May 9, 2025 • 29 mins
Our attention is constantly being hijacked by systems training us to see ourselves as problems needing to be fixed. Let’s play with the phenomena of ‘perception drift’ (when you can’t see changes in/on you— grace à Courtney Cox) and ‘change blindness’ (when you can no longer see change around you) to explore how we’re perpetuating coloniality rather than tending to collective issues + why reclaiming our attention and moving beyond pathologizing ourselves is revolutionary.
This ep is full of ways to practice expanding your capacity for empathy & connection, resisting anti-intellectualism, tending to your nervous system resilience and reclaiming your attention as the act of graceful rebellion that it is!
~ resources & more ~
- Free grounding meditation ~ bit.ly/grounding-now
- Attention & Will
- All the book recs from this episode
- COMET ☄️CORN 🍿
- Enter to win a free coaching session ~ when you leave a 5-star rating (only) and a written review, you'll be entered into a monthly drawing for a free 90-min coaching session with dana (value of $388). Email dana@danabalicki.com the review title + your review name. Winner announcements will be made across platforms mid-month.
// sound-editing/design ~ rose blakelock, theme song ~ kat ottosen, podcast art ~ natalee miller///
@danablix on ig 😭 feeling the pull for coaching support? go to danabalicki.com for inner/outer transformation 🖐️⭐️ leave a 5-star rating & review to be entered in a monthly raffle for a free coaching session (details in show notes) 🎁 share this with your favorite boo-hooer 😭
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Dearest crybabies, welcome back to Crying in my
Fancy, the ebbs and flows ofliving an examined life where we
live, laugh, love in theAnthropocene.
I'm Dana Balicki,transformational coach of 13
years, former grassrootsorganizer, reverently,
irreverent, deep feeler.
(00:22):
Woo-woo Sherpa, your internetbig sis that you always wanted,
and slow-down medicine guide inexploring the weird magic of
humaning together.
The Jacuzzi Verse is where wedive into the messy, beautiful,
ridiculous and profound journeyof self-exploration and
(00:44):
collective evolution, becauselife is a lot and sometimes the
only thing left to do is to sinkinto the warm, bubbly depths of
it all and let it flow.
Crying in my jacuzzi, Crying inmy jacuzzi.
(01:18):
Crying in my jacuzzi, crying inmy jacuzzi.
(01:40):
My phone feeds me a neglectedmix of news, mostly about
quantum theories, breakthroughsin consciousness studies,
quantum theories, breakthroughsin consciousness studies and the
unseen worlds, communicationbetween plants and animals and
all matter, all things that Ireally love to just devour, and
every so often it throws in aplot twist, something that seems
(02:04):
completely random.
Most recently, it was a storyabout Courtney Cox dissolving
all of her face fillers and Iclicked because look, oracular
guidance is everywhere, and inthe article was a mention of the
phenomenon called perceptiondrift.
(02:26):
This is when people undergocosmetic procedures and lose
sight of their originalappearance I don't know who I am
anymore and begin toconsistently perceive new flaws,
new things that need attention,leading them to seek more
(02:47):
treatments.
And, in a nutshell, it happensbecause the brain adapts to a
new baseline, like the goalpostis just constantly shifting, but
the person doesn't know it.
Courtney didn't know it.
Speaker 2 (03:01):
God, oh my God poor.
Monica Courtney didn't know it.
God, oh my God poor.
Speaker 1 (03:04):
Monica, and I don't actually want to debate, take
this episode to debate or judgecosmetic surgery, but I will say
that I was recently at FreezeLA.
It's an art fair in LA and Iwas walking behind a woman whose
energy was just hot, magnetic,crackly in an electric sort of
(03:30):
way and everyone was justlooking amazing.
All over the place Just outfitsfor days.
And then, when this one womanturned around, I realized it was
Justine Bateman.
She looked amazing.
Realized it was Justine Bateman, she looked amazing.
I remember reading an interviewwith her when her book Face, one
Square Foot of Skin came out afew years ago, and she had this
(03:54):
quote in it where she said myface is rad, I think I look rad,
my face represents who I am, Ilike it, something like that,
like, and then basically, andthat's it, that's all there is
to it.
It stuck with me, okay, but Iwant to go deeper into
perception drift.
So perception drift happens toindividuals and there's another
(04:23):
cognitive phenomenon that I wantto apply, yes, to individuals,
but also to the collective, andit's called change blindness.
Right in the pocket there withperception drift, it's when
people fail to noticesignificant changes in their
environment, even when they'relooking right at them in their
(04:45):
environment, even when they'relooking right at them.
And so, while perception driftis about scanning for flaws and
trying to fix which is acultural addiction, affliction
of sorts late stage capitalismthrives on binaries, on the
binary of right and wrong.
So it works.
If something is always wrongand then needs fixing, where are
(05:09):
we going to get the solution, Iwonder?
Surprise from the people whotold us the definition of the
wrongness.
