Attention, part 1: Mindful Awareness

[00:00:02] Speaker A: It's the youe Life Lived well podcast with Dr. Kevin Payne. A better way of seeing the life that you want to live. [00:00:14] Speaker B: Let's talk about attention. You don't think about it much, do you? [00:00:19] Speaker C: We take attention for granted until we lose it. But attention might be our most precious and limited resource. Attention is the lens through which we experience our lives. Our time is metered through the experience of our attention, and that can never be recovered. In today's world, everything is trying to grab our attention. We recognize this is so important that we even call it an attention economy. Social media, email, news that never ending to do list. Every bit of it is competing for a slice of your awareness. And most of the time, those demands win. Our attention is constantly being hijacked, pulled in a thousand different directions, split among competing appeals. And when we're spread thin like that, when our focus is fractured, we're not really present anywhere. We're distracted, disconnected and exhausted, running on autopilot while our brains jump from one thing to the next, never doing any of it very well or to our satisfaction. But here's the thing. We don't have to live like that. That's where mindfulness comes in. Now, mindfulness isn't some mystical, enlightened state where we sit on a mountaintop in perfect stillness. It's not about emptying our minds or silencing every stray thought. It's simply the practice of paying attention on purpose in this present moment, without judgment. Now, that last part about no judgment isn't exactly true, and we'll get back into that later. It is about noticing what's happening inside and around you rather than just reacting. It's about learning to direct your attention instead of being at the mercy of whatever grabs it first. Because, let's be honest, most of the time, we're not in control of our attention. Our minds wander constantly. They dart from past regrets to future worries, from what's happening right now to something completely unrelated. You've experienced this. You're having a conversation and suddenly realize you've been somewhere else entirely for the last few minutes. Or you get in the car, drive across town, and barely remember how you got there. You might be experiencing it right now. That's because your brain defaults to autopilot whenever it can. It tries to be an efficient system adapted to conserve resources and energy. And it is useful. Until it isn't. When we lose control of our attention, we lose control of our experience. We get caught up in rumination, anxiety, distraction, and overwhelm. We're here, but not really here. And over time, that disconnect affects our relationships, our work, our health, our entire quality of life. But what if we could change that? What if we could train our minds the same way we train our bodies? What if we could build attention like a muscle? Developing the ability to focus, to stay present, to respond intentionally instead of reactively. That's what mindfulness does. And one of the best tools for strengthening mindfulness meditation. I know the word meditation comes with a lot of baggage. Maybe you're picturing monks in robes or influencers on Instagram sitting cross legged on a beach. But meditation is not about aesthetics. It's not even about spiritual enlightenment. It's about practical cognitive training. A way to strengthen our ability to focus, manage stress, and actually experience our own lives. So today we're going to break it all down. What meditation actually is, why it works, and most important, how you can start using it as a practical tool for managing your mind, your emotions and your daily life. Now let's get into it right after a quick break. [00:04:14] Speaker B: I'm Dr. Kevin Payne. Just jump with me into your life Lived well. Half of us now live with chronic illness. Mine is multiple sclerosis. It's your life, live it well. A chronic diagnosis doesn't mean goodbye to the good life you wanted. You don't have to feel overwhelmed or hopeless. I'll show you how to save yourself. Take your first step at justjump life. [00:04:46] Speaker A: It's the youe Life Lived well podcast. Don't forget to like, share and subscribe. [00:04:57] Speaker B: We are going to talk about meditation today, but it's not going to be all about mantras and metaphysics and woo, woo, woo kind of things. We're going to talk about what it actually is, what it's doing in your mind and your brain, and especially why it's a really useful tool for living with a chronic health condition. My story with meditation goes back a long way. Back when I was a kid in the 70s, there was this television show called Kung Fu. Some of you may remember. It starred David Carradine as this wandering Shaolin monk. And he meditates. There's a lot of scenes in that show where they're meditating. And it's very much the stereotype of Eastern meditation. Bald guys in robes sitting in a lotus position and being very still and very focused. And I'll admit it, I was a weird kid. I thought, that looks really interesting. So back then what you would do is go to the library and order some books because you have to remember, I'm a kid. Growing up in the middle of the Midwest, and this was not something that