Ep. 61 - The Currency of Your Attention - How Paying Attention Can Change Everything with Kathy Washburn

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Your attention is your most valuable currency and much of it is being spent for you. Kathy shows how daily attention is the real engine of love, integrity, and connection, drawing on Iris Murdoch, Mary Pipher, and the modern attention economy to reveal why scattered focus breeds shame and disconnection. You will learn a five day Values Discovery practice so your time, energy, money, and attention align with what matters most, plus simple ways to give undivided presence that transforms relationships. 

Topics Discussed:

• Attention is love. What you choose to notice and nourish becomes your life
• The world is engineered to steal your focus. Reclaim your attention to reclaim your values
• We are what we pay attention to. Alignment starts with naming what you truly stand for
• Presence beats performance. Fifteen minutes of undivided attention can transform a relationship
• Values direct the spend. Time, energy, money, and attention flow where values are clear

View extended shownotes here

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Transcript

 Ep. 61 - The Currency of Your Attention - How Paying Attention Can Change Everything with Kathy Washburn

Ep. 61 - The Currency of Your Attention - How Paying Attention Can Change Everything with Kathy Washburn

[00:00:00] ​

[00:00:36] Introduction and Today's Question

[00:00:36] Kathy Washburn: Hello, beautiful humans and welcome back to the Self Investment Project. I'm Kathy Washburn, and today we're gonna start with a question, how do you attend to people? Just sit with that for a second. How do you pay your attention to others? Maybe even more importantly, how do [00:01:00] you pay attention to yourself?

[00:01:03] The Importance of Attention

[00:01:03] Kathy Washburn: Today's episode is the final of a three solo series, and it's about something that is really close to my heart lately. After reading so much about our youth's emotional health, there was a big summit locally here at Dartmouth College. And it's really got me thinking. The topic for the most part of this podcast is about morality, which I know might sound heavy or philosophical, but stay with me because this is actually about the most practical everyday thing in the world.

[00:01:39] It's about where you're spending the currency of your attention, and for those of us spinning in this fast-paced world. Which I think I can say is all of us, this might be one of the most revolutionary questions we can ever ask ourselves. [00:02:00] How do I attend to people? 

[00:02:03] A Personal Story of Attention

[00:02:03] Kathy Washburn: Me being honest, this noodling actually started years ago, a couple of years ago, while I was on the Dartmouth coach taking a bus to uh, Logan Airport. And you know, when you're traveling, there's this kind of like, moment where you just escape all else. It's, it's a invitation to just be. And in this moment I was kind of watching the landscape blur past the window. Half in my thoughts, half listening to an audio book that was David Brooks reading his book, how to Know a Person, the Art of Seeing others Deeply and being deeply Seen.

[00:02:48] He was reading to me. I actually love David Brooks' voice and then he actually said something that made me hit the pause, [00:03:00] rewind, play sequence several times. He was introducing a philosopher named Iris Murdoch and her work on morality. And Murdoch tells us that morality isn't some big dramatic thing that happens in moments of crisis.

[00:03:19] It's not about the grand gestures or the life or death decisions. Morality, she says, is mostly about how you pay attention to others. It happens continuously throughout the day, even during the seemingly uneventful and everyday moments. The immoral act, according to Murdoch is the inability to see other people correctly.

[00:03:49] Even just saying that gives me the chills, the inability to see other people correctly. To look at another [00:04:00] human with, and I love this phrase, patient and discerning regard that Murdoch tells us is moral behavior. So I'm sitting here on the bus, there on the bus rain sliding across the windows, and I'm asking myself, huh, how do I attend to, to people?

[00:04:23] How do I really pay attention and what do I really pay attention to? And for some crazy reason I don't quite understand, my brain took me back to a really vivid moment from years earlier. Almost 30 years earlier, like 26 years earlier, it was a moment that honestly I'd stuffed away as a time that I was doing a really crappy job at being enough, I was trying to be a really good [00:05:00] employee.

[00:05:00] I was trying to be a really good mom. But now sitting on that bus, I was seeing it differently. So let me take you back to that WTF moment. I was 33 years old and my sons were two and almost four. I was working full-time at a company. I'd helped start and I was wearing all the hats. Always busy. You know the drill, right?

[00:05:26] My husband was traveling for work and he was on another trip. Now some people were running on Dunking, that's Dunking Donuts for those of you not in the United States. I was running on this need to be needed. This not only need to be needed, but I needed to be a 10 out of 10 and that need to be needed.