So we, as good littleunconscious, mostly consumers of
greed and misery, we've beendeeply, so, so deeply
conditioned into thepathologizing, into this
(05:32):
problem-centric ontology, alwayslooking for the next wrong
thing, that we have fullylearned to see ourselves and
everything around us as problems, as wrong things needing to be
fixed, needing some rightness.
And if we're busy, busy, busyin the identifying of the,
(05:57):
obsessing over problems andsolving of them, right, because
we can get really good at it,and those problems are our
bodies, our beings, even thenwe'll be way too busy to address
any issues in the largersystems, because we're oriented
towards fighting our crow's feetover fighting fascism.
(06:21):
One's gonna get us free andone's gonna get us a lot of eye
cream.
Change blindness can have moreto do with memory and attention.
Maybe you've heard me talkabout the psychologist Daniel
Kahneman's work on theexperiencing self versus the
(06:44):
remembering self.
The remembering self isselective, it holds on to peaks
and endings, and thisremembering self is manipulated
by politicians' oppressivesystems, all of their agents and
sentinels.
And the experiencing self hasto do with presence, and so
(07:06):
we're following the breadcrumbshere, because another cause of
change blindness is limitedattention, which absolutely has
to do with our presence or lackthereof.
The early 20th century writer,philosopher, activist, simone
(07:29):
Weil wrote many things aboutattention and focus and presence
.
Maybe you've heard me quote hermention her work before, when
she would write about attentionas the rarest and purest form of
generosity In an article ofhers Attention and Will.
(07:53):
She writes many things.
I'll put the link in the shownotes below, but one thing
that's standing out in thismoment is the incorrect approach
involves focusing attention ona problem, a phenomenon driven
by an aversion to emptiness.
We fear wasting our efforts.
(08:14):
We must not desire to findExcessive devotion can make us
dependent on our endeavors, canmake us dependent on our
endeavors requiring an externalreward that we might accept at
the cost of distorting the truth.
To me, that speaks volumesabout perception drift and how
(08:38):
we are culturally trained toperceive ourselves as flawed
creatures, viewing ourselves asproblems.
But with incredible focus andattention we could possibly
solve those problems.
(08:59):
Then we would be full, then wewould be whole, then we would
matter, then we would have value.
Aversion to emptiness, thetraining to be attached to
objects, even if we are theobjects to objectify ourselves.
Speaker 2 (09:15):
Nobody likes to be objectified.
Speaker 1 (09:17):
And so then, we are trained.
We are trained in the ways ofperception drift.
Of you've heard me say itbefore pathologizing Of seeing
ourselves as a series ofproblems to be fixed.
Devotion to perceived essentialwrongness, what I have come to
(09:43):
call P-E-W pew, pew, pew,perceived essential wrongness.
What I have come to call P-E-Wpew, pew, pew, perceived
essential wrongness.
Anyway, I do it with my clients.
We do like a little a littlepew pew gun thing Anyhow, not
really translating over podcast.
(10:08):
Oh my god, you guys, thispopcorn is so good.
So a couple of years ago, on amedium-sized magic mushroom trip
, I discovered coconut currypopcorn by Comet Corn.
It was a transcendentexperience, a momentous day, and
Comet Corn accompanied mebeautifully.
After that I was surely chasingthe coconut curry dragon by
(10:29):
buying up all the little bagswhenever I saw them, which
wasn't all that often, becausehonestly this is kind of a niche
popcorn cult following sort ofthing.
You're welcome.
But I love this popcorn so muchthat one time I even just
popped by their Popcorn HQ inNorthern California when I was
in the neighborhood and I got atour of the plant Anywho.
(10:51):
I came all the way back down tothe high desert, to my home, my
community, and I really justwanted someone to carry it
locally so I could just pop inand get a bag whenever I wanted.
And of course the amazing AllRoads Design studio rose to meet
my popcorn needs and so nowanyone who comes to the high
desert can get the gift of mymedium-sized magic mushroom trip
(11:13):
sponsored by comic corn.
Just to be clear, there are notmushrooms in the popcorn.
It's just really, really good.
And I love the popcorn, I lovesherry and jeff, I love how much
they love it and the love thatthey put into it.
And honestly, there's no easyway to get this popcorn.
You can't just go online andbeep boop, beep boop it to your
(11:33):
door.
This ad is for the intrepidsnacker, the committed
popcornologist, the one who iswilling to go the extra mile and
go to CometCorncom, click onin-store, scroll down, put in
their zip code and see if thereis indeed a spot near you
selling this magic.
Or you can go to one of yourlocal fine food purveyors and
(11:55):
see if they will carry it foryou.
This is a great way to makefriends and build community for
the rebellion.
So perception drift is like ourown bodies, right Change
blindness is when we're lookingat something and we fail to see
the changes that are happeningin the scene around us or in
(12:20):
front of us.
And I'm stretching thedefinitions a bit here and
overlapping them and sort ofmixing them together.
This gets me to thinking aboutJohan Hari's book Stolen Focus
why you Can't Pay Attention, andhow to Think Deeply Again.
(12:40):
I'll talk about this bookbefore 10 out of 10 recommend.
