Attention, attention

I was keen to step back into work today, after a self-enforced break over the Christmas period, but equally I had got too used to taking my time and being somewhat self-indulgent, and so had a leisurely start.

In being ‘kind’ to myself and reading the paper with coffee before getting to my desk, I came across an article in The Guardian by psychoanalyst and writer Adam Phillips [‘What we talk about when we talk about giving up’]. Even though I didn’t go into it with my work lenses on, I found so much there that was relevant to what I do and which woke me right up. Here’s just one example.

In his piece, Phillips references Marion Milner’s distinction between narrow and wide attention, and this really got me going. ‘Narrow attention creates a certain kind of person - is a way of overdefining oneself; wide attention provides alternatives, alternative ways of seeing ourselves and others … wide attention is a form of attention purged of aims and wants and conventional satisfactions (it is a version of forgetting oneself).’

In a career development world where we are often encouraged to seek to know ourselves better in order to unlock our ‘purpose’, I find this way of thinking refreshing and intriguing. Perhaps it’s all (or also) about knowing ourselves less, or forgetting or refusing to reinforce what we think we know about ourselves, and thus laying ourselves open to new potentialities.

In essence, I suppose, this widening up rather than (at least initially) narrowing down is what I do with clients. I help them to shake themselves loose from the internal and external frameworks, the default settings that guide their feelings and choices and their feelings about their choices, their ways of seeing themselves and the world. Instead, I invite and support them to roam with freedom, curiosity and neutrality before identifying the next direction they want to explore in their work and lives. In this respect, a ‘want’ is not predetermined, preconceived or even unearthed from within them, but is come across in the unmapped territories of a wider world and explored with interest and freshness.

This is also how this article acted on me today. I did not read the paper looking for information and insight relevant to my work. I was not instrumentalist about it. I was, with my coffee, in a neutral mental space where nothing or anything might have had relevance and I wasn’t even thinking about it in those terms.

It made me excited to be back at work, awake to the present and to possibilities and discoveries, and to accepting that knowing more is not like completing a Christmas jigsaw puzzle: there will never be a final piece or a complete picture.

Well, that’s me. What about you? What’s excited you on your return to work? Nothing? Maybe it’s time to pay some wide attention.

Photo: Greg Rakozy on Unsplash