auntieannie

I had great expectations for this book, but it fell short. I kept plugging away at it, but it was uneven, and well, not focused. I liked the idea of introducing an "attentional regimen" -- a combination of exercises that strengthen concentration and benignity. "Attending to others also invites interaction and feedback, which helps you feel useful and connected to the larger world.... paying attention is an individual effort, but it's also a kind of social cement that holds groups together and helps them feel part of something greater than themselves. ... As well-matched tennis partners, chess players, book-group members, and spouses can attest, along with the benefits of bonding, such relationships provide a benign stimulus to be "the best you can be." p.86Productive people who have totally mastered a difficult skill can feel challenged and lose focus. High achievers can avoid burnout, depression and even self-destructiveness by "going wide," or focusing on a new vocation or avocation along with their business as usual. p.107The antidote to leisure-time ennui is to pay as much attention to scheduling a productive evening or weekend as you do to your workday. "Not coincidentally, an important recent discovery in flow research has a social as well as a personal dimension. Once you focus on an activity -- ranching or marketing, haiku or horticulture -- and start to develop the skills required, you need to take on progressively greater challenges to keep on experiencing flow. In this way, writes Csikszentmihalyi, optimal human experience is a Darwinian dynamic that can slowly transform society and even affect evolution by encouraging activities of ever-greater complexity, countering business-as-usual mind-sets, and offering alternatives to obsolete, destructive behavior." p. 113"Not paying attention to anything in particular sometimes just plain feels good. Research conducted by the U of Michigan psychologists Rachel and Stephen Kaplan shows that when you gaze dreamily at drifting clouds, twinkling stars, rippling water, or other natural stimuli, you drift into a soft-focused state of "fascination" that allows your mind to relax and unwind, reduces the incidence of dumb "human errors," and even lower physiological measures of stress." p. 151