Also, when he's reading it, ifyou listen to it like on Audible
or audiobook, his voice strainsand he sounds like British
Kermit the Frog.
It's endearing.
So there's a quote from StolenFocus that I want to add this
breadcrumb to the path.
(13:02):
Here it goes Democracy requiresthe ability of a population to
pay attention long enough toidentify real problems,
distinguish them from fantasies,come up with solutions and hold
their leaders accountable ifthey fail to deliver them.
So perhaps in this we canunderstand the role of change,
blindness and pathologizing, butseeing ourselves as problems,
(13:24):
not the world around us.
Not that I'm endorsing viewingeverything as a problem, but
hopefully you get what I'msaying here that if we're just
truly focused on ourselves inthat almost toxic level of toxic
individualism which is acharacteristic white supremacy
(13:46):
thank you, tim Okun and alliesfor helping us to continue to
understand how white supremacytouches us all and we can also
understand how we've fallen into, or how we regularly fall into,
change, blindness, blindness.
(14:19):
In the book stolen focus, harrytalks about many things, but the
saturation of information, howmuch more information we are
taking into our bodies, into ournervous systems, how it has
been ramping up really since thecreation of the printing press,
right.
So this isn't just about theinterwebs, though that is a huge
factor technology and all theways in which it conditions us
(14:43):
to give away our attention.
Hari also writes people whocan't focus will be more drawn
to a simplistic, authoritariansolution and less likely to see
clearly when they fail.
The truth is, you're living ina system that's pouring acid on
your attention every day andthen you're being told to blame
(15:03):
yourself.
Blame yourself for theoppressive nature of the systems
that are meant to keep youfueling them.
Tweak your own habits.
Manage your screen time better.
Be more disciplined.
Work in 45 minute spurts with alittle 10 minute thing between
(15:27):
pomodoro, blah, blah, blah.
Work on your wellness routine.
Why don't you go do some Yoga,or maybe some face yoga, fix
your face?
Oh, you don't have the money.
That's probably your fault too,never mind capitalism.
I don't think this is a verycatchy tune, but hopefully you
(15:53):
like get the drift.
Another note that the wealth andhellenist industry is
consistently well.
The neoliberalization ofwell-being and health that I
like to call wealth andhellenist is consistently
telling us that we can do better, make it better if we just try
(16:16):
a little harder, want a littlemore manifest, a little harder.
This is why I'm alwaysyammering on about our attention
and how we use our attentionand how we can be subversive
with our attention.
These are acts, generative actsof our presence, and not just
in these small little personalways, but collectively we must
(16:40):
use our attention.
We must pay attention to whatis happening to Mahmoud Khalil,
columbia graduate student, greencard holder, syrian-born
Palestinian, snatched from hishome in front of his wife, eight
months pregnant, no warrant, nocrime, charged, spirited away,
(17:05):
kidnapped to a detention centerin Louisiana, all for being
involved in the Gaza encampmentsat Columbia University.
And if you didn't see that oryou forgot about it, change
blindness.
There's so many things I know.
There's so much.
I don't want to minimizeoverwhelm because, as you'll
(17:27):
hear in my interview with SarahPayton, we talk about overwhelm
and how it diminishes ourability to access our healthy
nose, not like the nose on ourface, which would actually fit
into this conversation here, butour healthy N-O's and that'll
(17:50):
show up in so many ways.
I mean, that is, that is aboutour attention and that we cannot
distinguish between what isours and not ours when we are in
overwhelm.
What is for us and what is notfor us.
Speaker 2 (18:07):
Psst, hey there.
So Dana doesn't know we're here, but it's important.
Yeah, we slipped in through ourrobots-only wormhole to ask you
to leave a review for the oneand only podcast broadcasting
from the Jacuzzi-verse.
Speaker 1 (18:21):
Did I hear somebody say wormhole?
Speaker 2 (18:25):
You sure did, Connie.
Speaker 1 (18:27):
Oh, okay, I just didn't want to be left out of
the party.
Speaker 2 (18:31):
We portaled in here to remind listeners how much it
means to all of us that theyrate and leave a review, even
just a short one.
Oh, yes, absolutely.
Speaker 1 (18:41):
Go, punch some buttons, y'all.
It only takes a second Time's.
Time's a construct anyway, butyou got all the time in the
world.
So two things, my darling,darling crybaby.
One always nervous systemtending.
(19:02):
We are all being pulled intohigh stress everything, and when
we're in high stress, thethings that we need to cultivate
presence can feel tormenting,so difficult.
So for right now, just for amoment, you're just going to put
your feet on the ground, take acouple of nice deep breaths In
(19:28):
and out, maybe later when you'reout and about, or if you're out
and about right now, go lean ona tree, ask it if it's okay to
just send some of your energydown into it and then say thank
you.
Or a nice big rock oh, it's anice rock, because healing
(19:49):
happens in relationship.
All matter is agential.
The other thing I want to bringup reading and about the
benefits of reading fiction.
(20:10):
I quoted a lot of nonfictionhere in this episode, but I'm
also an avid fiction reader andlistener.