I knew anybody who did. I didn't have any personal experience with it. I just thought, that looks really kind of interesting. The librarians were used to my weird requests for books. By the early 80s, the started trying it, it was kind of hit or miss. And then I kind of started getting the hang of it. And I thought, I really like this. Meditation has been off and on something that I practiced for almost 40 years now. And it's something that over the years, I've found has a direct association with my quality of life. I am a better human in the world. I experience the world better. My health is better. I function better, when I meditate regularly. So now it's essential to my quality of life. This is something that I do every day. I started this morning by doing my meditation. The one kind that I always do every day is something called a body scan meditation with my wonky central nervous system. It's a way for me to understand what's going on with my body today, what's working well and what's not working well, and what kind of resources I have to deal with. So we'll get into the things that you can do with meditation later on. But that's always, always, always the thing that I start my day with, because then I can go out into the world armored with an understanding of, here's what I can deliver during that day. That's a really important bit of self knowledge to go out into the world with. And it's something that if we're healthy, we take for granted. But if we're living with an ongoing health condition, sometimes we're on and sometimes we're not. This is the way that I found that allows me to be more confident and more functional within the world. When we think about meditation, we think of the stereotypes that I was talking about. And throughout human history, it's been associated with religious and spiritual practice. And of course, it is still used in that way. Our history with meditation is really old. There are wall decorations in ancient buildings in the Indian subcontinent going back 7,000 years that show people meditating, sitting in that position kind of with eyes half closed. So it's been around for a long time in Western traditions. It's a little Newer, but by 2000 years ago, you had Greek, Jewish and early Christian thinkers that were starting to engage in these kinds of practices. If you're really interested in the geeky history of it, look up Philo of Alexandria. He's kind of the guy in the west that got this started. So by the 18th and 19th century, Western curiosity from trade and colonialism is starting to import some of these ideas into Europe and North America. And we're starting to see people interested in this, especially Europe in the United states in the 19th century, the transcendentalists. There's another really interesting group of people that I'm not going to go off on a tangent with, but look them up. By the 1960s in the US you had the hippie movements and the peace movements, and they're interested in Eastern cultures. And we start seeing this becoming more mainstream. But we also see secular meditation that's being experimented with by medical and health professionals for things like stress reduction, relaxation, self improvement. And then you get something like a TV series in the early 70s that touches the curiosity of a kid. What meditation is and how we define it is still kind of nebulous and it's still kind of ill defined. We'll talk about some of the basics of it. Through the 1970s and 80s, we started modern research, research done by medical professionals, by psychologists who are really looking at, well, what's happening to our brains and our minds. Remember, those are two different things. Just like behaviors are what bodies do, minds are what brains do. They started examining what's really happening between our ears when we do this meditation. There's evidence for lots and lots of positive effects in terms of stress reduction, in terms of mindset, in terms of quality of life, in terms of overall health. But that research is still ongoing and we're still not 100% certain why I'm interested in meditation as a way of training aspects of our minds and brains. At its very most basic, meditation is practicing focused attention. The very first thing that we learn to focus, focus on is the breath. We may be focusing on our senses. We may be focused on a feeling, on an idea, on a mantra, which is just a word that embodies some kind of concept or feeling that we're repeating and using as that anchor to come back to whatever it is. We're focusing our attention on a place to come back to when our minds wander, because our minds do wander. And people have this misconception that when you are meditating, it's this ironclad focus on one thing, and they think, oh, that's too hard and I can't do that. And that is exactly the wrong way to think about it, because that's not what it is. Our minds are always wandering around. Meditation is about learning a better way of gently shepherding yourself. For most meditations there's that point of focus. For more advanced meditations then, like resting awareness, we don't presume a focal point. We let things emerge as we go. So why do we key to the breath as the basic way into meditation? Because breath is natural. Breath is rhythmic. Breath grounds us into our bodies and our feelings. And