Smith College STÖF

SCOTOMAVILLE 01.08 Smith College Fixation vs Attention

Daniel: "Where'd the sanitizer go?"

Angelina: "Well, we had a bottle of sanitizer and I got some aloe vera gel, I thought, at the store. Later on, I mixed it into our hand sanitizer, and then I was going to add more alcohol, (like Vodka) I realized what I had bought was baby-oil-gel (not Aloe-gel).>"

Daniel: "So your at-home chemistry... what did they tell you? Don't make your own gels?"

Daniel: "So what do we have? Baby-wipes? Which are not sanitizing."

Angelina: "No, but you can wash your hands with soap and water when we get back."

"Welcome back to Scotomaville. This is a really interesting time in history. You have an opportunity to become more self-aware than almost all humans on the planet. I mean, this is the first week in April 2020. We are..maybe..fifty to sixty percent up the first slope of the bell curve globally for one of the most challenging things that most people will have ever gone through. And you, like a good friend and helper, Garth Hardin, who's transcribing these videos, are locked down. You'e going thru things that you may not have chosen to go through."

    

"You're being forced to consider the world from a different point of view. That's a great thing. That's..it's a really great thing! And it's a fabulous opportunity to lead, starting here (motioning to head) and change the destiny of your life."

"Today, we're going to talk about attention and fixation. We're gonna make the distinction between fixating and simply paying attention. And because we're traveling, we're in an Airstream, I'm going to serve a number of the people watching to learn about air streaming and learn 'how do you live in a small space?' And so I can reach out to you, those of you, now, that are living in isolation. And in the future, those who are considering a tiny home and a small house and an RV lifestyle and even just getting along in your really big mansion."

"We're gonna use the tools that I have. And one of those is to be authentic. To be sincere. And as you can tell, this is not scripted. I haven't opened the book other than to try to organize some things. So I'm speaking to you from my heart, out of experiences that I've had. The difference between fixating on something, right? Like the scotoma card, the blind spot card, the exercise that I started with. The difference between fixating and paying attention has to do with the emotional baggage that it brings with it."

Key Points

• Attention is deliberate
• Fixation is a habit
• Habits can be changed with attention

WDWDWWD?

1. Which of your habits fall into the category of fixation?
2. What might be the earliest memory where that fixation began?
3. What discipline might yield better outcomes than the fixation does.

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