Listener, and how.
When we read stories and thereare characters living their
lives that may be quitedifferent from ours or maybe not
(20:31):
too different, it expands ourability, our capacity for
empathy.
There's a James Baldwin quotethat goes.
You think your pain and yourheartbreak are unprecedented in
the history of the world.
But then you read.
It was books that taught methat the things that tormented
me most were the very thingsthat connected me with all the
(20:54):
people who were alive, who hadever been alive.
So a few books I want torecommend that have swollen my
heart and definitely expanded mycapacity.
I could feel it.
Some are short, some are longer.
(21:14):
Check them out, see whatresonates.
The book Split Tooth byIndigenous writer Tanya Tagak.
She's a Canadian Inuk throat,singer and songwriter and actor,
visual artist and novelist.
She also played the doula inthe most recent season of True
(21:38):
Detective Night Country.
Highly recommend Okay.
Henry Hoke's Open Throat, anentire work of fiction written
through the perspective of amountain lion living in the
Hollywood hills, grappling withthe loneliness and the
complexities of the human world.
(22:00):
So good, and the complexitiesof the human world, so good.
Psalm for the Wild built byBecky Chambers.
A shorty but a goody, about aparallel timeline in the future
After the great awakening of therobots and how humanity moved
(22:21):
on and created itself anew.
Ocean Vuong's On Earth Were,briefly, gorgeous.
Not a work of fiction, but sucha beautiful poetic story.
It's about growing up as aVietnamese immigrant, as a gay
(22:43):
teen in connecticut,relationships with his mother,
his grandmother, lovers, poetry,the world how high we go in the
dark by sequoia nagamatsu, oneof my faves.
I don't even know how toexplain this one.
There are so many overlappingnarratives and a parallel
(23:11):
timeline of humanity and itslast unknowing throes of its
existence.
Oh, so poignant so beautiful Oohand Matrix by Lauren Groff,
about a 12th century nun whoprotects her Abbey from
intruders.
Queerness, rebellion,connection with nature, all the
(23:38):
things.
Another few favorites are theFuture of Another Tim timeline
by annalee newitz.
It's about time travel, but notin a way I've ever read or seen
any other books or moviesdesigned in this way, and
includes fighting againstreligious nuts to protect
(24:02):
reproductive rights, and somehowsome riot girl culture gets
mixed in there.
Highly recommend Girls to thefront.
Another one that I'm justreading now is from my dear
friend, nancy Krikorian, calledthe Burning Heart of the World.
It's the story of a BeirutArmenian family before, during
(24:25):
and after the Lebanese Civil War.
She writes of Armenian diasporaand centers her stories on
women and girls in a poetic,intergenerational trauma,
tenderness kind of way.
And of course, works by OctaviaButler her Exogenesis series,
(24:46):
one of my favorites Tomi Adeyemi, patron Saint Ursula Le Guin
the list goes on and on.
Remember this isn't just a goread books and forget about the
world.
This is read to draw yourattention back to yourself, to
(25:06):
harness it, to reclaim it, tofind your agency again if you
have become totally uncenteredand ungrounded, which is
happening to all of us all thetime and practice that
subversive use of your ownattention.
Practice compassion, practicecuriosity, practice slowing down
(25:31):
, practice feeling knowing thatyour heartbreak is the thing
that will connect you with allpeople through time through
space.
Connect you with all peoplethrough time through space.
Or maybe, go back to a bookthat you loved and read it again
.
Pay attention to, perhaps, whatyou didn't notice or didn't
(26:01):
remember.
Share your favorite books witha friend or a co-worker or
someone on the street I don'tknow the person who sells you
your morning coffee at thebodega.
Oh, my goodness, there's alittle tiny lizard in my office,
hello friend.
Hello friend, you know, yearsago I had a guy that I spoke to,
(26:27):
connected with, called Lizard,and a mountain lion who had a
name, but Lizard was just Lizard, and Lizard actually had the
medicine always for me, a focusand attention.
So I am not surprised thatlizard has made its way I mean,
(26:48):
I do live in the desert, okay,but made its way into our space.
I offer you the gift of lizard,the medicine of attention, and
may it be soft.
May you give yourselfpermission to not take it all in
, to just take in some, to besubversive, to choose to be in
(27:15):
your agency.
You may be over-indexing onyour own problems, fixating on
yourself.
And look, I'm a life coach.
I have made it my job to workwith people about the stuff
(27:35):
going on inside of them.
So know that I'm saying this,as anything can be a gift and a
curse.
Anything can be stretched andtwisted to a painful degree.
So what needs some softening?
Where can you be subversivewith your attention?
(27:56):
Where have you been trained toput it and where else can you
share it?
Be generous with it.
Be loving, curious andcompassionate and focused like
lizard Blah, blah, blah, cryingin my jacuzzi, crying in my
(28:24):
jacuzzi.
If this episode swirledsomething in you, please share
it, send it to a friend and ifyou haven't already, make sure
to boop that subscribe button soyou don't miss what's coming
next.
