A tribute to many conversations along these lines over the past year.
Attention and Values are two sides of the same coin.
We attend to what we value. Our attention is reflexively drawn toward what we value – not only what we think we value, but what our brain has been quietly trained to value through years of unconscious conditioning.
We value what we attend to. This is how that conditioning gets written in the first place. Whatever we repeatedly focus on – chosen or not – becomes the gravity that pulls our attention in the future.
This creates a loop.
That’s what makes the Attention-Values window so central to Self-Investigation. It’s not just a lens for understanding yourself – it’s the lever for change. But you have to find it before you can use it.
The actions that follow from this:
- Attention training – deliberately directing focus, repeatedly, to gain insight into your attention, and strength over what you want to focus on
- Noticing where your mind goes on its own – this is your operative value system revealing itself, not your declared one
- Extended contemplation on what you notice – reasoning about what you notice, to understand if it truly matters to you or not
Breakdown of Attention/Values
See a detailed breakdown of attention/values in our “model of self-investigation” video.
(Timestamp 12:40)