[00:05:50] I was unable to say no, unable to speak up for myself and I would do anything, anything to avoid conflict. These behavioral [00:06:00] patterns that, by the way, had served me really well up to that point, or at least I thought they had weren't serving me at all from the outside. I was killing it, doing it all, eating whatever anyone put in front of me, metaphorically speaking.

[00:06:15] But having children was challenging me in new ways. I felt like I had to keep doing it all, but the squeeze was coming from these fleeting little humans that I loved to the end of the earth. They relied on me to attend to them, and I was doing a really shitty job at it. I felt like I was failing. Then it happened.

[00:06:47] My oldest son w woke with a fever, which meant I couldn't bring either of them to daycare, so I had to stay home. It just happened to be quarter end at work, and that was [00:07:00] a really busy time at my company, and there were a lot of things that needed my attention. So I had to work from home. This was way before working from home was cool.

[00:07:12] Okay. My younger son, son went down for a nap and my older son, the one not feeling well, was fussy and inconsolable. I tried to work with him, snuggled on my lap, but he was not having it and we were both really frustrated. I was watching the clock, doing the mental jujitsu and feeling that familiar squeeze of there is a no possible way.

[00:07:37] I'm gonna get all this done. Then something shifted. I made a decision. I decided to focus my undivided attention on my son for 15 minutes, just 15, after which I told him he could watch an episode of Wallace and Grommet so that I could work. [00:08:00] I noted the time and I turned my full attention to my son. I did not, and I repeat, did not divert my attention for a whole 15 minutes.

[00:08:15] Now, I wanna be honest with you, part of me is proud of this but part of me is absolutely not proud at all. Because it took me being at the end of my rope to give my own child 15 minutes of undivided attention. And by the way, this was before cell phones. So grace upon grace upon grace to anybody listening to this that you have diversions, which include that metal thing that we carry around with us.

[00:08:49] Here's what happened, and it was remarkable. My son was. Thrilled, [00:09:00] like generally delighted for this one-on-one time with his mom. We built a block road together. We zoomed his Matchbox cars, matchbox cars, all along it. He told me to follow him, so I followed him, his and his car, and we circled around and around the living room and when the 15 minutes were up.

[00:09:21] He happily put his cars to sleep and crawled in onto the couch where Wallace and grommet rocked him to sleep. And I just sat, sat there thinking, WTF what just happened? There was peace in that moment. And I actually didn't know what to do with it. I mean, wow, that slap of reality that made me realize I barely allowed myself to pay attention, to pay undivided, fully attentive attention to these [00:10:00] sacred little humans.

[00:10:04] To any of the sacred humans in my life, including my husband, including myself, though I didn't get that part, then permission to be human. I was constantly busy trying to do it all, trying to be a 10 outta 10 at everything. And for the love of Pete, trying not to truck it up. I felt so ashamed of myself in that moment, and at the very same time, I was gobsmacked at what 15 minutes of untethered attention could actually do for another human, or both humans actually.

[00:10:46] Okay, so you're still with me. Let's get back on the bus. I was watching the rain transition to snow, thinking about how many. Uneventful and everyday moments [00:11:00] I'd thrown away because of the currency of my attention was being squandered on things I did not value. Tears slid down my face, wishing for a chance to start all over and rewrite an ending or two and attend differently.

[00:11:21] Especially on those little boys who are now big men. In fact, one of them, the older one is turning 30 next week. Dang, that memory made my heart heavy. And then David Brooks' voice came back sharing wisdom from an interview that he did with author and therapist, Mary Piper. She said that being a therapist is less about providing solutions for people and more a way of paying attention, which, and listen to this is the purest form of [00:12:00] love.

[00:12:01] Paying attention is the purest form of love. Dang. Take a hot second and let that sink in. So here's where it gets even more interesting. 

[00:12:19] The Economy of Attention

[00:12:19] Kathy Washburn: We're gonna talk about the economy of attention. You know me. The investment of self, the economy of attention. But honestly, when I started researching this and, and found this information, it was.

[00:12:34] Quite astonishing. So back in 1997, just a few years before my WTF moment with my son, there was this technology writer named Michael Gold Haber, who predicted that people's attention would become the most valuable currency. He envisioned a world where attention [00:13:00] would supplant money as the dominant currency.

[00:13:03] And if you had enough attention, he said, you can get anything you want. He was right, wasn't he? Advertising caught up with the trade, social media, algorithms, notification. Everything is designed to capture and hold our attention, hold our attention, pull it away from what it is we truly value to be seen, to be connected, to feel loved.