And if you are listening onApple Podcasts, give us a rating
(28:47):
five stars and a written review.
Send me the name of your reviewand I'll add you to the monthly
raffle for a free coachingsession with me.
Subscribing, rating andreviewing are amazing and they
help us out immensely.
And you, listening, you sharingwith your community is the very
best thing that we in theJacuzziverse could hope for.
(29:10):
So thank you, crybabies, thankyou for your support.
Earworm theme music by the verytalented Kat Otteson, sound
design and editing magic by theeffervescent Rose Blakelock.
Keep questioning, keep feeling,keep rebelling in all the ways
(29:32):
that matter.
And remember the jacuzzi iseverywhere.
At any moment you could enterinto the version of
non-normative consciousness thatis Jacuzzi consciousness.
Dearest crybabies, welcome back to Crying in my
Fancy, the ebbs and flows ofliving an examined life where we
live, laugh, love in theAnthropocene.
I'm Dana Balicki,transformational coach of 13
years, former grassrootsorganizer, reverently,
irreverent, deep feeler.
(00:22):
Woo-woo Sherpa, your internetbig sis that you always wanted,
and slow-down medicine guide inexploring the weird magic of
humaning together.
The Jacuzzi Verse is where wedive into the messy, beautiful,
ridiculous and profound journeyof self-exploration and
(00:44):
collective evolution, becauselife is a lot and sometimes the
only thing left to do is to sinkinto the warm, bubbly depths of
it all and let it flow.
Crying in my jacuzzi, Crying inmy jacuzzi.
(01:18):
Crying in my jacuzzi, crying inmy jacuzzi.
(01:40):
My phone feeds me a neglectedmix of news, mostly about
quantum theories, breakthroughsin consciousness studies,
quantum theories, breakthroughsin consciousness studies and the
unseen worlds, communicationbetween plants and animals and
all matter, all things that Ireally love to just devour, and
every so often it throws in aplot twist, something that seems
(02:04):
completely random.
Most recently, it was a storyabout Courtney Cox dissolving
all of her face fillers and Iclicked because look, oracular
guidance is everywhere, and inthe article was a mention of the
phenomenon called perceptiondrift.
(02:26):
This is when people undergocosmetic procedures and lose
sight of their originalappearance I don't know who I am
anymore and begin toconsistently perceive new flaws,
new things that need attention,leading them to seek more
(02:47):
treatments.
And, in a nutshell, it happensbecause the brain adapts to a
new baseline, like the goalpostis just constantly shifting, but
the person doesn't know it.
Courtney didn't know it.
Speaker 2 (03:01):
God, oh my God poor.
Monica Courtney didn't know it.
God, oh my God poor.
Speaker 1 (03:04):
Monica, and I don't actually want to debate, take
this episode to debate or judgecosmetic surgery, but I will say
that I was recently at FreezeLA.
It's an art fair in LA and Iwas walking behind a woman whose
energy was just hot, magnetic,crackly in an electric sort of
(03:30):
way and everyone was justlooking amazing.
All over the place Just outfitsfor days.
And then, when this one womanturned around, I realized it was
Justine Bateman.
She looked amazing.
Realized it was Justine Bateman, she looked amazing.
I remember reading an interviewwith her when her book Face, one
Square Foot of Skin came out afew years ago, and she had this
(03:54):
quote in it where she said myface is rad, I think I look rad,
my face represents who I am, Ilike it, something like that,
like, and then basically, andthat's it, that's all there is
to it.
It stuck with me, okay, but Iwant to go deeper into
perception drift.
So perception drift happens toindividuals and there's another
(04:23):
cognitive phenomenon that I wantto apply, yes, to individuals,
but also to the collective, andit's called change blindness.
Right in the pocket there withperception drift, it's when
people fail to noticesignificant changes in their
environment, even when they'relooking right at them in their
(04:45):
environment, even when they'relooking right at them.
And so, while perception driftis about scanning for flaws and
trying to fix which is acultural addiction, affliction
of sorts late stage capitalismthrives on binaries, on the
binary of right and wrong.
So it works.
If something is always wrongand then needs fixing, where are
(05:09):
we going to get the solution, Iwonder?
Surprise from the people whotold us the definition of the
wrongness.
So we, as good littleunconscious, mostly consumers of
greed and misery, we've beendeeply, so, so deeply
conditioned into thepathologizing, into this
(05:32):
problem-centric ontology, alwayslooking for the next wrong
thing, that we have fullylearned to see ourselves and
everything around us as problems, as wrong things needing to be
fixed, needing some rightness.
And if we're busy, busy, busyin the identifying of the,
(05:57):
obsessing over problems andsolving of them, right, because
we can get really good at it,and those problems are our
bodies, our beings, even thenwe'll be way too busy to address
any issues in the largersystems, because we're oriented
towards fighting our crow's feetover fighting fascism.
(06:21):
One's gonna get us free andone's gonna get us a lot of eye
cream.
Change blindness can have moreto do with memory and attention.
Maybe you've heard me talkabout the psychologist Daniel
Kahneman's work on theexperiencing self versus the
(06:44):
remembering self.
