Hi, and welcome to your Daily Mindfulness.

Today, I'm going to talk about the

idea of taking an attention diet.

So these days it's been said that

our attention is under siege.

There are a few ways in which our

attention is really being pulled at.

First, there's just a massive amount of

stuff to pay attention to these days.

And just the more stuff there is to

pay attention to, the more difficult

it is to choose what to focus on.

And it's not only that is it?

Because these days it's also really

easy to find your attention being

pulled into consuming, what I

would call, just mental junk food.

Whether it's scrolling on your

phone, surfing the web, flicking

magazine pages, or just being

buffeted by marketing messages.

You know, in the same way that a lot of

junk food can harm our bodies, the huge

growth of junk information in the past

decades has really been bad for our minds.

So if you care to experiment with

the idea of taking an attention

diet, here's how it can work.

It's really simple.

The diet has two parts.

One is to consume just less information in

general, but especially junk information.

And then that can open up a little more

space in your life for other things.

And two, you know, it's really

decide to deliberately find highly

nutritious, uplifting sources of

healthy information and build your

habits in your life around them.

So the attention diet works very,

very similar to a nutritional diet

by cutting out a lot of unhelpful

consumption for a period of time.

Your body and mind adjusts and

becomes healthier and stronger.

And often, eventually you just no

longer crave so much for a fix of

the junk because your whole system

has kind of recalibrated how good

it feels to stop consuming it.

So if you're interested in giving

this a try, the kinds of stuff

that you might think of as junk

information is information that's

sensational, emotionally charged,

stuff that really isn't important,

helpful, or useful to you.

And also any of those addictive loops

where you find yourself just scrolling,

clicking, or watching without being

fully conscious of what you're doing.

Now offline in the real world, junk

information might be gossip, unhelpful

relationships or environments or

people who don't treat you well.

So, and the nutritious information that

you might want to increase is information

that's reliable, well thought out,

helpful to you and relevant to your life.

Nutritious information

uplifts you, supports your

personal growth and wellbeing.

And informs you about things

that are really important

for you to know in your life.

Now in the real world, nutritious

connections are often with

people who treat you well, where

there's mutual trust and respect.

People who speak thoughtfully

and kindly and make you feel

better when you're around them.

Similarly, environments such

as being in nature, being in a

supportive community group, these

can make a big difference too.

So if this sounds like it might be of

benefit to you in your life where you're

at right now, I invite you to have a

little experiment with this this week.

You might like to change only one

or two small things in your diet.

But you might also feel like

you want to do a bigger change.

I'll leave that up to you.

But whatever you decide, I

wish you really well with this.

And I hope it leaves you feeling more

uplifted, clear-headed, and happy.

Thank you for your practice

and your presence here with us.

And now let's settle in

for today's meditation.