Are You Paying Attention?

Late November 2023, I took the picture above. Those are ice crystals on the gutter of our house. Ho hum! 

Or, not. 

I noticed them and then focused on them. Each one made of the same ingredients. Each one intricate. Unique.

By asking if you’re paying attention, I’m not simply talking about work life, or home life. I’m talking about all that is small, complicated, temporal; around us each day. Taking moments to focus on what nature brings to us; then, takes away. 

Amid the stress of a start-up, Xuan Zhao talks about how essential it is for her to be in nature for her own resilience and recovery. On this episode of AS UNEXPECTED, she offered the “three S’s”: Sight, Sound, Smell. Don’t just look - see. Don’t just hear - listen. Don’t just breathe - smell. Even if you’re not in the throws of non-stop entrepreneurism, she’s got solid counsel for us all. (Listen here.)

Stephan Mayer and colleagues (Environment and Behavior, September 2009) studied the impact of exposure to nature on ‘connectedness to nature’, attentional capacity (i.e., capacity for focus), positive affect and ability to reflect on life problems. Their results are clear and compelling - even 10-15 minutes in a natural setting can:

• increase your ability to focus, 

• improve your general mood, and 

• enhance your ability to work through perplexing personal or professional issues.

For a less intense academic approach, go read the American Psychological Association’s overview of different studies. Any interest in being more focused, content and kind? Then. See. Listen. Smell.

The day that I took the ice crystals photo, I put it up on the screen at the beginning of our weekly senior leadership team meeting. Why? To make sure we’re all paying attention - to the nuance of our organizational narratives; to the idiosyncraticity of each day; to the beauty in the differences in each of us. It spurred conversations about the uniqueness of each of us in the room. 

The start to that day, when I took the ho hum picture, was positive. I took a moment to pay attention. To see. The first stanza of Robert Frost’s Tree At My Window reads…

Tree at my window, window tree,

My sash is lowered when night comes on;

But let there never be curtain drawn

Between you and me.

No matter what curtains we draw, walls we raise or freeways we lay between us and nature, we are intimately connected. If we don’t exercise that intimacy on occasion, we lose a sense of our own being. So, are you paying attention?