[00:13:37] And by the way, our attention is limited. According to current research, the average human attention span is around eight seconds. Eight seconds. These increased digital distractions, screen time, and the sheer amount of information coming at us all contributes to this [00:14:00] scattering of our most precious resource, and it is scattered.

[00:14:06] This is my experience and the experience of so many of my clients. We're pulled in so many directions and we're trying to be a 10, outta 10 in all of them, but we're doing it basically with our blindfolded and our hands tied behind our back. So many competing responsibilities for our attention that we lose touch with what is truly important.

[00:14:34] That was my awareness that day in 1999. And I can honestly viscerally feel that shift that was happening, but I just didn't know what to do about it. But I see now that the truth of the matter is we are what we pay attention to. So to counter this, pull [00:15:00] away from what's important, one of the most powerful practices that I do with clients and one that I return to myself on a regular basis annually, if not more often, is called values discovery.

[00:15:16] Your values are the foundation for an authentic and purposeful life. And here's the kicker. Most of us live misaligned from our own personal values, and for many of us, and I am raising my hand high here, we've built our entire identity around. Other people's values, knowingly or unknowingly, it really doesn't matter.

[00:15:48] But doing so means that we spend the currency of our attention on somebody else's priorities, somebody else's expectations, while our [00:16:00] own values gathered dust in some forgotten corner of ourselves. But this can be fixed. Chin up people. There's hope. Alexander Hamilton once said, if you don't stand for something, you will fall for anything.

[00:16:18] So the importance of your values is that they let you know what to stand for. They know. They let you know what you stand for. When you know your values, it allows you to fall only for the things that align with your deepest held. Truths. When you know your personal values, you can choose to spend your precious resources, which is your time, your energy, your money, and your attention on what is truly important.

[00:16:53] Values Discovery Practice

[00:16:53] Kathy Washburn: So I'm gonna walk you through the values discovery five day practice that I have [00:17:00] witnessed and experienced myself change everything. So here's what you're gonna need. You're gonna need. A pretty big list of values. I like to combine James Clear's list with Brene Brown's list. That's a pretty powerful combo, right?

[00:17:20] You can find both of these lists online. Just Google James Clear Values List and Brene Brown, dare to Lead Values. And you can also, I think Brene Brown's dare to Lead Values has some. Blank spaces, so you can add some of your own, but have that list I think combined, and I add even more of that for my clients.

[00:17:43] But if you'll probably have about 50 to start with, maybe even more. This practice is meant to take five to 10 minutes each day. And I want you to start each session with a few deep breaths. What I call a sense [00:18:00] drench. You can take 90 seconds, just focus on what you're hearing, focus on the rise and fall of your breath.

[00:18:12] Focus on. Your touch, maybe connect your thumb and your forefinger and make some circles so slowly, so exquisitely that you begin to discern your own unique, beautiful fingerprint. So that's when once you start there, giving yourself that 90 seconds sense, drench just focusing on your senses. You can do it with your vision, your hearing, your touch, your breath.

[00:18:50] And then on that first day, I want you to look at the list and just circle any value that resonates with you. Don't think too hard about it. [00:19:00] If judgment comes in, do another 92nd cents drench. But I just want you to circle what pulls at you. It might be like you feel like you're circling every, every one or every fourth one.

[00:19:12] It doesn't matter. Just make a circle. On day two, you're gonna only look at the values that you've circled, and if they still run resonate, you're gonna circle them again. If they don't, you're just gonna cross them out. The goal here is start to cull the list On day three, you're gonna look only at the values that you double circled.

[00:19:40] Circle them again if they resonate. And go back and x out the ones that don't have three circles. I have one client that did this with different colors. She liked the rainbow effect, but the idea is to keep culling. So on day four, yep, you guessed it. You're gonna look at your triple [00:20:00] circle and highlight.

[00:20:02] Now you're gonna cull it down to a list of 10. You're gonna transfer those 10 to a separate piece of paper. Now you might recognize a couple of things. One, you might have, words that mean essentially the same thing. So there might be a value of trust and there might be a value of honesty. So it's really for you to discern what one of those might resonate more for you, or you wanna pop those words into a thesaurus, and maybe there's another word that's not even on your values list.

[00:20:39] So this is. Day four is a moment to be a little more intentional. You're going to hone in on those 10. In day five, you're gonna list, look at your list of 10 and you're gonna pull out the five that really speak to you. Write them on a separate piece of paper. I write them on a [00:21:00] sticky note. Or you take a photo of them, make them the wallpaper on your phone, stick them to your refrigerator or your bathroom mirror, or your your laptop screen and.

