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Give attention to yourself

by | Oct 20, 2020 | Beautiful Leadership, Open Leadership, Storytelling

"Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity." - Simone Weil.

I love this Simone Weil quote, one shared on a group call of “We are Liminal” last week, a bi-weekly/fortnightly connection call for that group.

My experience of the group was that each person did take that time to give each other attention and to give attention to where the collective could collaborate to have greater impact.

At this moment, though, I pause to reflect on the generosity we can offer by giving attention to and for ourselves.

I write this daily post at 14:30 on the day before. I’ve been at my desk for over six hours already today with barely a break and it has been a time of deep attention.

I have focussed on several pieces of concentrated work, one for a client, one for a “coach the coaches” session I am leading on Zoom later this week, the third being work on the new design and copy for this website.

Each of these was on my list to do this week, but as I tend to keep Monday’s largely free for focussed work, I chose to give them attention on this first day of the week.

Each piece needed deep and focussed attention, something I sometimes struggle with, allowing myself to have “shallow attention” to do “busy work” and focus on the urgent rather than important.

Today, though, I am now feeling most grateful I chose to give that attention and to have created quality and meaningful work in a relatively short time.

Now? The sun is out and it is mild, so, having also now written tomorrow’s post today (you’ve watched Tenet by now, you get what I mean!), I am going to be generous with myself in a different way and go for a long walk.