If you have never googled commencement addresses, you are missing out. If you are only going to listen to one, then let me recommend This is Water by the late David Foster Wallace.
If you haven’t heard it, just click the link there and give it a listen. I’ll wait.
In his speech, Mr. Wallace talks about the discipline of consciously choosing where to focus our attention.
“This, I submit, is the freedom of a real education, of learning how to be well-adjusted. You get to consciously decide what has meaning and what doesn’t. You get to decide what to worship.” David Foster Wallace
He states that in real life, we all worship something… either a spiritual set of beliefs or something else, like beauty, power, or intellect – all of which, he adds, we are free to do. But, he adds:
“The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people…“
The act of paying attention signals to our brains what is most important. Mr. Wallace has some advice about what we might want to pay attention to and he also clues us in on how hard it is to follow his advice.
Our brains evolved to help us focus on the most crucial stuff: cookies, romance, and an awesome apartment. Our brains are also exquisitely tuned to revising and re-evaluating the world around us. This evaluation process happens every time we pay attention. Each time we bring our attention to an experience, our brains revise the reward we associate with the experience.
What does this mean?
It means that when we choose what to pay attention to, we not only consciously shape our experience – we also trigger our brains to revise how rewarding that experience is.
Dr. Judson Brewer – who I’ve mentioned before – has a great video that lays out the process for updating our brain’s value measurement. You can click the link and check it out.
Things get really interesting because the opposite is also true. When we do not pay attention to what we are experiencing – our brains don’t update our valuation of that experience.
Why does this matter?
Look, most of the time, we are on autopilot. We watch TV while we cook dinner. We whip through emails and tune out our co-workers. We are lost in thought while we wait for our food and while we eat it. We rush through our work without tuning into our emotions.
Every time we engage with something without paying attention to it, we fail to update our brain’s valuation system. So, we wind up believing that eating two candy bars for lunch is just as good as it was when we were twelve. We don’t notice how utterly miserable it is to be rushing through our workday. So we just. keep. doing it.
When we pay attention to something, we’re telling our brains that it matters… and that it needs to be re-measured.
According to Dr. Brewer, it takes as few as ten re-measurements to change the value our brain places on something.
According to Mr. Wallace – that is the way to freedom.
And that? Is just good to know.
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