Attention, Distraction and the Interior Life

Modern life fractures our attention, but the spiritual cost is far deeper than lost productivity — it’s the quiet erosion of the interior life. In this episode, we explore how distraction shapes the soul, why reclaiming attention is essential for holiness, and the simple practices that help us return to presence, prayer, and communion with God.

Transcript

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Welcome to Ordered Reality. This podcast explores the deeper patterns shaping our world through history, philosophy, and the moral framework of the Christian faith. In a culture driven by speed, noise, and constant reaction, this show takes a slower approach. Each episode examines a single idea truth, power, memory, responsibility, and asks how these principles shape both civilizations and the lives we live today. Because understanding reality clearly is the first step towards living faithfully within it. There's a war happening around you every single day. Not one fought with weapons or armies, but with notifications, noise, novelty, an endless digital tug of war. The battleground is your attention, and the cost of losing isn't simply wasted time. It's fragmentation of the interior life. Because whatever captures your attention shapes your desires. And whatever shapes your desires forms your soul. In today's world, distraction isn't an accident. It's an industry. We carry devices engineered to fracture our focus, to keep us reactive, overstimulated, constantly consuming. And over time, that internal fragmentation spills outwards into our relationships, our prayer life, our discipline, our sense of meaning and purpose. But what if attention is more than a mental skill? What if it's a spiritual posture? What if refusing distraction, even for a moment, is an act of resistance against the chaos trying to rule our interior world. In episode 11, we're stepping right into the heart of that fight. We're gonna explore the theology of attention, why distraction weakens the soul, how modern environment weaponizes interruption, and how reclaiming your attention becomes a path towards interior order, clarity, and peace. This is not a productivity episode, it's a formation episode. Because the state of your attention is the state of your interior life. Let's step right in. Hi, my name is Kellen. I'm your host. Welcome back to episode 11 of Ordered Reality. We're looking at attention, distraction, and the interior life today. I just want to say thank you for joining me again if you've made it this far. I appreciate you listening, taking the time to slow things down a little bit, think more critically, start to orient yourself more towards the moral good and the objective truth in the world rather than all of the worldly goods that are out there that we're constantly bombarded with every single day. I do apologize right out of the gates. I'm coming off a cold. Um, so I tried holding off on recording this for the longest time, but I also want to maintain the same weekly episode pace that we have without taking too much of a break, because I'm enjoying myself, and I hope you are too. So let's dive right in. So there's this idea that there's this war for attention. The war for attention is the war for the soul. The idea that attention is not neutral. What you give sustained attention to slowly forms your desires, habits, and interior world. Modern life fragments attention, making interior stillness rarely and costly. And I think you guys are gonna understand or at least get the idea of what I'm talking about when we live in such a fast-paced society that tells you if you slow down, if you stop, if you breathe, uh for even a moment you're wasting time, you're being unproductive, you're not um utilizing your time efficiently. I'm gonna try and change your mind on that today in the hopes that maybe we can start to slow things down a little bit, reorient ourselves to what's actually important. So, ultimately the war for attention is a war for the soul because modern algorithms and media target human consciousness. That steals time and energy necessary for deeper life, relationships, and spiritual growth. By engineering constant distraction and quick gratification, technology creates an addiction that fractures focus. Replacing mean of meaningful reflection with shallow, algorithmically driven consumption. It's essentially weaponizing one's attention against their own well-being. And it may come across as if I'm just trying to say that all technology is bad, it's pulling us away from what's really important. That's not the point I'm really trying to make with this entire episode. Um, but what I do want us to start thinking about is that we are so constantly bombarded by technology and information through these technologies that it can help distract us from the reality of what the foundation of life should all be about. And just being able to recognize that can help get you back on track to making sure that you are focusing on what's important in life, which is your your actual human relationships, not through a screen and your relationship with God. So, what we pay attention to on a daily basis, repeated over time, becomes what we love. When you focus or invest time into something, we're feeding it with our life energy, which eventually transforms interest into a deep-seated attachment or value. Think about it. The more you pour time and effort into something, the more you're gonna care about it or want it to mean something. We don't spend hours and hours a day doing something, uh, whether it be a hobby, a craft, our job, um, every single day to then turn around and say, you know what, it doesn't really matter because at the end of the day, we want it to matter. If we're gonna spend time on it, we want it to mean something, we want it to uh play an important