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Rapt
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Rapt (edit title/settings)

Attention and the Focused Life

by Winifred Gallagher (Author) (edit contributors)

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Winifred Gallagher revolutionizes our understanding of attention and the creation of the interested life In Rapt , acclaimed behavioral science writer Winifred Gallagher makes the radical argument that the quality of your life largely depends on what you choose to pay attention to and how... read more

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Quotes edit see section history

  • “... your life - who you are, what you think, feel, and do, what you love - is the sum of what you focus on. (Introduction)”
  • “... as the terms in focus and out of focus suggest, attention shapes your experience by selecting and clearly depicting something in your external or internal world, leaving the rest in a blur. (Chapter 1)”
  • “... shift your focus from the past or the future to pay rapt attention to the present and experience reality. (Chapter 14)”
  • Popular Highlights from Kindle Customers
  • “The greatest weapon against stress is our ability to choose one thought over another.”
    Highlighted by 187 Kindle customers
  • In short, to enjoy the kind of experience you want rather than enduring the kind that you feel stuck with, you have to take charge of your attention.
    Highlighted by 136 Kindle customers
  • To William James, wisdom was “the art of knowing what to overlook,”
    Highlighted by 126 Kindle customers
  • We must resist the temptation to drift along, reacting to whatever happens to us next, and deliberately select targets, from activities to relationships, that are worthy of our finite supplies of time and attention.
    Highlighted by 126 Kindle customers
  • According to psychology’s “negativity bias theory,” we pay more attention to unpleasant feelings such as fear, anger, and sadness because they’re simply more powerful than the agreeable sort.
    Highlighted by 108 Kindle customers
  • “Nothing in life is as important as you think it is while you are thinking about it.” Why? “Because you’re thinking about it!”
    Highlighted by 104 Kindle customers
  • if you could just stay focused on the right things, your life would stop feeling like a reaction to stuff that happens to you and become something that you create: not a series of accidents, but a work of art.
    Highlighted by 104 Kindle customers
  • “Everyone knows what attention is. It is the taking possession of the mind, in clear and vivid form, of one out of what seem several simultaneously possible objects or trains of thought. Focalisation, concentration, of consciousness are of its essence. It implies a withdrawal from some things in order to deal effectively with others.”
    Highlighted by 85 Kindle customers
  • When you feel frightened, angry, or sad, reality contracts until whatever is upsetting you takes up the whole world—at least the one between your ears. Life seems like a vale of tears, the future looks bleak, and the only memories that come to mind are unpleasant. The best explanation for why bad feelings shrink your focus is that in a potentially ominous situation, homing in on and reacting to any trouble quickly is more important than taking your time to get the big picture.
    Highlighted by 73 Kindle customers
  • you cannot always be happy, but you can almost always be focused, which is the next best thing. As the poet says in Beowulf, “Every life has more than enough sadness and more than enough joy.” By skillfully managing your attention, you’re able to experience both in a balanced way and stay oriented in a positive, productive direction. John Milton might have been thinking of the power of focus when he wrote: “The mind is its own place, and in itself / Can make a heav’n of hell, a hell of heav’n.”
    Highlighted by 47 Kindle customers
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Setting & Locations edit see section history

First Sentence edit see section history

We're all amateur psychologists who run private experiments on how best to live.

Table of Contents edit see section history

Introduction
1 - Pay Attention: Your Life Depends on It
2 - Inside Out: Feelings Frame Focus
3 - Outside In: What You See Is What You Get
4 - Nature: Born to Focus
5 - Nurture: This Is Your Brain on Attention
6 - Relationships: Attending to Different Worlds
7 - Productivity: Work Zone
8 - Decisions: Focusing Illusions
9 - Creativity: An Eye for Detail
10 - Focus Interruptus
11 - Disordered Attention
12 - Motivation: Eyes on the Prize
13 – Health: Energy Goes Where Attention Flows
14 - Meaning: Attending to What Matters Most
Afterword
Acknowledgments
Notes and Suggested Readings
Index

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

  1. Winifred Gallagher (Author)

Awards edit see section history

Classification edit see section history

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