What Captures Your Attention Controls Your Life - Kare Anderson - Harvard Business Review
Who'd have thought that a Harvard Business Review article would lead to some soul searching. But that's exactly what has happened. "Giving and receiving undivided attention, even briefly, is the least that one individual can do for another — and sometimes the most," writes Kare Anderson, who is also author of Say it Better. "And yet, attending to others doesn't just help them — it helps us, by evoking responses that help the listener feel cared for, useful, and connected to the larger world. Paying attention may be an individual effort, but ....simply gazing steadily and warmly at that person, nodding at times and reiterating what you heard will activate an empathic, mirror-neuron response in both of you."
Who'd have thought that a Harvard Business Review article would lead to some soul searching. But that's exactly what has happened. "Giving and receiving undivided attention, even briefly, is the least that one individual can do for another — and sometimes the most," writes Kare Anderson, who is also author of Say it Better. "And yet, attending to others doesn't just help them — it helps us, by evoking responses that help the listener feel cared for, useful, and connected to the larger world. Paying attention may be an individual effort, but ....simply gazing steadily and warmly at that person, nodding at times and reiterating what you heard will activate an empathic, mirror-neuron response in both of you."
Heeding Anderson's recommendation to become aware of where we
are focusing our attention, for a few days
now, I've become increasingly aware that while I may be in the same room
as my kids, I'm not always present. In choosing to be preoccupied or only half
available, or half listening, I've realized that it's not just them I'm robbing
of an emotional bond but myself too. Love, relationships, emotional bonds are
about connecting and in order to connect we need to be fully present. This
article, though applicable to our work life too, solidified that thought for
me.
Perhaps this explains how we fall in love, too. Feeling loved
is nothing less than feeling heard, listened to, cared for - all byproducts of
being given focused attention. If you've been there, you know just
how lucky you were to have made the journey - those all too fleeting moments of
actually feeling heard. Moments that don't come by so easily once you factor
in the onslaught of our daily lives, the many distractions and diversions in our
day. For me, there is only one solution. To set aside family time, to
treat those moments together as non-negotiable and to guard it ferociously from
the needling interference of life's many to-do lists, phone calls, pings and
texts.