sometimes this is just actually called breath work. When we do that, when we focus on these slow, deep, regular breaths. When I say slow, deep and regular, don't read too much into that because it's not too slow, it's not too deep, it's not too regular. Because if it becomes excessive and too regulated, well, that's not natural. That's not the way humans are. It's breathing naturally in the way that is slow and deep. When it's comfortable for you, it's about finding that relaxed point of comfort. When we do this neurologically, what's happening is we are engaging our parasympathetic nervous system. Sometimes colloquially, that's called our rest and digest nervous system. This is the part of our nervous system that is engaged when we're feeling relaxed and comfortable. The cool thing about it is you've got the parasympathetic nervous system, and then you've got the sympathetic nervous system. The sympathetic nervous system is often called the fight or flight system. Well, they can't both be engaged at once. So when you are engaging your parasympathetic nervous system with those deep, calming, regular, rhythmic breaths, you can't be all amped up. It's physically impossible. You can't do it. Now, you may have trouble engaging the system, but again, this is about practice. We have this weird bias with ourselves. We think that we know our own minds. We think that if we can think it, it should be easy to do it. Even if that has to do with feelings and thoughts and stuff like that. And that's just wrong. We have to practice doing those basic human things so that we can do them well. And that's what this is about. Why are we meditating? Because, one, we're spending time with ourselves and we're learning who we really are. That sounds kind of weird, but you don't actually pay much attention to yourself. You're on autopilot most of the time. I am everybody else's. But why? Because we're what I call resource misers, which is just a nice way of saying lazy. And that's okay because we're adapted to be that way. So we're not usually paying attention to what's happening. Our minds are spacing Off. We're thinking about the future planning stuff. We're ruminating on the past. We're fantasizing about something we'd like to be doing. Whatever it is, our minds are everywhere but here with you in this moment. We need to practice spending time with ourselves and learning who we really are. Think about this. If you are hanging out with another person and you always have your face buried in your phone or you're spaced off and staring into the distance and not responding, how does that other person feel? You do that to yourself all the time. How do you think you feel about you when you don't even give yourself the time of day? How can you have a good relationship with yourself if you don't spend time with yourself and learn who you really are? The second thing that we're doing with meditation is we're exercising parts of our mind and brain that can be stronger. We use all of our brains at some time during the day. That Myth that there's 80% or whatever percent of your brain that you're not using is just completely, totally, absolutely wrong. We use all of it. We just don't use all of it at the same time. The problem is we use a lot of the parts of our brain that are not the parts that we should be using. So we use the parts of our brain that really bring us down that question. Everything that we are doing that are negative in lots of ways. So those are the parts just like your muscles, Those are the parts that get big and strong and. And that we are primarily going to. But those aren't the parts of our brains. Those aren't the parts of our minds that we want big and strong. We're exercising the parts of our mind and our brain that allow us to focus, that allow us to manage our attention, that allow us to manage our emotions and regulate our emotions, that allow us to move forward in life. A third thing that we're doing when we're meditating is we're changing our perspective on ourselves and on our world so that we can become more forgiving and grateful. I know that sounds fluffy and smarmy, but what I'm telling you is you have a really awful attitude to yourself. Probably more often than you would like to admit, probably. And you don't have to. You can cultivate a better attitude toward yourself. If you were someone else and you displayed your attitude toward you, you would not want to hang out with yourself, now, would you? And yet you're smushed into that body with yourself. And you have to now, how Much stress. How much dysfunction is that poor relationship with yourself adding to your world? So we're going to meditate because we're going to learn to be more forgiving and more grateful with ourselves, with our world. And the fourth thing that we're going to be doing is we're going to be cultivating detachment and persistence. Why is that important? Because so often you get so wrapped up in yourself that you can't step back. You know why? You need another person to sometimes give you perspective, because they can give you a little distance. If you have that detachment, you can start doing that for yourself. And that's a really cool thing. You can also practice what persistence really looks like, because we have a misunderstanding of what persistence actually looks