factor in our life, and the more time and effort that we put into that, the more we're hoping that it is important and has an impact. Scientifically speaking, the more you focus your attention towards the moral good and objective truth, the more your brain will begin to build neural pathways to recognize this more easily. The same can be said for negative habits or actions. The brain's RAS or reticular activating system acts as a filter. When you focus on something, you tell your brain that it's important. Over time, your brain becomes more efficient at noticing that thing, making it a central part of your reality. Um, for example, so if you're consistently focusing on your phone instead of those around you or your relationships, you can literally rewire your brain to fix its attention on a device rather than the human relationships or people around you. You're essentially going to tell your brain that the phone is more important than the people. And you're gonna be continuously distracted because your brain is gonna be pulled towards the device because you're giving it your attention at all times over the relationships of the people around you. Your brain, without even thinking about it, and you may say outwardly, no, that's ridiculous. The people are way more important than my phone. But the reality is, is the actions you're showing don't reflect that. And your brain is literally rewiring itself to say, hey, if the phone's in the area, if I see the phone, if I think of the phone, that's going to take precedent over everything else. And that's kind of just science. I mean, you can kind of look that up and um just kind of see there there are several different uh researchers out there that believe that. Um also think intentional attention cultivates presence and love, whereas misplaced attention can cause addiction, emptiness, or spiritual unrest. In essence, attention is a limited resource, right? So realistically speaking, I can't pay attention to eight different things at once. At least not with the, you know, we we love to be a multitasking culture, and that's phenomenal. There are certain things that obviously we can do in conjunction with one another better than others, but the reality is I can't place 100% of my attention on more than one thing. Um, the level of attention I'm able to give to something is gonna differ based on how many things are going on and what's pulling my attention. So that's what I mean by attention is this limited resource, but it really does shape reality and experience. It cultivates presence and love, it dictates spiritual growth by flourishing when attention is directed towards positive spiritual pursuits and it determines value. Attention can determine your priorities and it shows what you believe is important. But like everything, attention is never neutral. It either brings you closer to building positive virtues or destructive vices, right? There's not a, you know, there's not a neutrality of attention. You're either moving one direction or the other. Modern life impacts our attention by significantly fragmenting it. There are studies that have shown that over the past few decades, most likely due to the constant information overload we've been experiencing on a daily basis, the attention span has actually shrunk from approximately two and a half minutes on average to just 45 seconds. That is an absolute absurd statistic that I wanted to share is that because we have technology, and while that is amazing and we have access to all this information, it's actually bouncing us around from storyline to tagline to headline to social media to all of these different things. And it's excuse me, it's training our brains to just get the instant gratification from whatever we're reading and move on. We're not diving in, we're not thinking more critically, we're just hit it and quit it, and we're moving on. And that has shrunk our attention spans. We're rewiring rewiring our brains to focus on something, and it's actually, on average, gone down from two and a half minutes to just 45 seconds, and that's within the span of just a few decades, I believe. The digital age has basically ushered in a constant technological uh distraction and also the ability to obtain those distractions willfully at any time. Modern life has also reduced our cognitive endurance, as quote, doom scrolling, you guys have heard me hit on that before, excuse me. Has taught our minds to be conditioned for immediate, shallow stimulation instead of focused, complex tasks. The modern age is literally requiring humans to prioritize our attention to rapid scanning and responsiveness rather than sustained focus over time or on deeper, more complex issues or life events. Our brains are being rewired to basically, like I said just a moment ago, that instead of we're focusing instead of sustained focus, we're just having these quick um prioritizing our immediate gratification responses and moving on rather than building those complex emotional connections or focus on a certain event or statistic or thing for more than uh just a short while. And that kind of leads us into this internal stillness has become an extreme challenge for people in today's society because we're forced to live in an informationally overloaded society that prioritizes rapid completion of tasks and constant movement over meditation, spiritual arrangement, and complex deep relationships. It is truly difficult to sit in silence and to allow your mind to just rest or meditate in this fast-paced world. Um, and I think a lot of times it's it's brought on with this sense of guilt that if I'm taking time to just sit in silence, even if it's five minutes, ten minutes at a time, it's this sense of guilt brought on that I'm not doing enough and I'm not getting enough done and I'm not uh being efficient or productive in society or for