Stewarding Our Attention Podcast

There’s a saying that says, we steer where we stare. And you find yourself following or going down the path where your attention is. Welcome everyone to Breaking Bread, the podcast brought to you by Apostolic Christian Counseling and Family Services. Excellent to have you along as always. Arlan Miller and I are together. 

We’re going to have a conversation about the concept of attention. Yeah, we hope we can capture your attention with this one, right? Can we capture their attention? Actually, we don’t want to be long with this because attention is so precious. Does that make sense? It does. And I think it’s an increasingly important thing just to think about in the society that we live in. 

Matt, you can play this out. I mean, there’s a lot of dollars and a lot of advertisers who know how much, you know, so many seconds of a person’s time is worth. It’s starting to become almost a currency in some ways. It is a currency. And to your point, exactly, advertising and the like, they are measuring attention. 

You know, the bottom line, whether it’s Twitter to Facebook to any of those social media platforms. The bottom line is attention. Have they captured somebody’s attention? And then how long do they keep one’s attention? So yes, attention is very tangible. It’s very measurable and it’s certainly a huge commodity in our world today. It’s important for us to recognize that. 

And just, for the audience’s sake, when we say attention in our conversation here, attention is what captures our mind. It’s what we focus on, it’s where our attention is at. You know, what is our mind focused on during that period of time? As you say that, Arlan, I’m picturing my mind being pointed in a certain direction. 

Yeah. Right. This orientation. I am focused. I am looking. I am thinking in this direction and continuing down that path. You know, there’s a saying that says we steer where we stare, and you find yourself following or going down the path where your attention is. 

Yes. That’s what we’re talking about here. Where do we find ourselves spending our focus? And what influence does it have in our life? Okay, so we steer where we stare. By that statement, Arlan, you’re really saying attention matters. Absolutely. Attention matters big time. Yeah. Let’s go into that space a little bit. 

In what way does attention matter? Why is this a precious commodity and why do we need to steward it? Yeah. I mean, there’s a lot of ways you can look at that, but attention really will help determine our destination. It will show us where we will end up. If you continue down the path, you will become like that path. 

What does Proverbs say? As a man thinks in his heart, so is he. Which I think is a way of saying, where our focus and our attention and what is inside of our core determine who we become. So, it’s a really important question to realize the influence that the inputs or where our attention is in our life that determines. Said a different way, we become what we pay attention to. 

Is that a true statement? We do. So, there’s a Scripture there in Romans, be not conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds. It’s that idea that the inputs that come into us form us. 

I don’t know if this metaphor fits, but I think sometimes we can have a concept that my attention, my in between moments, the way I think about things is like using petty cash. I’m not going to buy anything substantial, but really you’re positing the idea that we do buy substantial things with that petty cash over a lifetime. 

Yeah, right, very informative things. It becomes very shaping because I become what I pay attention to. Matt, have you ever seen those stats that talk about how we spend our time? Right. And where that goes, and you don’t think a lot of it, but, the amount of time that an individual spends brushing their teeth or some little thing like that. 

And it’s like maybe five minutes a day, 10 minutes a day. But then when you play that out over a period of time, the amount of time in our lifetime that we spend on some of these little activities. Now, play that out further. Have you ever had this scenario? We hear this a lot. I was just going to check something out on the internet and suddenly an hour had passed, right? Or two hours had passed, right? And I just was going to watch one video on YouTube and suddenly it was 47. It’s that kind of thing that gets us. Oh, those companies, they know what they’re doing. They know how to grab you and keep you just one more video. They have turned attention getting and keeping into a science. 

I mean, a big dollar sign to fall prey to just exactly what you said, finding yourself having squandered a great deal of mind energy and directional thought and attention. It means we’ve been bested by the best. You know what I mean? Yeah. I think that’s really the awareness that we want to bring in this podcast is attention is precious. 

Attention is a commodity. It’s a currency. Yeah, and it matters. We think it might be petty cash, but it’s not as petty as we think it is. It builds up over time. It builds up and we become those things we pay attention to. I heard a podcaster who is a classical educator, and so I kind of listened to that type of thing, and he made an astute observation. He said, there are really many things in life that are too easy to like. There’s literature out there that’s too easy to read. There’s music out there that’s too easy to listen to. There are drinks out there too easy to drink. And what happens is it grabs our attention, keeps our attention, and does not have a real good end to what it grows in us as we become it.  