like, and we don't live up to our idealized misunderstanding. We give up. We add a lot of stress. I know a lot of people with the way they treat themselves. If you treated anybody else the way you treat yourself, you'd have to live in a cave, and no one would want to come see you. I've been there. It's. I've been pretty awful to myself. We're all prone to this. It's part of being human. And we are cultivating that detachment and persistence. We think, oh, I should just know this because I'm human. Everything must be learned. And this is stuff that is so basic that we take it for granted that we should know it out of the box. And then we berate ourselves when we don't do it. Well, no, you got to learn it. You've got to practice it. And even if everything I've said in this episode is something that on a cognitive level, you know, knowing is not understanding or doing. You've got to do this stuff, and you've got to fail at this stuff, and you've got to be okay failing at this stuff, because that means that you're at your edge. That's where you're learning. You will fail, and then you'll succeed occasionally, and you get really excited, and you'll be, wow, this is cool. And then you'll fail again. You'll say, oh, that's dumb. No, you just do it again. You try it, you reflect on it. You consolidate. You learn something, you try it again, and eventually you become consistent at it. And eventually it gets so ingrained that it becomes a habit. But it's a process, and you got to do it, and you got to be willing to fail. Even at something that seems so basic as breathing correctly or being kinder to yourself, you still have to Practice. Everything must be learned. Meditation is training to be present and focused in your world because you really can't deliver until. Unless you are here. And you really can't deliver if your mind is going 20 different directions at the same time. You just can't. You are not doing anything as well as you think you are if you are living that way. And the rest of us notice, meditation changes our brain physiology. This is neuroplasticity. The brain is like a muscle. The brain learns and. And people say that, oh, I'm too old to learn anything new. Oh, you have neuroplasticity. And we've got tons and tons and tons of studies that you learn up until you die. If you say I can't learn anything new, what you're really saying is, I'm committing to relearning and reinforcing all the stuff I already think I know. But you could just as easily learn something new. I've got two metaphors about how our minds actually work that I want you to think about. I hope that this absolutely changes the way you think about thinking and feeling. The first one is we all have dispositions. We all have personalities. We all have assumptions that we carry into the world. Most of those are things that we haven't even reflected on. We just take them as real and that's what it is. Our dispositions are like a climate. And some of us are colder and we're living closer toward the poles, and some of us are hotter and we're living closer to the equator, and some of us are calmer and some of us are more excitable, some of us are stormy, and that's the climate. One given place doesn't have all, all of the possible weather at one time, but it does have certain patterns over time. And so each of us has a different disposition and that's our climate. The weather is what's going on in our minds right now. And just like the weather in the real world, wait five minutes and it'll change. Why is that important if we're really down and we're really grumpy and we're really angry and resentful and all of those things all the time? Well, that's the weather. That's not necessarily our climate. Because you have to work to keep an emotional state. You have to keep feeding it, you have to keep reinforcing it, you have to keep ruminating on it, you have to keep going, you have to keep hanging onto it. Nobody is naturally sad all the time. Nobody is naturally angry all the time. You Have a climate, and you have weather that moves through. So if you are always miserable, you are working at that. One of the things meditation allows us to do is to recognize those things and then let them go, let them pass, and then recognize the next thing that's coming through your internal weather. The way we think about this and the way this part of it is kind of more of a Buddhist metaphor. And it's the idea that behind all the clouds, behind all of the crazy weather events that are going on, there's still blue sky, there's still the sun. And the sun gives light, like we have cognition. It illuminates parts of the world as we think about them. And the sun has heat, like emotion. It gives color and flavor and texture to our world, and that allows us to perceive and experience the expanse of our minds, the light of cognition, the warmth of emotion, and this idea that behind all the clouds, the natural state is blue sky. If you are stuck in a particular emotional place that is negative, that is, you're stuck in a particular cognitive place that is judgmental in negative ways, those can be as the weather, and they can change. And the nice thing about meditation is you're learning to see the judgments you're making but not attached to them and say, oh, okay, that's a really miserable thought that just came