my family or for myself or anything that's going on. And the reality is we need that, we need that internal stillness to help not just bring us more spiritually closer to God, but also to help calm ourselves, uh our brains from being constantly bombarded with information. So we're gonna kind of shift a little bit of focus from attention to distraction. Um, distraction isn't just a bad habit, it's kind of a spiritual condition, or is a spiritual condition. Um, looking at it, the saints, the desert fathers, and Catholic tradition all teach that noise and distraction pulls us away from communion with God. Modern distractions are simply the newest form of an ancient spiritual battle. Distraction acts as this kind of pulling apart of the soul, drawing attention away from God, purpose, and presence towards fleeting worldly desires. And distractions don't have to be inherently bad things. Um, good things, such as work or entertainment, can also take precedence over the best things, which is connection with God or others. It's those relationships we build. I mean, how often do we get caught up in the idea that one task at work has to be finished before family time, or I have to get this done, I have to meet this deadline before I spend time with the kids, or before I cultivate uh my relationship with my wife or my spouse or my girlfriend or boyfriend, or that we need to be profitable over our relationships with God. You know, I need to take that overtime shift because we need more money rather than um spending the day with family or growing closer to God. Um, we just live in this society that prioritizes those things or tells us to. And the hard part is with the structure we do have set up, it's almost expected. You know, if you're not doing more, or if you're not taking the overtime shift, or if you're not doing these things, well, how are you gonna get um further along in your career? How are you gonna show that you actually care? And the reality is, is at home, that's the important stuff. The loss of presence itself can kind of hold bad habits, or uh or can be about productivity loss. A spiritual condition of distraction is marked by the inability to be fully present with God, oneself, or others in the current moment. I think the easiest example here is pulled off, uh, is pulled by the TV or cell phone, even when we know we should be present with God or family first, right? It's just the external distraction of you know paying attention to worldly desires instead of cultivating a relationship with God or our family. It's important to realize that distraction is the ultimate pull uh from what is godly and what's Christ's teachings are towards, uh basically going towards worldly fleeting pleasures, kind of just what I stated before. It's a state where we become so consumed by the noise of the world that we neglect our relationship with God. Some of the greatest early Christian teachings on distraction come from the desert fathers and mothers, who withdrew from society primarily in the third and fourth centuries AD in order to escape spiritual mediocrity. They sought this union with God in the quiet of the desert and in the silence of their hearts. These individuals took distraction from not just being external factors, but internal as well. The idea that guarding every thought that came to mind and making a determination as to keep it or expel it. The idea that, and think about it like this, right? Whenever you try and even just have a calm, peaceful moment in your mind, do you ever feel like your mind is wandering? Do you ever feel like you're all of a sudden just singing a song in your head when you're trying to remain still and remain quiet? It's that whole idea that you make the determination mentally as to what can enter your mind at a given time and determining whether you should keep it or get rid of it. The famous rule as, quote, using your cell as your teacher, end quote, or forcing oneself to tackle their inner thoughts or demons without the numbing effect of busyness or entertainment. The reality is they were essentially using meditation as a way to get closer to God and meditating through prayer. We received short repetitive prayer from the Desert Fathers and Mothers, most notably Jesus' prayer, which is Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me. And you say that in your mind over and over and over again, repeat it, and let that be the only thought that comes into your mind and the only words that leave your mouth. And you practice this prayer over and over and over again, which intended to create this internal stillness, freeing oneself from distraction. We can use these teachings to help orient our own minds in today's modern world. Their strategies still remain as one of the best ways to ground ourselves in our relationship to God. Distraction is deeper than just diverting our attention. It takes us away from what truly matters between our relationship to God and people around us. Excuse me, I'm so sorry if I'm just constantly trying to clear my throat. Um again, this cold is kicking my booty. Um, so we're moving on from we talked about attention and distractions. So let's talk about um why you can't build an interior life without guarding your inputs. Your phone, your social media patterns, your background entertainment, and even your mental clutter shape the capacity of your soul to pray, listen, and discern. The reality is what we choose to focus our attention on, or the distractions we allow ourselves to succumb to can impact our ability to build interior life. If we aren't cognizant of what we give our attention to or what we are truly distracted by, we will struggle to build a life focused on God andor what truly matters in life, such as our relationships with our loved ones. But what is interior life? You guys are probably saying, I don't really understand