And then he used that to talk about the classics, right? So, you can imagine whether it be classical music or classical literature, that classics typically are difficult. They’re not easy to like. You actually have to grow in them. And then he says, when you do grow that space in your life in them, then that’s where the tremendous blessing comes. 

And time has tested that out. That’s why these things are very, very old and still have value. So, the podcast is not about getting people to read or listen to the classics. But they’re an acquired taste that takes a little bit of discipline and diligence and you’re not going to just pick it up and put it down and pick it up and put it down. 

You’ll move on to something easier. But the realization that acquired taste can be really satisfying in the long run and really healthy. It will grow a space in you. Because you will be formed to its likeness in a way. It will grow a space in you that will far surpass the too easy to like literature and the too easy to like music. 

You know what I’m saying? Well, let’s take that to the Scriptures and to that verse in Romans that we talked about earlier, be not conformed to this world and the easy thing that comes natural potentially the thing that we’re surrounded by. That’s easy to pick up but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. And this idea of becoming more like Jesus, or walking in a way that’s contrary, that’s an acquired taste, and yet is so important in a spiritual sense, and so critical long term for our direction and our trajectory. 

I really appreciate that, Arlan, and I think that is now starting to put our finger on the beautiful hope that lies with this principle. The hope that you just mentioned there, Arlan, is that this is a real tangible way to grow and change in important ways in our life. Yeah. I didn’t realize I could do that with petty cash. 

Right. We become what we focus on, what our attention is focused on. And it can be a really hopeful thing because it’s not some secret formula that I have to uncover. But it does take a little bit of work to say, okay, what am I paying attention to and what influence is that having on my life? 

Yeah, so let’s go right there. What are some application points of like here’s a way to engage this area of our life Yeah, now that we know the attention, we all have that currency, and we all spend it. We all have choices that we can make about where we spend it. Give us some ideas. What does that look like? 

Great point. And there’s a few different things here to think about. I think you can’t get away from this idea that this requires a tremendous amount of self-awareness. Like we have to understand ourselves, understand our thoughts, and if we are finding ourselves anxious, worrying, just distracted, or more irritable a lot. I mean, some of those kinds of things, they’re on the surface. What inputs are we putting into our life that maybe are feeding that and to be thoughtful about that, right? Hey, I’m experiencing this. I wonder what I’m paying attention to. To think about the voices that are in your head, the voices coming into your head. 

That’s an important activity because we’d like to think we’re more original or thinking than we are. And some are, but in general we reflect what our input is. Step us through the hope that lies in this axiom that would become what we pay attention to, what hope is there? I can have other inputs that would steer me in a little bit different way. If I stare at something different, I will steer in that direction, right? You know, Corinthians talks about how we focus in on Jesus, and we’re changed into his image as we behold him from glory to glory. It just speaks to that idea that understanding the input that’s going in there and that reflection piece and beholding him as in a mirror. 

And we are formed in his image over time, right? Yeah. And I think over time is a huge part of that process. That’s the renewing of the mind. I mean, I think that’s what that is. It’s renewing or changing and that’s hopeful. It’s not set in stone. There is a renewing that can take place as we change those inputs. 

You know, here’s another. Or maybe. And I find that I have to continually go through my feeds and thoughtfully organize the feed. I’ve come to recognize Arlan, that my feed naturally orients itself, the algorithms all work according to my spontaneous, non-thoughtful Matt Kaufman. Yeah. Do you know what I mean by that? 

Yeah. It’s my first click. It’s the quickest click. It’s the not thoughtful click. And then all of a sudden, guess what populates? More of the same. Yeah. So, what I get are the quick, not thoughtful click feed, not Matt Kaufman’s thoughtful consideration. This would be good for me to consume. You see what’s going on here. 

Yeah, right. So, our feeds naturally follow and curate this person that I am. Or on a humorous note, that’s why in the middle of the winter when I have that spontaneous click and say I wonder what it’d be like to take a vacation to Florida and then suddenly everything I see is about sunny beaches and those kinds of things. But that’s the kind of thing that can happen with that. 