[00:21:11] Just spend the next couple of days looking at them. Notice how they make you feel. If they don't completely jazz you, if they don't light something up inside of you, go back, switch them up. Use the thesaurus. The goal is to get five that absolutely rock you. The five values that are yours, not your mother's, not your partners, not your bosses.

[00:21:37] They're yours. Now you have an awareness of your personal values, and here's what I want you to do. I want you to hold them sacred, spend your attention on them, spend your resources in service of them. [00:22:00]

[00:22:00] Reflecting on Personal Values

[00:22:00] Kathy Washburn: I'm gonna give you some questions to reflect on. You'll, you can find these in the show notes also. You don't need to answer them right now, and you don't have to jot them down.

[00:22:10] I just want them to percolate. Can you think of a moment in your life when you felt particularly aligned or misaligned with one of those values? happened during that time?

[00:22:27] How do your personal values influence the decisions that you make in your daily life? Or maybe a better question is how do you want them to,

[00:22:39] how do you want your values to shape the way that you interact with others?

[00:22:44] Are there any values that you wanna bring more into your relationships with family, friends, colleagues?

[00:22:51] What challenges do you face in practicing your values consistently?

[00:22:57] How do your values contribute to your [00:23:00] sense of identity and self-worth?

[00:23:03] And finally, what steps can you take to live more fully in alignment with your values? Just one step, one small step. And it might just be that you wrote them on a sticky note and you stuck them on your computer screen. I'm looking at mine right here. Trust, connection, discipline, vibrancy. Leadership, I would probably adjust that in this moment to self-leadership.

[00:23:33] So hamer's research in 1997 was fortuitous. I mean, our attention is so rich. It is such a strong currency. It is the gateway to flow in life.

[00:23:50] To stop and pay full attention. And aligning with what you value helps you adapt as things [00:24:00] change, and then you get to change with them instead of fighting them. When you pay attention to what is important in this precious moment, you might notice that you really are. Digging what you're doing. It's kind of crazy for me, and I had one client recently say to me, God, it feels so freeing, and you might even experience a sense of joy.

[00:24:24] I wanna leave you with this one quote. This is from Bene Brown, because it speaks to the cost of not paying attention, especially in our relationships. Brene says, when the people we love or with whom we have a deep connection, stop caring. Stop paying attention, stop investing, and stop fighting for the relationship. Trust begins to slip away and hurt. Starts seeping in. Disengagement, triggers, shame, and our greatest fears.

[00:24:57] The fears of being abandoned, [00:25:00] unworthy, and unlovable. What can make this covert betrayal so much more dangerous than something like a lie or an affair, is that we can't point to the source of our pain. There is no event, no obvious evidence of brokenness. It can feel crazy making.

[00:25:21] I don't know about you, but I know that crazy making feeling.

[00:25:25] For those of us who have spent our lives attending to everyone else's while abandoning ourselves, that disengagement from ourselves and therefore fear in others who've been doing it to ourselves all along and again. Grace, compassion and permission to be human awareness is the most magical step in becoming a different version of ourselves, and I truly believe that there's So much beauty once that you [00:26:00] know your values, once you start spending the currency of your attention on what truly matters, you begin to engage with yourself. You begin to show up for yourself. You begin to invest in yourself, and that affects every human you get to influence. It's actually also my friends where the real transformation happens.

[00:26:26] So it is not in grand gestures, it is not in dramatic life overhauls, but in the everyday seemingly uneventful moments where you choose to pay attention, where you choose to align with your values, where you choose to invest in the I that you might have been neglecting.

[00:26:47] Final Thoughts and Invitation

[00:26:47] Kathy Washburn: So here's my invitation to you today.

[00:26:49] Try the values discovery practice this week. Give yourself those five to 10 minutes and see what rises to the surface. And then, and this is [00:27:00] probably the hardest part. Start spending your attention there. Start making small, tiny choices. Five minutes. Set your timer for 15 minutes with your child, your undivided attention coming from that place of value.

[00:27:16] Maybe it's not your child, maybe it's your spouse or your partner. Maybe it's 15 minutes of undivided attention with yourself or saying no to something that doesn't align with your values. That so that you can say yes to something that does whatever it is. Know that you're not just making a decision in that moment.

[00:27:36] You're casting a vote for the person that you're becoming. You're investing in yourself and that is always, always worth it. Thank you for being here today. Thank you for spending the currency of your attention on this conversation. I do not take your gift lightly. Until next time, keep investing in yourself.

[00:27:57] I wish you well. I. 

[00:27:59] ​