, right? We're all here. But, we're not here for the same reason. We don't have the same mission. So, I’m constantly asking myself: Why am I here? What am I going to do with my time to make the here and now better—for me, for you, and for all of us?” 

Neuroscientist Amishi Jha, PhD, on tools to train—and reclaim—our attention

“When it comes to resilience, if we wait for the moment we need our attention to train it, it's too late; In the same way that if we wait to exercise when we need physical strength, it's too late. You really want to stick to this notion of ‘train every day’ because you don't know when you're going to need it.” 

Authors and Stanford Professors Jennifer Aaker,PhD, and Naomi Bagdonas on cultivating a mindset of levity 

“We do another story exercise with our students, levity reframes, which are one minute signature stories about their lives. They have to be authentic stories that have a goal. Most of the time, these stories are very meaningful, but they can often be dark, revealing, or defining. We ask them to write down their signature story in a way that is essentially like a comedy. So, how do you infuse levity into the story you've shared with yourself and others in the past because it’s defined you? As the students infuse the story with humor, levity, and joy, it enables them to see how easy it is to tell the exact same story, but with a very different tonality.” 

Author and Psychologist Susan David, PhD, on expanding our emotional vocabulary 

“When we’re experiencing autopilot stress, we often lock down into very rigid labels around emotions. Whereas what is needed is much more nuanced language. Stress, busy, resistant to change—These are big labels that don't describe the nuance of what people are feeling. If you say—‘I'm stressed.’—your body and psychology don’t know what to do with the stress. First, we are conflating ourselves with it: I am stressed. What does that mean? 100 percent of me is stressed. There's no space for anything else…This is where emotional granularity becomes important. You try to understand: What are one or two other options here? This thing that I'm calling ‘stress’ or ‘resistant to change,’ what else is really going on [for them]?...Nuance allows us to understand the cause of the emotion and move forward.” 

Good Morning America Co-Anchor Robin Roberts on embodying our intentions 

“I always tell my team: Onward, upward, and inward. We’re marching on and up, but we’re also going in. We stay on the surface because we’re afraid of what we’ll find if we go deep within ourselves. Empathy is in your heart. It all stems from what’s inside of you.”