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gwunspoken
We know that now more than ever, there is a growing disconnection between parents and their teens, corporates and their employees, and human interactions in general.
This can cause stress, frustration and many arguments within families and the work environment.
gwunspoken looks at the challenges people of all ages have in their relationships with one another and provides experience and advice, allowing all parties to have a voice.... and feel heard.
Join us to hear corporates, parents, educators, teens and the latest advice of how we can in fact live the life we love, in making authentic interactions, because we know... authentic connection is everything.
gwunspoken
Finding Stillness in a System Built for Distraction
Ever feel like you're just not cut out for mindfulness? Like your wandering mind proves you're somehow failing at the whole concept? Take a deep breath – this episode is about to change how you see your mindfulness journey forever.
The truth is startling: your struggle isn't about discipline or personality. Research shows the average person's attention span has plummeted to just 47 seconds before switching tasks, with each interruption costing up to 23 minutes of focused thinking. We're attempting mindfulness in a world literally engineered to fracture our attention, where tech companies profit from your distraction and society rewards busyness as a status symbol.
Let's liberate mindfulness from its marketing. Forget the curated Instagram aesthetic of expensive yoga pants, whispery voices, and salt lamps. Real mindfulness isn't a performance – it's simply intentional attention. Walking mindfully, washing dishes with presence, or taking three deep breaths before checking emails all activate your prefrontal cortex, lower cortisol, and improve dopamine regulation just as effectively as formal meditation.
This episode offers practical strategies for thriving in our distraction-dominated world. Learn to redefine what counts as mindfulness, build micro-practices into daily transitions, and most importantly, laugh when it goes sideways. When your mind inevitably wanders, that moment of noticing and gently bringing it back IS the practice – it's not failure, it's a mental rep.
Ready to transform your relationship with mindfulness? Listen now and discover why you're not bad at mindfulness – you're just living in a very loud world and still showing up to try. That's not failure. That's commitment.
www.in8code.com
Welcome back to another edition of GW Unspoken, where we discuss stuff we don't typically talk about but probably should Look. We're in episode six in our mindfulness series. If you've been secretly thinking I'm just not good at this mindfulness thing, then guess what this episode is definitely for you, and you're probably not alone. I'm here to tell you. We love it. We love a little bit of sass and you're actually not bad at mindfulness. You just try and do it in a very loud world. So let's unpack that.
Speaker 1:So many of us are thinking that we're failing at mindfulness because we can't sit still, because our brains wander off like a dog with no leash. But here's the truth your struggle with mindfulness isn't about discipline or personality or even trauma whether that can play a role. It's about the environment you are in. We live in a world that's built to fracture your attention all the time. You've probably got notifications every 4.2 seconds, multiple screens open at once, and we live in a place not only in Australia but in the world where productivity culture rewards busyness over stillness. You heard someone say before you ask someone how busy they are, how are you going? And they go oh, I'm just so busy and it's like a status symbol right. So if you're struggling to be mindful, it's not because you're weak. It's probably because you're wired for survival in a system that thrives on your distraction. And, believe me, if you're someone who's on laptops with emails or screens, it's happening all the time. The tech companies are getting paid to distract you. So what does the science say? Let's look at this for a second, and I'm going to read this word for word here. A 2022 study in the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience showed that the average person's attention span has dropped to just 47 seconds before switching tasks, and every time we interrupt it, it takes up to 23 minutes to get back into actually focused thinking. So that's like losing your keys 17 times a day, except this time, it's your focus. So when you attempt mindfulness in this context, your brain is failing because it's protecting itself from overload.
Speaker 1:Here's another fun fact Mindfulness doesn't require silence. It doesn't require cross-legged sitting under a triangle. In fact, walking, meditation, doing dishes mindfully, drinking your coffee without checking your phone, walking your dog that all counts as mindfulness. So neurologically, it's still engaging your prefrontal cortex, which means that thinking part of your brain and for that to engage it means it lowers your cortisol, that stress response system and actually improves your dopamine regulation. So you're not being distracted all the time. Now, if you're out there thinking out there, listen to this with kids, you're probably thinking out there now going. Yeah, I can see kids getting distracted all the time, right? So let's bring it back a bit ironically. Let's have some focused attention on you. How are you going with yours? This podcast is about you thinking about how you're going with your mindfulness right now. So let's talk about the elephant in this salt lamp lit room. Here we go ready.
