Module 2 | Drawing Your Attention

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Module Video:

Attending to the world around you

Scroll down for a transcript of this video.

ATTENDING TO THE WORLD AROUND YOU

We can also direct our attention externally to the world around us. Oddly enough, attention is a very selective process. We pick and choose what we focus on, but the way in which we do so can influence how we see the world around us, and in turn, how we feel.

For this exercise, let’s give poor Lauren a little break, and instead I want you to imagine that you are interviewing for a job in front of a panel made up of these four people:

Interview Panel 1:

Sure, you may still feel a bit anxious (as it is a job interview after all), but speaking to people who appear friendly and supportive can often help soothe any nerves.

Interview Panel 2:

Now imagine these were the people in your panel…

Pretty unnerving, yeah? For many people, a panel like this would make them feel increasingly anxious, disheartened or overwhelmed.

Interview Panel 3:

But what if your panel looked like this?

Would you feel distressed? Or supported? The research suggests that it actually depends on where your attention is. If you focus on the negative, then you will likely feel more distressed. But if you redirect your attentional focus to the positive things around you, you will likely feel significantly less distressed.

For this example, we can think of the job interview as our goal, and we can think of a positive focus as being a helpful pattern of attention, as it would lead to a more composed emotional state conducive to achieving our goal. In contrast, we can consider dwelling on negative information as being an unhelpful pattern of attention, as it may likely increase negative emotional states which would then make it harder to achieve our goal.