Issue 6: Paying Attention... it's the currency of Love.
“Morality is mostly about how you pay attention to others. Moral behavior happens continuously throughout the day, even during the seemingly uneventful and everyday moments.”
On a long bus ride a few years ago, I was listening to David Brooks read his book How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen. At one point he introduces the work of philosopher Iris Murdoch around the topic of morality. “Morality is mostly about how you pay attention to others. Moral behavior happens continuously throughout the day, even during the seemingly uneventful and everyday moments.” Murdoch goes on to say the immoral act is the inability to see other people correctly. “To look at another human with patient and discerning regard.” That is moral behavior.
How do I attend to people?
I paused the audiobook. The question begged for my attention. As the rain slid across the windows blurring the passing landscape I wondered, how do I attend to people? How do I pay attention to others?
For some reason I don’t quite understand, my brain took me back to a vivid moment I remember wrestling with this same line of questioning.
There I was.
A 33 years old woman, in the throws of my amazing life. My sons were 2 and almost 4. I was working full time at a company that I helped start - wearing lots of different hats and busy, always busy. My wasband travelled for work and was gone on a trip.
Some people were running on Dunkin, (a Boston coffee shop called Dunkin’ Donuts for those of you not in America), I was running on not knowing how to say no, people pleasing, resisting conflict at all cost, suppressing my emotions and never asking for help. All behavioral patterns that served me well. However, I was beginning to feel squeezed. From the outside I seemed to be absolutely killing it. Able to do it all, and proverbially, eat whatever anyone put in front of me. But having children was challenging me in new ways. I felt I had to keep doing it all but the squeeze came from these fleeting little humans that I loved to the end of the earth. They relied on me to attend to them. And I felt I was failing.
Then it happened.
My oldest son woke with a fever. Which meant I couldn't bring the two of them to daycare, so I had to stay home. It was quarter-end at work and lots of things needed my attention so I had to work from home (this was way before working from home was cool). My younger son went down for a nap and my older son, the one not feeling well, was fussy, and inconsolable. I tried to work with him snuggled on my lap. He wasn’t having it. We were both frustrated.
Then it happened. I decided to focus my undivided attention on my son for 15 minutes. After which, I told him, he could watch an episode of Wallace & Gromit so I could work.
I noted the time, turned my attention to my son and did not divert my attention for a whole 15 minutes. (Proud, not proud.) What happened was remarkable. He was thrilled for this one on one time with Mom. We built a block road and zoomed his matchbox cars along it. He told me to follow him so I followed his car as we circled around and around. When the 15 minutes were up he happily put his cars to sleep and crawled on the couch where Wallace & Gromit rocked him to sleep.
WTF just happened? There was peace in this moment and I didn’t know what to do with it. I realized I barely allow myself to pay attention. To pay my undivided, fully attentive attention to these sacred little humans. To any of the sacred humans in my life. (Including myself but I didn't get that then.) I was constantly busy, trying to do it all, be a 10 out of 10, and for the love of Pete, not fuck it up! I felt so ashamed of myself in that moment and at the very same time I was gobsmacked at what 15 minutes of untethered attention could do for another human. Or both humans actually.
Back on the bus.
I watched the rain transition to snow. All the while thinking how many uneventful and everyday moments I threw away because the currency of my attention was being squandered on things I did not value. I wish I could rewind and spend my attention on those little boys who are now big men.
This memory made my heart heavy.
Hitting play, Brooks’s voice shared wisdom about an interview he did with author and therapist Mary Pipher, (Letters to a Young Therapist), where she described “being a therapist is less about providing solutions for people and more a way of paying attention, which is the purest form of love.”
“Paying attention, which is the purest form of love.” Mary Pipher
Paying Attention
In 1997, (just two years before my WTF moment) the technology writer, Michael Goldhaber predicted a future where “people’s attention would become the most valuable currency.” He envisioned a world in which attention supplanted money as a dominant currency. “If you have enough attention, you can get anything you want.” Since then, advertising has caught up with the trade. All I can think of is Mad Men.
