Good Morning Everyone!! Happy Friday!! Sisyphus’ boulder is atop the hill and we can rest. We’ve gone over a lot this week and hit the subject of attention from a lot of different angles. I’ve enjoyed it and I certainly hope you all enjoyed it as well. Today is gonna be about bringing everything together.

For our main course, we’re going to synthesize what we’ve learned from the Greeks, the Stoics, Augustine, Aquinas, Watts, and the Buddhists. Further, we’re going to tie in some modern psychology to bridge the ancient insight with contemporary science. To burn that off, we’re going to do a little visionary exercise. To finish off with our Book Nook, we’re going to read a line from William James’ Principles of Psychology.

I’m gonna try to keep this breakfast portioned so we can bring in the weekend faster. Pull up your seat, Thought Breakfast is served!

Plato and Aristotle showed us that attention is orientation. You position your attention on things that matter, and ultimately you will live a virtuous and meaningful life. This is the philosophy behind the saying, “When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.” The Stoics, on the other hand, showed us attention as a form of self-governance and moral perception (prosoche). This assigns a moral responsibility to what we attend to, asserting that if we don’t take care of where our attention is placed, then our natural dispositions will lead us down a vicious path. Augustine and Aquinas used attention as a magnifying glass and building block, respectively. Augustine showed us that reflecting on what consumes our attention reveals what we love. Aquinas put an Aristotelian spin on it, saying that attention first reveals what we love (Augustine), and then we can actively use it to orient ourselves toward the good (Aristotle). Finally, the Buddhists assert that attention is non-grasping presence. Alan Watts says that the more we try to take control of our attention, the more we lose it… for the hand can’t grasp itself.

So we got to see how attention looks through the lens of many different traditions, coming from radically different cultures and metaphysical beliefs. However, all of these modes of thought converged at one point: What we repeatedly attend to becomes the lens through which we experience life. Even though their explanations diverged from each other on the basis of the soul, virtue, desire, ego, non-self, etc… the practical observation was the same across the board.

Attention forms experience, which forms character, which predicts life trajectory.

Into the modern lens, psychology tells us that this is accurate. Cognitive psychology asserts that attention shapes perception. Selective attention determines which stimuli become “reality” to us. The concept of confirmation bias comes in here too; we only see what we look for. There’s even attention filtering, an idea from Broadbent and Treisman, which says the mind literally reinforces what it focuses on most. This mirrors the Greeks and Stoics.

Neuroscience tells us that sustained attention amplifies the emotional salience of an object. In other words, the more we attend to something, the easier it is to think about it. Even in CBT, changing your attention is a key tool in changing your emotional responses. Further, non-judgmental attention reduces anxiety and reactivity. This parallels perfectly with Buddhism and Watts.

Our attention also shapes our identity and behaviors. Habit loops, an idea recently popularized by James Clear in Atomic Habits, asserts that what we attend to ultimately becomes what we do. This aids the self-schema theory, which says identity is built through repeated patterns of attention. Neuroplasticity is literally attention rewiring the brain. This matches perfectly with Aristotle and Aquinas, and even Augustine.

So the ancient thinkers used many different avenues to come to the same conclusion: attention shapes the soul. Modern psych tells us that attention shapes the brain. At the end of the day, it’s the same insight in different languages.

Imagine your attention as a spotlight in a dark theater.

Whatever the spotlight hits becomes the entire scene.

Ask yourself: What scene have I been accidentally lighting up this week?

Then: What happens if I shift the spotlight 10 degrees? What do I see?

William James (the father of modern psychology) says in Principles of Psychology, “My experience is what I agree to attend to.”

With one line, he reframes:

Munch on that for today. It’s a lot to take in at once, but that’s what happens when you try to wrap a whole week into one Friday edition. Have a fantastic weekend. Rest, reset, and come back on Monday for a brand new menu full of Thought Breakfast!

Thank you for reading along with us today! If you enjoy this content, and want to start your days grounded in thought and mindfulness, I suggest you have a seat at our table! Smash that button below to check out more editions and subscribe!

Remember to stay mindful, smell the flowers, and take it easy.

Chef Ricky - Thought Breakfast