through my mind. And then let it go and see what comes through next. Because the second metaphor that we're really interested in, it's a delightful one. It's another very old Buddhist idea. And it's the idea of the monkey mind. Our minds are like monkeys gambling all about and chittering and into everything. And that's our natural state. It's not just one monkey. We're actually a barrel of monkeys. So you can't grab a monkey and stop it, can you? You grab the monkey, the monkey fights back. Your thoughts and your feelings and your attention are bonkers going all around. The way to get your monkeys to work with you is not to force them. Focus is not about force. Focus is about acceptance. It's like, oh, okay, this thought just came across my mind. Okay, you accept it, you acknowledge it, and then you gently move your focus back to where you want it to be. And then, oh, something else comes along, and you acknowledge it and you accept it, and then you gently move your focus back to where you want it to be. That's what focus is like. That's what it is. It's accepting, it's working within that the nature of being human. And the nature of being human is we're a bunch of cave monkeys. And that's okay. We're pretentious, uppity cave monkeys. And we can work with it, but we have to acknowledge it. We are always judging. That's natural. People say, don't judge, and it's like, no, no, no, no, that's the wrong attitude. We naturally judge. If we didn't judge, we wouldn't be alive. Because judgment is about movement and motivation. It's about getting us from one place to another toward things that we want, that we judge positively, away from things that we judge negatively. However, we don't always have to act on our judgments and we don't always have to accept our judgments. And we can always understand that we're not just making one judgment, we're making many different kinds of judgments. And we can choose which ones we accept and which ones we we acknowledge, but we don't follow. This is a crucially different way of thinking about living in your own mind. And through meditation, we can learn to practice. We can understand and experience our minds in the way they actually are. We have to work to stay in the darkness, hanging on to aging, resentments, slights, hurts. That's not natural. That's not the way our minds work. That's not the way the weather works. The other consequence of this, that's crucially important is that what we are looking for, that blue sky, that clear understanding of the world lit and warmed by positive emotions, is already there. We're not creating it. We're not searching for it somewhere else. We're discovering it inside. What we're really doing is building mental and emotional muscles. We're spending time with ourselves and learning who we actually are and that we are okay with all of our faults and foibles, we're still okay. Everybody has those deficiencies. We're human. We don't like to acknowledge our imperfections. We compare ourselves with our greater, although still incomplete knowledge and all of our understanding of our failures and our shortcomings. We compare that with the display behaviors of others, where they're on their game, where they're doing their best, where in our media saturated world, they've got a whole team of people behind them, making them look a particular way. And we will lose that comparison every time. And intellectually we may know that, but our inner cave child, our inner cave monkey doesn't. We have to learn to be more graceful and more forgiving of that inner chorus of primal creatures that we live with in our heads. And that's okay. And meditation provides us a set of Tools to begin that understanding and that negotiation. Meditation provides us with tools to exercise parts of our brains and our minds that we don't necessarily engage as often as we want, as often as we should. Those really beneficial parts, the parts that allow us to focus and accomplish, but that also allow us to truly relax and feel grateful and feel forgiving of ourselves and one another. Meditation allows us to change our perspective on ourselves and our world in those ways that are more gentle. We're awful rough on ourselves. We really are. [00:30:59] Speaker C: And the thing is, most of the. [00:31:01] Speaker B: Time, we don't even want to admit how awful we. We are to ourselves, really. We don't want to admit that if you were in a relationship with you, you would probably want a divorce. What kind of stress does that add to their lives? How often are you getting in your own way just because of that? On the other hand, if you just cut yourself a little bit of a break, allow yourself to breathe deeply and just be. How cool is that? What an amazing gift to give ourselves. That's why I start my day in that way, because I know I'm going to screw up plenty of times during the day. I'm going to start the day by spending a little time with myself and getting to understand myself and knowing what's going on in my weird, dysfunctional carcass every morning. So I know what I have to work with so that I can later on, instead of being frustrated, I can be more graceful toward myself. And we are learning this stuff. We're practicing meditation because we're cultivating our detachment. A little bit of distance. You can look at somebody