Our attention is limited. According to current research and trends, the average human attention span is around 8 seconds. Yes, increased digital distractions, screen time and the amount of information that comes at us - they all contribute.
Our attention is scattered. It is my experience and that of many of my clients, that we are pulled in too many directions. So many responsibilities that we loose touch with what is truly important. That was my awareness on that day back in 1999.
What I have learned since is this. If morality is mostly about how you pay attention to others, which means seeing the best in others, being able to have empathy for their life journey and be curious and interested in who they are in the moment; then our ability to distinguish between right and wrong or good and bad has to be grounded in our own personal values. We have to know what is important. What is worth fighting for.
We are what we pay attention to.
One of the most powerful practices I do and share with clients is called Values Discovery. Your values are the foundation for an authentic and purposeful life. Most of us live mis-aligned from our own personal values. This can be fixed.
Alexander Hamilton once said, “If you don't stand for something, you will fall for anything.”
The importance of your values is that they let you know what you stand for.
When you know your values, it allows you to “fall” only for the things that align with your deepest held truths.
When you know your personal values you can choose to spend your precious resources: time, energy, money and attention on what is truly important.
The Values Discovery 5-day Practice
Gather a list of values. I combine James Clear’s list with Brene Brown’s. That’s a pretty powerful combo right? This practice takes 5-10 min. Always start with a few deep breaths and a 90 second focus on what you are hearing. Hear the sounds furthest away, then focus on the sounds closest to you. Then notice your own breathing. (I call this a sense drench, feel free to pick a different sense.)
Day 1: Look at the lists and circle any value that resonates with you. Don’t think too hard about this and if judgement comes in do another 90 second sense drench.
Day 2: Look only at the values you circled, if they still resonate circle them again. Go back and X out the ones without 2 circles. (Goal is to cull the list.)
Day 3: Look only at the values you double circled. Circle them again if they resonate. Go back and X out the ones without 3 circles. (Goal is to cull the list.)
Day 4: Look at the triple circled values and highlight no more than 10. Transfer the 10 to a separate piece of paper.
Day 5: Look at your list of 10 and pull out the 5 that resonate the most. Write those on a separate piece of paper. Take a photo and make them the wallpaper on your phone. Stick them to the fridge or your bathroom mirror. When you look at them notice how they make you feel. If they don’t completely jazz you, go back a step and see if you want to switch some up. Goal is to get to 5 that rock you.
Spending the currency of your attention.
Now you have an awareness of your personal values. Hold them sacred. Spend your attention on them. Spend your resources in service of them.
Here are a few questions to reflect on:
Can you think of a moment in your life when you felt particularly aligned or misaligned with your values? What happened?
How do your personal values influence the decisions you make in your daily life? Or how do you want them to?
How do your values shape the way you interact with others?
Are there any values you want to bring more in your relationships with family, friends, or colleagues?
What challenges do you face in practicing your values consistently?
How do your values inform your long-term goals and aspirations?
How do your values contribute to your sense of identity and self-worth?
What steps can you take to live more fully in alignment with your values?
Wrapping it up.
The gateway to flow in life is to pay full attention. Aligning with what you value helps you adapt as things change - you change with them instead of fight them.
When you pay attention to what is important in this precious moment you might notice you really are digging what you are doing. Maybe even experience a sense of quiet joy.
“When the people we love or with whom we have a deep connection stop caring, stop paying attention, stop investing, and stop fighting for the relationship, trust begins to slip away and hurt starts seeping in. Disengagement triggers shame and our greatest fears – the fears of being abandoned, unworthy, and unlovable. What can make this covert betrayal so much more dangerous than something like a lie or an affair is that we can’t point to the source of our pain- there is no event, no obvious evidence of brokenness. It can feel crazy-making.” Brene Brown
Beautiful Kathy. BRAVA. I will do my values list 🙏🏼