Matt, just think about this idea of notifications. All of us probably have notifications on our phones or whatnot in our life, and those things are meant to remind us. In fact, there’s more and more desire to have those set up so that we are reminded. Oh, that update came, or did you know this news story came through? Well, do you really need to know it in the moment? 

And perhaps on a very proactive note, do you have similar notifications that draw you back to the Scriptures, that draw you back to Jesus? Use technology to your favor. Let’s go on to maybe some other practical things as we think about it. Certainly, technology is huge, but what else? 

Yeah, there’s another area here too. And I want to qualify this and make sure we’re clear. We’re not saying that you have to be on all the time and that it’s not appropriate at times to kind of check out or have those down times when you’re just zoned out a little bit, but it is about being purposeful about what those down times look like or what those zoned out times look like, you know, what is healthy in that regard? Is it healthier to go outside and take a walk and just enjoy and not really think versus sitting down on a couch or whatever and scrolling through something. But it’s that kind of a thing, if you’re keyed up all the time and always engaged, that’s going to have consequences of its own. 

Our body is rhythmic, and it needs to have downtimes and uptimes and that kind of a thing. But we’ve become very easy at turning that downtime into something that’s just not productive in any way, shape, or form. I don’t know if being productive necessarily needs to be the outcome of a downtime. 

No, but I think satisfaction is probably a good metric to be thinking about. And what I find very often is that some of the downtime, veg out, let the attention drift, is an elusive satisfaction. Very seldom does that lead me to a satisfying restorative place, but there are wonderfully downtime activities that we can engage in that are satisfactory and truly recharging in so many ways. 

So, let’s go to that space. What might some of those activities be? Yeah, it’s going to vary for each person. But there are some rules of thumb. Usually, nature or connection outside is a really important thing. And we lose that if we’re not careful. And so, some type of outdoor activity, walking or in the yard playing games with the kids or whatnot is just a very different feeling than sitting down in an enclosed space. 

With that example, Arlan, you mentioned feeling. I think that right there is a good test. How much of my feelings, physical feelings, am I engaging, whether it be sight, sound, smell, touch, taste, all of those things. I mean, God masterfully gave us a way to engage and interact with our world. And I think that’s probably a pretty good test too. 

Am I engaging in these things? Because God intended for these senses to be a blessing and satisfying. Right. In my world right now, it’s a jigsaw puzzle that I’ve been working on for a long time. Right? But you can sit down and you can focus on that or kind of semi focus on that and I find that things just kind of fall into place in my head. 

Right. And I’m not being distracted by other things. And it’s just good. I leave in a better place than when I started. And I think that’s just a self-awareness check to think about. Do you get up from that activity, whatever it was, and feel like you’re in a better place than when you sat down? One more thing I want to get into, which I think is really practical and almost radical today is just this idea of silence. You know, can we sit in silence? That’s becoming a rare commodity today. The ability to have silence, you know, could you sit for a minute? Can I sit for five minutes and just listen to my thoughts and watch where they go and not try to fill it with something. 

I think that’s really important. And I think that’s a good way to build some of those muscles of awareness. This example was shared with me just an hour ago and I was in a conversation and they borrowed it from a different author, but I think it really speaks well. It talks about a jar of muddy water and the busyness of life keeps that jar cloudy. 

It takes some quietness, it takes some subtleness for it to separate, to have any sort of clarity. Yeah. And really what I think you’re offering there is sometimes with our petty cash attention, we go to more turmoil that just keeps things stirred up rather than what you’ve just posited. And that’s the idea to let things settle. 

Maybe it’s the jigsaw puzzle. Where you can separate the gunk from the truth and then you’re in a more restorative place. Yeah. Let’s go to parting thoughts as we send off final comments. The goal is Jesus. The opportunity is Jesus, to become more like him. Well, if we’re going to become more like him, Matt, we’ve got to steer towards him. 

And he’s got to be the object of our attention. I really love how he says that. Come follow me. Yeah. For my yoke is easy. Learn of me, he said, for my yoke is easy. My burden’s light. And you will find rest. Is that how it finishes? Yeah, it is. You will find rest for your souls, which is very often what we’re pursuing, isn’t it? Yeah. We’re pursuing rest. We’re pursuing that settled place with our attention commodity. And very often we spend it and we’re shocked that we’re not getting it. But Christ, I think, wonderfully offers it.