AMISHI JHA: Where is your attention right now? The human brain’s attention system is actually the success story of what makes us unique as human beings. Because attention fuels our ability to think, to feel, and connect, what we pay attention to is our life. For a long time, through our evolutionary history, the brain started to suffer from a very big problem which is that there’s far more information out in the environment than could be fully processed.
Attention ended up becoming a very useful solution because it allows us to prioritize information, but there are qualities of the human experience that disable attention. Given how powerful attention is, we need to really respect where we place this precious brain resource. The mind is no different than the body. The mind needs to be exercised daily to optimize our psychological well-being. Knowing this, I became very interested in understanding if we might be able to train attention.
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