Hello and welcome to another episode of Mindfulness Plus. My name is Thomas McConkey. I'm your host.

So quickly, for those of you who are new, I'll tell you

what we do here. We practice paying attention. But I already know how to pay attention, you think.

No, you don't. Not like this. Mindfulness is a practice that human beings have been evolving and honing over thousands of years.

It's a particular quality of attention we bring to experience.

And when we get it right, when we learn how to pay attention in a particular way,

everything goes better.

So listen up.

Each week I talk about one aspect of the practice, and then we just do it.

We practice it because talk is cheap.

With that said, I'm going to talk a little bit.

The concept this week involves your attentional system, how your attentional system as a human being

actually works. Here's a scenario for you. Imagine you're at your favorite cafe. If you don't

have a favorite cafe, if you don't go to cafes, just imagine through the power of mindfulness

that you're a person who has a favorite cafe and that you're there and you order your favorite drink, something like a latte or a chai tea, or you get a kombucha, open tap, whatever. The barista pours you real tall and you have to carry it across the room to an open table

and you don't want to spill it.

So just imagine yourself in this scenario, you're carrying this beverage across the room,

taking care not to spill, and ever so steadily you make your way across the room.

Notice in this scenario how attention is working.

It's doing two things simultaneously,

and one of them is something we don't often pay conscious attention to

until we practice mindfulness. So we're keeping our eye on the

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