else having a massive amount of problems, and you can say that there's messed up, that there is, and you know it is. But when you are doing the same thing, you can't provide that detachment for yourself and say that there's messed up. I should be doing this instead because you get all wrapped up and in your own way. Right through meditation, we're developing the skills and the observation and the attention and the focus and the distance that allows us to do that. We're also learning what persistence actually looks like. Persistence doesn't look like laser focus. Laser focus is an illusion. And yeah, we can get there. You know, most of the time. Persistence, focus, resilience, which is such a big buzzword right now, is about seeing the negative, acknowledging it, allowing it to exist, and then moving your focus back to the way forward. We don't naturally do any of these things. We have to practice it. We have to practice it. We have to Fail, we have to come back to it. We have to succeed and then fail again. And that's okay. Meditation is really simple in the knowing of it, but it's difficult in the doing. It's difficult because working harder at it defeats the purpose of the activity. The harder you work, the worse it's going to happen. Allowing yourself to learn, to let go and experience and acknowledge and keep persisting is a completely different skill set that most of us have never had. And I can guarantee if you practice this, you will not only be a better person in the world, you'll be a better parent, you'll be a better boss or coworker, you'll be a better friend. Because not only is your mind filled with a bunch of little cavorting primal monkeys, everybody else is, too. One of the other things that I do every day, many times a day, usually, is I practice what I just call a mindful minute. Feeling a little stressed, feeling a little unfocused feeling, feeling a little unproductive, feeling. Maybe negative, maybe I'm angry or frustrated or sad. Any of those things. I'm going to pause, and I can do this anywhere, really. The only thing is you probably want your back to be relatively straight so that your breath is unimpeded. You want these clear, slow breaths. So what we're going to do then is we're going to pause and let the focus of your eyes go a little soft, kind of staring off into the middle distance. Nothing is forced, nothing is difficult or hard or effortful. Relax. Let your eyes relax. You'll see the world go a little soft. And then take a deep breath in through your nose, out through your mouth. Doesn't have to be. I mean, a lot of us have respiratory issues that we're dealing with. Goodness knows that I have a set of allergies for every time of the year. So sometimes I can't do it that way. Sometimes I have to do it through my mouth. But you breathe in, and it's as deep as you can comfortably breathe and let the breath fill your chest cavity and really feel the experience of the breath. And then slowly release and then close your eyes. Now, it'll probably take five or six breaths to do a mindful minute. On your first breath, you're going to be still. You're going to follow the breath into your body, let it get big, and then release it. And then as you do that, let your awareness slip inside your head. What are you thinking? What are you feeling? Don't attach to any of it. Don't grasp onto it. Just observe it. Say, oh yeah, that's nice, and let it go. Because you want to observe the transient nature of your mind. Breathe. And each time you take that breath, allow a little more of what you're sensing from the outside world to come into focus. By the time you get to the end of that fifth or sixth breath, you'll find that you're much calmer, you'll find that you're more focused, you'll find that you feel better about yourself and your world, and you are more dialed in to what's happening, and you are more dialed into this moment, this place in your life. It's just like dialing any other skill in. So give it a few days, a few weeks, and just try it. We all have challenges. Mine is multiple sclerosis. We each have this one life, and we didn't choose to be saddled with chronic illness. But there's a better way. So I choose to just jump. And you can too. It's your life. Live it well. Justjump life. [00:37:41] Speaker A: It's the youe Life Lived well podcast. Don't forget to like, share and subscribe. [00:37:50] Speaker C: We started this episode talking about attention. How we lose it, how we take it for granted, and how in many ways, it defines our experience of life. Because where your attention goes, your experience follows. And let's be real, most of us are not in control of our attention. In fact, I'll bet you feel at the mercy of an attention you just can't seem to tame most of the time. And that can set off a discouraging cycle that you can't escape. Attention wanders. You feel guilty. You get angry and frustrated. You vow to do better. You fail your lofty goal again, and the cycle repeats. You just end up feeling worthless. You're locked into a ruminating cycle. The only way to break it is to extend yourself some grace. Be kinder to yourself. Accept that a lot of failure must happen at the edge of learning. That's a sign you're in the right place, learning the right things. And the difficulty here is not in knowing about it. The