The remembering self isselective, it holds on to peaks
and endings, and thisremembering self is manipulated
by politicians' oppressivesystems, all of their agents and
sentinels.
And the experiencing self hasto do with presence, and so
(07:06):
we're following the breadcrumbshere, because another cause of
change blindness is limitedattention, which absolutely has
to do with our presence or lackthereof.
The early 20th century writer,philosopher, activist, simone
(07:29):
Weil wrote many things aboutattention and focus and presence
.
Maybe you've heard me quote hermention her work before, when
she would write about attentionas the rarest and purest form of
generosity In an article ofhers Attention and Will.
(07:53):
She writes many things.
I'll put the link in the shownotes below, but one thing
that's standing out in thismoment is the incorrect approach
involves focusing attention ona problem, a phenomenon driven
by an aversion to emptiness.
We fear wasting our efforts.
(08:14):
We must not desire to findExcessive devotion can make us
dependent on our endeavors, canmake us dependent on our
endeavors requiring an externalreward that we might accept at
the cost of distorting the truth.
To me, that speaks volumesabout perception drift and how
(08:38):
we are culturally trained toperceive ourselves as flawed
creatures, viewing ourselves asproblems.
But with incredible focus andattention we could possibly
solve those problems.
(08:59):
Then we would be full, then wewould be whole, then we would
matter, then we would have value.
Aversion to emptiness, thetraining to be attached to
objects, even if we are theobjects to objectify ourselves.
Speaker 2 (09:15):
Nobody likes to be objectified.
Speaker 1 (09:17):
And so then, we are trained.
We are trained in the ways ofperception drift.
Of you've heard me say itbefore pathologizing Of seeing
ourselves as a series ofproblems to be fixed.
Devotion to perceived essentialwrongness, what I have come to
(09:43):
call P-E-W pew, pew, pew,perceived essential wrongness.
What I have come to call P-E-Wpew, pew, pew, perceived
essential wrongness.
Anyway, I do it with my clients.
We do like a little a littlepew pew gun thing Anyhow, not
really translating over podcast.
(10:08):
Oh my god, you guys, thispopcorn is so good.
So a couple of years ago, on amedium-sized magic mushroom trip
, I discovered coconut currypopcorn by Comet Corn.
It was a transcendentexperience, a momentous day, and
Comet Corn accompanied mebeautifully.
After that I was surely chasingthe coconut curry dragon by
(10:29):
buying up all the little bagswhenever I saw them, which
wasn't all that often, becausehonestly this is kind of a niche
popcorn cult following sort ofthing.
You're welcome.
But I love this popcorn so muchthat one time I even just
popped by their Popcorn HQ inNorthern California when I was
in the neighborhood and I got atour of the plant Anywho.
(10:51):
I came all the way back down tothe high desert, to my home, my
community, and I really justwanted someone to carry it
locally so I could just pop inand get a bag whenever I wanted.
And of course the amazing AllRoads Design studio rose to meet
my popcorn needs and so nowanyone who comes to the high
desert can get the gift of mymedium-sized magic mushroom trip
(11:13):
sponsored by comic corn.
Just to be clear, there are notmushrooms in the popcorn.
It's just really, really good.
And I love the popcorn, I lovesherry and jeff, I love how much
they love it and the love thatthey put into it.
And honestly, there's no easyway to get this popcorn.
You can't just go online andbeep boop, beep boop it to your
(11:33):
door.
This ad is for the intrepidsnacker, the committed
popcornologist, the one who iswilling to go the extra mile and
go to CometCorncom, click onin-store, scroll down, put in
their zip code and see if thereis indeed a spot near you
selling this magic.
Or you can go to one of yourlocal fine food purveyors and
(11:55):
see if they will carry it foryou.
This is a great way to makefriends and build community for
the rebellion.
So perception drift is like ourown bodies, right Change
blindness is when we're lookingat something and we fail to see
the changes that are happeningin the scene around us or in
(12:20):
front of us.
And I'm stretching thedefinitions a bit here and
overlapping them and sort ofmixing them together.
This gets me to thinking aboutJohan Hari's book Stolen Focus
why you Can't Pay Attention, andhow to Think Deeply Again.
(12:40):
I'll talk about this bookbefore 10 out of 10 recommend.
Also, when he's reading it, ifyou listen to it like on Audible
or audiobook, his voice strainsand he sounds like British
Kermit the Frog.
It's endearing.
So there's a quote from StolenFocus that I want to add this
breadcrumb to the path.
(13:02):
Here it goes Democracy requiresthe ability of a population to
pay attention long enough toidentify real problems,
distinguish them from fantasies,come up with solutions and hold
their leaders accountable ifthey fail to deliver them.
So perhaps in this we canunderstand the role of change,
blindness and pathologizing, butseeing ourselves as problems,
(13:24):
not the world around us.
