It’s never been easier to spend an entire day thinking about life without actually feeling connected to it.
We check the weather, our calendars, and our email. We schedule and reschedule appointments. We read headlines and flag articles to read later. We plan vacations, replay conversations, and worry about our families, communities, the country, and the world.
According to philosopher Agnes Callard, we humans are best at managing our attention in bottom-up ways, which means we’re good at focusing on whatever demands our attention. Because so much of modern life happens online, we’re constantly required to manage our attention in top-down ways.1
“We find ourselves constantly deciding how to manage our attention—whether to allow ourselves to get distracted by one thing or another—and feeling like we’re always letting ourselves get too distracted.
So instead of responding naturally to what’s happening around us, we’re constantly trying to manage our own attention—deciding what deserves it, fighting distractions, feeling guilty about where our minds wander.
This can lead us to navigate our lives in increasingly abstract ways. We become managers of our experience instead of participants in it.
This reminds me of similar language David Whyte used years ago when he observed that we spend astonishing amounts of time abstracting ourselves out of our bodies and out of our direct experience.2
Being lost in thought comes naturally to me. I’m a gifted worrier with big feelings and a creative imagination. I can walk through a park on a beautiful afternoon and realize halfway through that I’m completely focused on some worst-case-scenario fear playing out instead of feeling the breeze on my skin and listening to the sounds around me.
Luckily, after decades of relying on these default habits, I stumbled upon tools and strategies that help me decide where to allocate my attention. Using them takes effort—it’s always easier not to.
The goal isn’t to turn off your thoughts and feelings. It’s to become more interruptible by the reality playing out in and around you. Mindfulness isn't an escape from life. It's training to participate in it more fully.
While this might sound like it takes a lot of effort, it’s actually the opposite. It leads to a mode of attention you’ve experienced countless times—a gentle focus that psychologists call soft fascination.
Psychologist Netta Weinstein describes soft fascination as the gentle way our attention is naturally drawn into the present through our senses.3 Nature often evokes this state, but it isn’t limited to forests and hiking trails. The warmth of a coffee mug, the sound of rain, a grandchild’s laughter, the movement of sunlight across a wall, or the feeling of air on your skin can invite the same kind of effortless awareness.
It’s easier to access soft fascination on vacation. Away from our usual routine and responsibilities, our attention has permission to notice details it has never noticed before. I noticed this while spending time on a tiny island in Croatia a couple of weeks ago. My attention wandered to the play of sunlight on the Adriatic Sea, the sound of church bells, laughter, and singing, and the contrast between the warmth of the sun on my skin and the coolness of the shade.
While taking care of my grandchildren this week while their parents are away, I've noticed that soft fascination sometimes arrives effortlessly, and sometimes it's much harder to find. When the children are playing, sharing observations, or asking me to watch them draw or do somersaults, it’s effortless. But when they rail against a limit I set—one I know is reasonable—it becomes much harder to remember to notice the air on my skin or the other sounds around us.
Soft fascination isn't something you force. When it's available, enjoy it. When it isn't, your practice simply becomes responding to the moment you're in.
Being immersed in nature can make it easier to experience soft fascination, but we can learn to invite its ordinary magic into any circumstance. It requires curiosity, willingness, and the habit of practice.
Just like riding a bike, my talent for spinning out in anger, fear, sadness, embarrassment, or boredom comes naturally. Shifting my awareness to sensory details takes practice. I’m convinced I’ll be practicing for the rest of my life. As with physical exercise, we’re never done. And, as with physical exercise, the return on investment is feeling stronger, more flexible, and more alive.
Exercise
This guided exercise explores soft fascination by gently shifting your attention toward visual details, sounds, and body sensations that spark your interest. Rather than concentrating harder, you'll practice letting your senses naturally draw you back into the present.
Circumstances for learning this attention exercise
When ordinary life begins to feel too conceptual.
When you’re somewhere beautiful and don’t want to miss it.
When strong emotions make it difficult to notice anything except your thoughts.