knowing here is easy. I just explained it to you in well under an hour. The difficulty is in practicing the skill over and over. So it becomes second nature. You must accept this is not easy. We live in a world others designed to pull us in a thousand directions of their choosing, not ours, keeping us reactive, distracted and exhausted. Our thoughts jump from past regrets to future worries, from emails to social media to the thing we forgot to do three days ago. And all the while Our one precious real life is happening right here in the present, and we're missing it. This is where mindfulness is crucial. Mindfulness isn't about controlling every thought. It's not about forcing calm or achieving some enlightened state of being. It's about awareness. It's about noticing where your attention is, learning to recognize when it's been hijacked, and building the ability to bring it back to your chosen focus again and again with patience and kindness and grace. And the best way to train that skill? Meditation. Meditation isn't about emptying your mind. It's not about achieving some blissful, transcendent state where nothing bothers you. Can you work toward those goals through meditation? [00:40:08] Speaker B: Sure. [00:40:08] Speaker C: It's a tool. We lift weights so we have strong muscles that will do the work of a day without failing us. We run or swim or row so we can build the endurance to keep up with a life full of experiences that don't exhaust us. Meditation is training for our minds. It's training for our attentions, that one cognitive resource we must have as a foundation for everything else. And like our muscles or our aerobic fitness, we can do a lot of things through attention. We need it to think our way through difficult problems. We must actively be involved in the world if we want to create beautiful memories. And we should be demonstrably present for others if we want to build valuable relationships. And no matter how experienced we are, we must always make time to keep drilling the fundamentals so that we're doing the right things by default. It's all about practice. It's all about building the cognitive strength to hold your focus, regulate your emotions, and reclaim your experience from autopilot. Think of it as a workout for your brain. The first time you try it, it won't feel natural. Your mind will wander, you'll feel restless, and you might even feel like you're bad at meditating. But here's the truth. The moment you notice your mind has wandered and bring it back. That's the workout. That's the skill you're building. That's why you'll suck for a while. Because this is the difficult purpose you must build toward over time. This repetition rewires your brain. Research shows that consistent meditation improves focus, emotional regulation, stress, resilience, and even changes the physical structure of the brain. It strengthens the parts that help us stay present, respond rather than react, and experience life with more clarity and intention. And if you live with chronic illness, stress, or ongoing uncertainty, these skills are even more valuable. Meditation won't make life Perfect, but it can help it become more manageable. Navigating your challenges with a little more space, a little more grace, and a little less overwhelm. So what are your key takeaways from today? 1. Your attention is your most valuable resource. Where it goes, your experience, and therefore your whole life follows. 2. You are not at the mercy of your attention. You can train it, direct it and reclaim it. But it takes patience and humility. 3. Mindfulness is about awareness, not perfection. You won't stop your thoughts. You'll learn to recognize them and redirect your attention. 4. Meditation is the gem for your mind. It strengthens your ability to focus, regulate emotions and respond with intention. 5. The goal is not to do it right. The work is in the returning. Every time you bring your attention back, you're building the skill. 6. Small, consistent effort leads to big change. You won't feel the effects overnight, but over time, the impact is real. Now, today we've talked about why meditation matters, but next time we're going deeper into how to actually do it. In part two, we'll break down specific meditation techniques, from breath counting to visualization to body scans, and talk about what that research actually says about their benefits. But just as important, we're going to talk about the real challenges of meditation. Because it's not always easy. It can feel frustrating, uncomfortable, even discouraging at times. Some people even have negative experiences with it. We're going to explore why that happens and how to make meditation work for you so it becomes a tool, not another source of stress or failure. Because this is not about forcing yourself into some rigid practice. It's about finding an approach that fits your mind, your life and your needs. Stick with me and tune in for the follow up episode. This really is life changing stuff and and we're just getting started. So until next time, go forth, be well, do well, and do good. [00:44:33] Speaker A: If you've enjoyed today's topic and want to join the conversation with Dr. Kevin Payne, find your life lived well on all of your favorite social media sites, Patreon and of course yourlifelivedwell.co sa.