In this neurocoaching talk, Susan Britton MCC explains how attention and energy are tightly linked in an "attention‑energy loop" that shapes our emotional state and ability to act toward goals. She cites Joe Dispenza’s principle that where we place attention, we place energy, and shows how positive focus fuels positive energy while negative focus quickly generates negative energy. Britton contrasts the brain’s massive unconscious processing capacity (millions of bits per second) with the very limited conscious bandwidth (approximately 2‑60 bits per second), illustrating why multitasking and interruptions overwhelm our conscious attention. She describes how both external stressors (deadlines, conflicts) and internal stressors (exhaustion, pain) further diminish this limited capacity, leading to distraction and reduced focus. The talk concludes with practical guidance: become aware of the brain’s attention limits, deliberately choose where to allocate attention—prioritizing strengths, values, and intentions—to keep energy high and move efficiently toward important goals.
Chapters
It's Susan Britton with The Academies with a neurocoaching tip. Today we're talking about attention, and where our attention goes, our energy flows. In fact, Joe Dispenza, the author of Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself, has a beautiful phrase. He says, "Where you place your attention is where you place your energy." And so we have to think about this attention-energy loop that is sort of constantly going on in our brains and bodies, and if we have positive focus, and we're putting our attention on the things that are positive, the things that we want, the goals, the strengths that we have to move towards the things that we want, then we are going to have positive energy. The minute that we put our attention on the negative, the things that we don't want, the things that are irking us or frustrating us or causing us to be sad or depressed, we are going to absolutely turn quickly towards negative energy. So that's not to say that you have to be Suzy Sunshine and positive all the time, but it is to be able to say that we can notice when we've gone into that negative focus, and that our attention there, because it's going negative, our energy is also going to go negative. And once our energy goes negative, it's very difficult then to be able to muster the energy towards doing the things that we need to do to move towards our goals. So it's interesting too because the brain has different processing speeds for the unconscious and the conscious. It's been said that we can process up to 2 million bits of data, or actually just millions of bits of data per second on an unconscious level. But when it comes to our conscious processing, in other words, the things that we can really pay attention to, that number is just a fraction, somewhere between 2 to 60, sometimes 80. Different studies say different amounts, but 2 to 60 or 80 amounts, or 2 to 60 bits of information per second. So that means, for example, that if you're listening to a conversation, you're going to require almost 60 bits of data per second to be able to listen to someone. So if a second person comes along and your brain has already maxed out that conscious processing speed listening to one person and someone else interrupts or tries to speak to you at the same time, it's nigh impossible to really understand both people at the same time. We can take that idea and apply it to the goals that we have, the things that we're moving forward towards. The attentions that we want to put on our goals. Because if we start getting distracted with things that are not priorities, with things that feel urgent but they're not important, now all of our attention, all of those bits per second, are going to be used up on things that are not moving us towards the things that we want. Stress is also a factor in all of this because the more stress that we have, the more anxiety that we have, then the, the less we have in terms of attention capabilities. So there's external stressors, things like deadlines or conflicts, and there's also internal stressors, which would be things like exhaustion or pain that can impair our attention. And so the more that we add to our anxiety, the more our neural circuits are going to kind of not function as effectively and give us the control that we need to be able to stay focused and pay attention. So lots of things go into that whole attention-distraction, attention-energy loop, and if we're just simply aware of my brain has has a limit about limited amount of bits per second that it can process. What do I choose to give my attention to so that I can move towards the things that are positive in my world and in my life, and that I can leverage the pieces of my strengths, my values, my intentions that are going to keep that energy as high as possible for as long as possible to move as quickly as possible towards the things that are important to you.
