Is your brain’s attention system sabotaging your ability to perform at your best?
How you feel and perform depends hugely on what you pay attention to.
If you let your attention be controlled by others – for example, by social media algorithms or a torrent of email – then you will be less able to control how you feel and perform.
If you are stressed, your attention will seek out signs of threat in the world – such as a frown by a senior stakeholder or a worrying symptom in your body – and that makes us more stressed.
Too much stress worsens our attention and performance and creates a vicious cycle of stress and poor attention – and hence poor performance.
If you are anxious while giving an important presentation to a board, for instance, and see one of the board members reading their phone as you speak, then this will probably make you even more anxious.
Unless you control them, your brain’s attention systems will lock onto to this sign of threat. So, what you must do is consciously pull your attention away from its magnetic attraction to threat signals and deliberately target your presentation to the people who appear to be listening to you.
Because of the vicious cycle of attention and stress, however, that is harder to do than if you are in a low-stress situation. So, you must practice habits of controlling your emotions by deliberately choosing what to pay attention to. If you do this, you will feel more in control of your feelings and your performance and so you will build your confidence.
Try to think back to times when you’ve controlled your emotions by choosing what to pay attention to. Discussing this with a partner, friend or colleague can be really helpful.
When you notice that you have a negative emotion – such as anxiety, sadness or boredom – experiment with choosing to pay attention to something or someone, even to a positive memory, that counteracts that emotion.
People often feel that their emotions are caused by things that happen in the world when in fact they are controlled by what we pay attention to, not by the events themselves.
Which habit would you like to develop to better regulate your emotions during stressful circumstances?
Author: Professor Ian Robertson, Academic Partner at The Leadership High, Neuroscientist, Co-Director of The Global Brain Health Institute, Author of ‘How Confidence Works’
