Change Your Life: Living Skillfully

SharpBrains have an interesting interview with neuroscientist Michael Posner, in which he talks about attention and how a new neuroimaging technique called diffusion tensor is helping to reveal the brain’s networks.

Posner’s research suggests that what we call “attention” has three elements:

1. Alerting – you might think of this as “coming to attention”.
2. Orienting – direction attention to a particular stimulus.
3. Executive Attention – managing the attention paid to both inner and outer stimuli (such as emotions and sensory information) in a goal-oriented way.

photo credit: Nesster

The three combined factor into “effortful control”, which is the ability to self-regulate our emotions and behaviours. This is obviously a key factor for success in life, and according to Posner, there are both genetic and environmental aspects which feed into our abilities to do this. Good parenting builds effortful control, but some genes make good parenting less important – which may account for why some people who have been poorly parented become successful regardless.

The good news is that we can continue to increase our abilities at attention and effortful control throughout life. One of the things I routinely do with my clients is to show them simple techniques of emotional management through attention. Hypnotherapy in part works by directing highly concentrated attention on a desired change, making effortful control less effortful.

Any effective attention technique, regularly practiced, will increase your ability at self-regulation and self-direction and along with that will improve your self-efficacy. Start where you are, with something you can realistically do, and build from there. As Posner states:

…we have found no ceiling for abilities such as attention, including among adults. The more training, even with normal people, the higher the results.

Technorati Tags: attention, emotion, control, self-control, self-regulation, self-efficacy, self-direction, motivation, success, training, meditation

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