What's the Difference Between Attention, Mindfulness, and Awareness? // Part 1of 5
Channel: CJ Liu
Date: 2021-04-07

CJ Liu interviews Joseph Cardillo, Md (http://www.josephcardillo.com) an expert training on his book “The 12 Rules of Attention: How to Avoid Screw-Ups, Free Up Headspace, Do More and Be More at Work”. Attention is often misunderstand an in common vernacular is conflated with awareness, and mindfulness.  The passage below pulled from Dr. Cardillo’s book explains the difference 

• Mindfulness: Mindfulness can be understood as largely relating to energy. In this way, mindfulness itself is nonreactive to whatever you’re  observing. Think about this: mindfulness is not just about  being present. Rather, mindfulness is about increasing the  energy (currency) of your presence. For example, when you give sound more presence, you are making it crisper and sharper, of higher definition. The energy of mindfulness does that for your experiences. Think of increasing the brightness on your cell  phone flashlight by sliding the brightness bar upward to a stronger setting. Similarly, increasing your presence by boosting its  energy (mindfulness) will sharpen your focus. When your focus  feels too mellow, use your mindfulness mechanism to boost it. 
• Attention: Psychologists define attention as what (data) you are putting in your working memory (fast, short-term memory bank) to  activate procedures to achieve imminent goals. Although there are several different elements in our attention’s chain of command, here we are referring primarily to selective attention. Your brain’s attentional system is an electrochemical mechanism. It operates like an ultra sophisticated fetching system, targeting a piece of information, bringing it into your working memory, and connecting it to other information you  have stored there to create processes to accomplish tasks. Your mechanism for selective attention gives you say in which details to regard and which to ignore.
• Awareness: Awareness is a consciousness that  extends beyond the periphery of your attentional spotlight, and  you have it at your disposal. Often, however, you simply aren’t aware that you are aware. In attention training, our job is to discover more ways to use this machine to our advantage. When driving, you can be aware, for instance, of a hairpin turn coming up in two miles and yet focus your attention on  navigating through traffic directly ahead. As you drive, details  become available to you that the turn is imminent. Your brain’s  awareness mechanism almost instantly calibrates your attention to focus on the turn. Expectation, predictability, and surprise are all influenced  by your awareness. Because you are aware of certain details, you  may be surprised if something different from what your expectations are set for occurs. You are less surprised (or maybe not  at all surprised) if you are able to accurately predict from the  details. Your ability to attend advantageously toward goals is  also affected by these variables. Later in this chapter you will see  why and how you can use this predisposition throughout the  day to more effortlessly hit your goals and keep your good vibes  flowing. 

Dr. Cardillo explains that 96% of the time are brain is on autopilot and we mindless execute actions.  CJ provides a recent example of her unconscious behavior. 

In part 2, Dr. Cardillo shares how to retrain your brain out of being in auto pilot. 

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