what that means. What does interior life mean? Simply put, interior life is a state of peace, self-awareness, and mental clarity. And why can't we build it without guarding our inputs? Well, our minds are shaped by what we consume. In other episodes, we've already talked about how your brain forms these new neurological connections through the habit-building practices you choose to do. If we are unaware of what we are consumed by, we are allowing uh it to shape, uh we are allowing the world, excuse me, to shape our innermost self into what they want us to become, not what God intended for us. And if we aren't willing to safeguard our innermost self, we allow ourselves to become overrun with information and willing to believe anything we hear or see without basing it off of objective truth or towards the moral good. Unchecked inputs can bring these states of fear and dread into the body and soul. And this doomsday overwhelm is, in a sense, a worldly projection onto your inner self. But you have the power to work on gatekeeping what you allow into your mind and your soul. The best example I can kind of give of this is kind of like treating your mind like a garden. You get to choose what you want to plant, you have to tend to it, pay attention to it, feed it, nurture it, water it in order to obtain the fruits of your labor and to grow good crops. But think about that side distraction as the weeds that want to invade and overwhelm your garden. When this happens, what should we do? Well, when there are weeds in our garden that we don't want that we're worried about harming the crops that we're trying to grow or the fruits that we're trying to grow, we root those out and we protect what is the objective truth and morally good. We safeguard our garden. That's like that is essentially what we're doing here when we're building our interior life. We get to choose what we consume and what we bring into our life, what we allow to distract us, what we choose to give our attention to, and we nurture it. And it could be good things and it could be bad things that overrun. And if we let the weeds overrun the garden, we're gonna have a hard time building that relationship with God. We're gonna have a hard time giving our attention to our family and our loved ones, a hard time avoiding the distractions. The way to start reclaiming your interior life is by beginning to have a small conversation with God on a daily basis. Choosing silence when we could choose stimulation helps regulate your mind, soul, and body, calming oneself and refocusing on what truly matters, and disregarding the temptations of what this world has to offer versus what God has to offer. It could be as simple as dedicating the first few minutes to God every morning before you even look at your phone, before you even think about the tasks of the day, silence before prayer, or even just trying to have a conversation with God in your mind to separate yourself from distraction and the noise of daily life. Trust me, I understand it's gonna be so, so hard. It's so, so hard even for me, because your life just gets bombarded with things you have to do between work, at home life, the kids, this the spouse, projects around the house. It's so hard. But little by little, we can all reclaim our interior life, and it only takes a few minutes every single day. And we would all be kidding ourselves if we said we don't have five minutes for God every single day because He has everything for us. And we can give him five minutes of internal peace. So we talked about building on this interior life idea. So, kind of again, how do we get there? And attention training is kind of like holiness training. Practices like uh Lectiodemina and silence, fasting from screens, and daily attention audits retrain your fragmented mind towards presence, contemplation, and obedience to God. I think the best part of this is training yourself to be mindful of what grabs your attention. The distractions that corrupt you and guarding your inputs can all be holiness training as well. It's almost like killing two birds with one stone, right? We can get closer to God, but also attacking these other things, such as what do we actually want to give our attention to? How can we avoid distractions that are unnecessary and clouding our life every single day? Kind of the training that I mentioned above, it shifts the mind from this scattered, self-centered soul to a soul that recognizes intentional presence, allowing for deeper connection with God and others. It's just re-prioritizing what the important things are in your life and what you should give attention to. When we control the wandering mind, we build on our holiness, directing our attention away from selfish thought and directing it back to God. There is this sense of building spiritual concentration, the reflection on your daily actions. What am I doing and the why behind it? This helps to slow our minds down and focus on intentionality. Why am I doing what am I doing and why? Are we doing or consuming this because it's our wish, or is it God's will? The bottom line is through training ourselves in regards to attention prepares the heart for a more focused, loving, and intentional life, which is in the essence of holy living. It allows contemplation to come back into our lives. In a Catholic perspective, Catechesis 2709 through 2719 or 2719 hits on several things that drive attention towards God, showing obedience of faith and unconditional acceptance of a servant. It also hits on the gaze of faith. All of these aspects require active attention training towards God and His satiet and his teachings and an avoidance of distractions from the daily world. It's a drive back to the roots of our faith and the root root of what matters in life. And just to kind of hit on it again, this is not about productivity. This is not