Not that I'm endorsing viewingeverything as a problem, but
hopefully you get what I'msaying here that if we're just
truly focused on ourselves inthat almost toxic level of toxic
individualism which is acharacteristic white supremacy
(13:46):
thank you, tim Okun and alliesfor helping us to continue to
understand how white supremacytouches us all and we can also
understand how we've fallen into, or how we regularly fall into,
change, blindness, blindness.
(14:19):
In the book stolen focus, harrytalks about many things, but the
saturation of information, howmuch more information we are
taking into our bodies, into ournervous systems, how it has
been ramping up really since thecreation of the printing press,
right.
So this isn't just about theinterwebs, though that is a huge
factor technology and all theways in which it conditions us
(14:43):
to give away our attention.
Hari also writes people whocan't focus will be more drawn
to a simplistic, authoritariansolution and less likely to see
clearly when they fail.
The truth is, you're living ina system that's pouring acid on
your attention every day andthen you're being told to blame
(15:03):
yourself.
Blame yourself for theoppressive nature of the systems
that are meant to keep youfueling them.
Tweak your own habits.
Manage your screen time better.
Be more disciplined.
Work in 45 minute spurts with alittle 10 minute thing between
(15:27):
pomodoro, blah, blah, blah.
Work on your wellness routine.
Why don't you go do some Yoga,or maybe some face yoga, fix
your face?
Oh, you don't have the money.
That's probably your fault too,never mind capitalism.
I don't think this is a verycatchy tune, but hopefully you
(15:53):
like get the drift.
Another note that the wealth andhellenist industry is
consistently well.
The neoliberalization ofwell-being and health that I
like to call wealth andhellenist is consistently
telling us that we can do better, make it better if we just try
(16:16):
a little harder, want a littlemore manifest, a little harder.
This is why I'm alwaysyammering on about our attention
and how we use our attentionand how we can be subversive
with our attention.
These are acts, generative actsof our presence, and not just
in these small little personalways, but collectively we must
(16:40):
use our attention.
We must pay attention to whatis happening to Mahmoud Khalil,
columbia graduate student, greencard holder, syrian-born
Palestinian, snatched from hishome in front of his wife, eight
months pregnant, no warrant, nocrime, charged, spirited away,
(17:05):
kidnapped to a detention centerin Louisiana, all for being
involved in the Gaza encampmentsat Columbia University.
And if you didn't see that oryou forgot about it, change
blindness.
There's so many things I know.
There's so much.
I don't want to minimizeoverwhelm because, as you'll
(17:27):
hear in my interview with SarahPayton, we talk about overwhelm
and how it diminishes ourability to access our healthy
nose, not like the nose on ourface, which would actually fit
into this conversation here, butour healthy N-O's and that'll
(17:50):
show up in so many ways.
I mean, that is, that is aboutour attention and that we cannot
distinguish between what isours and not ours when we are in
overwhelm.
What is for us and what is notfor us.
Speaker 2 (18:07):
Psst, hey there.
So Dana doesn't know we're here, but it's important.
Yeah, we slipped in through ourrobots-only wormhole to ask you
to leave a review for the oneand only podcast broadcasting
from the Jacuzzi-verse.
Speaker 1 (18:21):
Did I hear somebody say wormhole?
Speaker 2 (18:25):
You sure did, Connie.
Speaker 1 (18:27):
Oh, okay, I just didn't want to be left out of
the party.
Speaker 2 (18:31):
We portaled in here to remind listeners how much it
means to all of us that theyrate and leave a review, even
just a short one.
Oh, yes, absolutely.
Speaker 1 (18:41):
Go, punch some buttons, y'all.
It only takes a second Time's.
Time's a construct anyway, butyou got all the time in the
world.
So two things, my darling,darling crybaby.
One always nervous systemtending.
(19:02):
We are all being pulled intohigh stress everything, and when
we're in high stress, thethings that we need to cultivate
presence can feel tormenting,so difficult.
So for right now, just for amoment, you're just going to put
your feet on the ground, take acouple of nice deep breaths In
(19:28):
and out, maybe later when you'reout and about, or if you're out
and about right now, go lean ona tree, ask it if it's okay to
just send some of your energydown into it and then say thank
you.
Or a nice big rock oh, it's anice rock, because healing
(19:49):
happens in relationship.
All matter is agential.
The other thing I want to bringup reading and about the
benefits of reading fiction.
(20:10):
I quoted a lot of nonfictionhere in this episode, but I'm
also an avid fiction reader andlistener.
Listener, and how.
When we read stories and thereare characters living their
lives that may be quitedifferent from ours or maybe not
(20:31):
too different, it expands ourability, our capacity for
empathy.
There's a James Baldwin quotethat goes.
You think your pain and yourheartbreak are unprecedented in
the history of the world.
But then you read.
It was books that taught methat the things that tormented
me most were the very thingsthat connected me with all the
(20:54):
people who were alive, who hadever been alive.
So a few books I want torecommend that have swollen my
heart and definitely expanded mycapacity.
I could feel it.
Some are short, some are longer.
(21:14):
Check them out, see whatresonates.
The book Split Tooth byIndigenous writer Tanya Tagak.
She's a Canadian Inuk throat,singer and songwriter and actor,
visual artist and novelist.
