(A)ttention
a-z challenge 2026
April begins a month of tending. I am excited to participate in this year’s A-Z Challenge once again. Getting started with the letter ‘A’ feels like perfect synchronicity with this month’s theme. What better way to tend ourselves and the world around us than by paying attention?
You might wonder what attention has to do with tending? This season is not only for tending our gardens and feeling in sync with nature, it is also for reflecting on the quiet work that we did during mid and late winter and to train our attention to tending to ourselves.
humanity’s greatest potential lies in our ability to pay attention. Everything we think, create, remember and love relies, most essentially, on how we were paying attention in the first place. Before your great idea was born into being, it was first conceived by your attention. The world is bursting with meaningless stimuli. Expressions, movements, objects and experiences all lie dormant until they are brought to life with human attention. This is precisely why two people experiencing the same event can swear to have lived two wildly different realities.
Traumas and tragedies are, in part, searing stories of pain and of darkness—but they are also invitations to open ourselves in ways that we have not previously been opened. The mechanism that does this hallowed work of transformation is gratitude. The change begins when we choose to shine the light of gratitude into the darkest recesses of our minds. Psychology Today
With so many competing stressors; from high speed digital content to 24/7 news cycles inundating our attention spans, the average person’s attention lasts only 47 seconds.1 So how can we get our focus back?
Re-train yourself to really listen. Have you found that in conversation, you will latch onto a comment and then spend the next several seconds creating a response to it in your head, while missing the end of the interaction? It is not uncommon for any of us to want to present our points concisely, however, as a result of this we aren’t truly listening to begin with. Our attention is turned on ourselves and our response instead of being fully engaged with the speaker.
Focus on going back to the basics when it comes to listening. Minimize distractions (yes, silence your phone), pay attention to body language, don’t interrupt and be comfortable in silent pauses, and make your listening judgement free. When you are focusing on the act of listening, your attention will not wander.
Gratitude is important because it trains our attention. Why might this be? When we begin to utilize a gratitude practice, it stems from noticing what is around us and how it makes us feel. Not only does gratitude focus our attention to the here and now, it also gives us the opportunity to tend our minds.2 It takes us from a outlook of lack to one of abundance.
A couple of simple ways to hone attention and tend to yourself.
Over the years I’ve incorporated a couple of steps into my morning routine that help me focus my day.
While I’m in the shower and take a brief moment to bask in the hot water, I close my eyes and list everything that I am thankful for that morning. Sometimes I simply start by expressing gratitude for having hot water to bask in.
When I go downstairs and pour my cup of coffee, I stir my creamer in, counterclockwise (as I have to think about that) and I say almost as a mantra; release. This is a cue for me to release all judgement for both myself and others for the day ahead. (A powerful trick I learned 10 years ago while my daughter was in DBT).
These two simple steps at the beginning of the day are a way to focus my attention, and tend to myself. I find beginning my day this way makes a huge difference! What ways are you paying attention to what needs to be tended as we enter April?
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Part of the Blogging A-Z 2026 Challenge
Until next time,
Hello friend! My name is Amy. I am so happy you have stopped by 🍃 If you are new here, a warm welcome to you! This space is where I am learning to walk the wise woman road by returning to my true self through seasonal living, reflective writing, nourishing food, intuition, and resilience. Rooted in the rhythms of the earth and my lived experience, these writings are an invitation to slow down, listen inward, and remember what nourishes us. If this resonates with you, I invite you to subscribe and walk the seasons alongside me.
This is an average. And then in the last five, six years, we found it to average about 47 seconds, and others have replicated this result within a few seconds. So it seems to be quite robust. American Psychological Association
By regularly experiencing and expressing gratitude, we change our perspective and think about things in new, more positive ways. This cognitive “rewiring” has a biological foundation, in that the brain reorganizes signaling pathways between neurons. This may also have benefits for brain health. One study found that people who experienced higher levels of gratitude had developed an increased volume of gray matter, brain tissue associated with processing sensation, voluntary movement, perception learning, speech, and a wide variety of cognitive tasks. American Brain Foundation
Wonderful advice.