about trying to make us more productive um members in society. It's truthfully, it's about recognizing that distractions are real and the end goal isn't being perfect. While we should strive to be perfect, it's about recognizing our attention. Recognizing our attention drives what we love, what we hold dear, and what's important. That distractions are massively impactful to our ability to form a high-quality relationship with God and those around us. If we aren't cognizant about what we're consuming, we don't just lose time out of our day. We lose the ability to think critically, slow things down, hold inner thoughts that preserve morality, dignity, and the truth. But what does this mean? I challenge you to unplug ironic, isn't it, considering you're listening to this podcast? That's okay. It's not about doing that cold turkey. It's about recognizing the importance of protecting your interior life. Taking five minutes of silence and prayer, sit and just be still with God. Listen to the quiet of nature around you, God's creation, slow your breathing down and let your mind take the path back to Him. It's time we reclaim ourselves and reorient our minds towards what matters most, which is God and our human relationships we form with our loved ones. I challenge you this week to begin strengthening your attention through some light training. When you feel you've been distracted from your task at hand, from your important relationships, or from God, try to do these things. First off, still your body. Second thing, attend to your breath slowly, in and out, or attend to scripture, read a passage from the Bible to help reorient it, reorient your mind back to where it needs to be. And then lastly, redirect your mind gently when you realize you're wandering. I think that is the hardest thing that I struggle with, which is sometimes I want to be silent and I want to sit for five minutes and just silent prayer with God, and these thoughts wander in, and you start thinking about, well, I gotta go to the grocery store. Oh, I gotta go to this store. Oh, what am I making for dinner tonight? Oh, I'm gonna start singing the lyrics to these songs in my head. And I think that is the hardest thing, is just making sure you redirect those thoughts out and refocus on God. And the more you do that, and the longer you practice that, the easier it will become. And the longer you're gonna want to start having these conversations with God on a daily basis. And even consider the five minutes of daily silence and breathing, and even better to start having a daily conversation with God. Because having a conversation with God is praying. Don't think of it as prayer, just start talking to God. Start building your relationship again. Knowing is half the battle, and now it's time to start building these positive habits, forming ourselves again, avoiding distraction, and placing attention where it is deserved most on Him. As we wrap up for today, I want you to sit for just a moment with one question. What has been shaping your attention? And what has your attention been shaping inside of you? We often think our days are scattered because we're busy, but more often we're scattered because our attention is unguarded. And when the interior world becomes noisy, we can no longer hear God, no longer sense his promptings, and no longer recognize the quiet movements of his grace. The saints didn't become saints because life was easy. They became saints because in the middle of distraction they learned how to return again and again to the one who calls them. Holiness was not their perfection, holiness was their direction. So this week I want to invite you into a very simple practice. Choose one moment each day, just one, and reclaim it. A moment without noise, without the endless scroll, without the pull of a hundred small distractions over and over again. A moment where you say to God, here I am, I'm listening. You'll be amazed at what begins to surface in that space, the clarity, the peace, the conviction, the presence, the beginning of an interior life that is whole, not fragmented. Attention is not just a cognitive skill, it's a spiritual posture, and reclaiming it is part of reclaiming your soul. Thank you for spending your time, your attention, and your interior space with me today. If this episode stirred something in you, consider sharing it with someone who's feeling overwhelmed or spiritually scattered, someone who might need the reminder that they can begin again. And again, my name is Kellen. I'm your host. Thank you again for joining me for episode 11, coming along this journey with me so we can help reorient ourselves towards what's important in life, retraining our attention on what really matters, which is Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior, our families, our relationships, and making sure that we avoid the distractions of daily life that pull us apart from those things. Because in the end, our goal is to get to heaven. Our goal is to realign ourselves closer to God every single day, and bringing along our families to do the same, teaching our loved ones, teaching our children that we can get closer to God every single day. And a lot of times it starts with five minutes of silence. God, here I am, and allowing ourselves to build those relationships with Him again. I want to say thank you one more time. And if you like what you're listening to, I do have a Buy Me a Coffee page. Um, you can find the link either on the But Sprouts podcast webpage, um, or you can go to Buy Me a Coffee and search ordered reality, and you can find my page there if you'd like to support the show. You can find us on Spotify and Apple Podcasts at this time. Until next time, stay grounded, stay attentive, and as always, live ordered. Thank you so much, and have a great rest of your day and a great week. May God bless you.