She also played the doula inthe most recent season of True
(21:38):
Detective Night Country.
Highly recommend Okay.
Henry Hoke's Open Throat, anentire work of fiction written
through the perspective of amountain lion living in the
Hollywood hills, grappling withthe loneliness and the
complexities of the human world.
(22:00):
So good, and the complexitiesof the human world, so good.
Psalm for the Wild built byBecky Chambers.
A shorty but a goody, about aparallel timeline in the future
After the great awakening of therobots and how humanity moved
(22:21):
on and created itself anew.
Ocean Vuong's On Earth Were,briefly, gorgeous.
Not a work of fiction, but sucha beautiful poetic story.
It's about growing up as aVietnamese immigrant, as a gay
(22:43):
teen in connecticut,relationships with his mother,
his grandmother, lovers, poetry,the world how high we go in the
dark by sequoia nagamatsu, oneof my faves.
I don't even know how toexplain this one.
There are so many overlappingnarratives and a parallel
(23:11):
timeline of humanity and itslast unknowing throes of its
existence.
Oh, so poignant so beautiful Oohand Matrix by Lauren Groff,
about a 12th century nun whoprotects her Abbey from
intruders.
Queerness, rebellion,connection with nature, all the
(23:38):
things.
Another few favorites are theFuture of Another Tim timeline
by annalee newitz.
It's about time travel, but notin a way I've ever read or seen
any other books or moviesdesigned in this way, and
includes fighting againstreligious nuts to protect
(24:02):
reproductive rights, and somehowsome riot girl culture gets
mixed in there.
Highly recommend Girls to thefront.
Another one that I'm justreading now is from my dear
friend, nancy Krikorian, calledthe Burning Heart of the World.
It's the story of a BeirutArmenian family before, during
(24:25):
and after the Lebanese Civil War.
She writes of Armenian diasporaand centers her stories on
women and girls in a poetic,intergenerational trauma,
tenderness kind of way.
And of course, works by OctaviaButler her Exogenesis series,
(24:46):
one of my favorites Tomi Adeyemi, patron Saint Ursula Le Guin
the list goes on and on.
Remember this isn't just a goread books and forget about the
world.
This is read to draw yourattention back to yourself, to
(25:06):
harness it, to reclaim it, tofind your agency again if you
have become totally uncenteredand ungrounded, which is
happening to all of us all thetime and practice that
subversive use of your ownattention.
Practice compassion, practicecuriosity, practice slowing down
(25:31):
, practice feeling knowing thatyour heartbreak is the thing
that will connect you with allpeople through time through
space.
Connect you with all peoplethrough time through space.
Or maybe, go back to a bookthat you loved and read it again
.
Pay attention to, perhaps, whatyou didn't notice or didn't
(26:01):
remember.
Share your favorite books witha friend or a co-worker or
someone on the street I don'tknow the person who sells you
your morning coffee at thebodega.
Oh, my goodness, there's alittle tiny lizard in my office,
hello friend.
Hello friend, you know, yearsago I had a guy that I spoke to,
(26:27):
connected with, called Lizard,and a mountain lion who had a
name, but Lizard was just Lizard, and Lizard actually had the
medicine always for me, a focusand attention.
So I am not surprised thatlizard has made its way I mean,
(26:48):
I do live in the desert, okay,but made its way into our space.
I offer you the gift of lizard,the medicine of attention, and
may it be soft.
May you give yourselfpermission to not take it all in
, to just take in some, to besubversive, to choose to be in
(27:15):
your agency.
You may be over-indexing onyour own problems, fixating on
yourself.
And look, I'm a life coach.
I have made it my job to workwith people about the stuff
(27:35):
going on inside of them.
So know that I'm saying this,as anything can be a gift and a
curse.
Anything can be stretched andtwisted to a painful degree.
So what needs some softening?
Where can you be subversivewith your attention?
(27:56):
Where have you been trained toput it and where else can you
share it?
Be generous with it.
Be loving, curious andcompassionate and focused like
lizard Blah, blah, blah, cryingin my jacuzzi, crying in my
(28:24):
jacuzzi.
If this episode swirledsomething in you, please share
it, send it to a friend and ifyou haven't already, make sure
to boop that subscribe button soyou don't miss what's coming
next.
And if you are listening onApple Podcasts, give us a rating
(28:47):
five stars and a written review.
Send me the name of your reviewand I'll add you to the monthly
raffle for a free coachingsession with me.
Subscribing, rating andreviewing are amazing and they
help us out immensely.
And you, listening, you sharingwith your community is the very
best thing that we in theJacuzziverse could hope for.
(29:10):
So thank you, crybabies, thankyou for your support.
Earworm theme music by the verytalented Kat Otteson, sound
design and editing magic by theeffervescent Rose Blakelock.
Keep questioning, keep feeling,keep rebelling in all the ways
(29:32):
that matter.
And remember the jacuzzi iseverywhere.
At any moment you could enterinto the version of
non-normative consciousness thatis Jacuzzi consciousness.
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