Speaker 1:Mindfulness has been marketed like a wellness performance. You've seen it. The curator's doing this. The $300 yoga pants, the slow whispery voices when the rain sounds in the background, those lovely mindfulness pictures on your TV and I suppose that has a lot of us you know, especially the busy people in the neuro-virgin, the parents, the trauma survivors.
Speaker 1:Feeling like mindfulness just isn't for us right, and that's BS. Mindfulness isn't a mood board, it's a moment of presence, any moment where you notice you're alive and breathing and you choose not to react to everything that's pulling at you. You don't need to look mindful, you need to practice noticing, noticing you're in a moment. So let me tell you what mindfulness has looked like for me this week? How about, number one, not yelling at the dog when he suddenly drips my boat cover off in time, about catching myself before snapping at someone who breathed wrong in my direction, maybe because I had a lack of sleep, or maybe taking three deaths deep breaths before opening my email inbox and then, when opening up, going, okay, I need three more deep breaths and then getting into it. So mindfulness doesn't make you enlightened, it makes you slightly less reactive and, man, we need that in a society these days, don't we? It actually makes you a little bit more grounded and definitely more self-aware and overall, that's the win. It's not a sudden feeling of, oh yes, I've done my deep breathing today, gary, and now I feel amazing. I'm going to do this every time I get distracted, those 17 times.
Speaker 1:It's not about that, it's that focus attention. So here's a bit of a plan, I suppose, in our distracting world. Here's how to stop thinking you're failing and making it work, because a lot of people do give up on mindfulness because they think, you know, it just doesn't work for me. I'm still stressed, I'm still worried, or, you know, I'm not that kind of person. So, number one redefine what really counts.
Speaker 1:So mindfulness is intentional attention. That's it. Walking, driving, sipping a cup of tea, no phone All that stuff counts as mindfulness. Me making a cup of coffee at 4.45 in the morning this morning and pouring it into the cup and just focusing on the heat, is it going to be the right taste? That's focused attention. Number two build it into transitions. So what was before walking out of your house today? Take a breath before you respond to something. Close your eyes, maybe for 10 seconds, between tasks, obviously, if you're not driving. Just try and do that. Just take 10 seconds and build it into a routine. You might just do that even three times a day. That's 30 seconds. Why not? What if it works? And also laugh when it goes sideways.
Speaker 1:I do that with the kids often when I was doing a life skills class and taking them out to this beautiful quad area we were at and they'd sit in circles or get them to move first and get into groups and have a bit of a laugh and giggle and get them to connect, sit down in the quad and then actually tell them to be still and it's very, very, very hard to get some like three or four students still and stereotypically it was boys still and when talking, some like three or four students still and statistically it was boys still and went and talked to them afterwards. Because you can't get people trying to practice mindfulness. But these boys and I don't think it's coincidence were massive gamers, massive gamers. So the don't means being dialed up. So when you get distracted and, believe me, your brain will start wondering when you're trying to do mindfulness, but it does gently pull it back and say, cool, okay, I noticed that that's the practice, that's the rep. You're not trying to control your mind, you're sort of building a relationship with it. So when you actually focus yourself, being distracted that's again, focus attention All you have to do is bring it back. Don't bag yourself and say, well, there you go, I'm not All right. So hopefully that's opened your brain to start trying something different, because the research has shown that mindfulness is so good for us in a heavily built society where we are distracted all the time, where we get praised for busyness, all right.
Speaker 1:So here's three prompts I'd like this week for you guys to write down. Number one when have you been too hard on yourself for failing at mindfulness and what could you do to redefine that? Instead, all right, what have you tried and said? This is just not me. This is not me. All right, write it down. Number two what external distractions are stealing your peace and how can you mute them, move or even manage one of them? All right, what's distracting you? And, last of all, what's one thing you do every day that you know you could turn into a mindfulness movement, even for 30 seconds.
Speaker 1:We talked about it. It's not sitting on a triangle and humming or having that background music of the rainfall in the forest. It's not about that. So what are some things you can actually think? Yeah, I'm taking three breaths before I drive in the car, or three breaths before my workout today, or before I meet the kids for breakfast this morning or dinner tonight. What's 30 seconds I can just have right now, because this is a reminder. My friend, this is it. You're not bad at mindfulness. You're just living in a very loud, very distracting world and still showing up to try, and that's not failure, that's actually commitment. So again, this podcast just doesn't talk about mindfulness. We actually practice it. We mess it up, we laugh along the way and I'll catch you next week, thank you.