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# Brené with Dr. Amishi Jha on Finding Focus and Owning Your Attention
![[calendar-plus.svg]] <small>Apr 02, 2022</small> | ![[calendar-clock.svg]] <small>Jan 03, 2023</small> 🏷️ [[Productivity]]
**Podcast: [[Podcasts#Dare to Lead with Brené Brown|Dare to Lead]]
**Host:** [[Brené Brown]]
**Citation:** Brown, B. (Host). (2022, March 21). Brené with Dr. Amishi Jha on finding focus and owning your attention [Audio podcast episode]. In *Dare to Lead.* Parcast. https://brenebrown.com/podcast/finding-focus-and-owning-your-attention/
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# 3 Sentence Summary
# Notes & Important Ideas
### Dr. Jha's background
- Dr. Jha's experience as a volunteer in the brain injury unit of a hospital led to an interest in studying the brain.
- How can we rewire the brain by doing something ourselves?
- Jha ran lab at the University of Pennsylvania studying the brain system of [[attention]].
- Curious about how to "fix" attention and was guided to explore [[meditation]].
### What is attention?
> In order to remember something, you have to have paid attention to it.
- Attention is a system with sub-systems and sub-processes.
- [[Focus is a flashlight]]
- [[alerting system]] keeps us receptive when things are uncertain
- [[executive control]] is most prone to fatigue, especially when [[multitasking]].
- Attention is always fully utilized.
- 'Not paying attention' just means your attention isn't on the thing you want to have it on.
#### Limits of attention
- Attentions is limited but flexible.
- Important not to spend too much time [[task-switching]] because it depletes [[attention]].
- Attention is required for thinking, deliberating, problem solving, feeling, and connecting.
- Attention is vulnerable to stress, threat and negative mood.
#### Mindfulness restores attention
- Research showed that 12 minutes a day of [[mindfulness]] training reduces decline of attention and rebuilds it during high-stress intervals.
**Myth #1 : Mindfulness means completely clearing your mind.**
You cannot clear your mind, it will always wander. Instead, the goal of mindfulness is to pick a target to focus your attention on.
**Myth #2: The goal of mindfulness is to feel peaceful and relaxed.**
Not about achieving any special state, it's about paying attention to our present moment experience without reacting to it.
### Peak mind pivot
> To think better, practice being aware that you are thinking.
- Practice [[meta-awareness]] by taking a distanced perspective of your thinking.
> To focus better, practice noticing and monitoring when you are not focused.
- Engage [[executive control]] to keep your focus where you intended to.
> To feel less pain, practice focusing on it, non-elaboratively. Don't make up a story about it, simply observe it and notice how it changes over time.
- Do an emotional body scan. Observe the sensations in your body associated with whatever emotion(s) you are experiencing. Notice how it changes.
- This is not thinking about the pain. Feel it physically. Watch the pain.
### Creativity and attention
Watching/listening to something formulaic in the background to get into creative mode.
Two steps to creativity:
1. Generative step of creativity requires [[alerting system]] to be receptive to anything that might come up.
2. Evaluative step requires [[executive control]] to determine if [[focus]] is on the right thing.
The formulaic background noise helps quiet [[mind wandering]].
# Connections to Other Materials
# Personal Reflection
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# Other References
TBR:: 🔖Jha, A. (2021). *Peak mind: Find your focus, own your attention, invest 12 minutes a day.* HarperOne (GR)
TBR:: 🔖Jha, A. (2017, March). *How to tame your wandering mind* [Video]. TED Conferences. https://www.ted.com/talks/amishi_jha_how_to_tame_your_wandering_mind