The relationship between love and attention

Tiffany Sauder: Merry Christmas. Happy New Year. This is the last episode of the year. It's crazy. I can't believe I've been pushing record for almost three years. It's wild. This has been such a forced process of reflection and discovery, and I guess I just want to start by just saying thank you for listening in, for following along, for the notes of encouragement, telling me that you're listening and that the effort matters, means a lot.

I think as a creator, sometimes you feel like you're just staring into the little green dot on your computer and you're wondering, is it helping? Is it Is it working? Is are people listening? Should I keep going? And, Your feedback just like, gives me energy to continue to dig deeper and reflect and continue to share. So thank you very much for reaching out and thanks for listening along. We are still doing the thing and, I still love it. So we're going to keep rolling.  this is going to be a really short episode, because I know your time starved right now. But I was listening to a podcast a couple weeks ago. the podcast is Diary of a CEO. D-O-A-C is like what it looks like on the little card And the host just has on like a myriad of different thinkers. And the interview was with Dr. Jordan Peterson, who is like a psychologist thinker. He's written some self-help books and he thinks about stuff and then shares his opinion and then you can decide if you agree or disagree. But one of the things that he said that has stuck with me and I think will for a very long time is he said, there is no difference between love and attention. There is no difference between love and attention.

So you can tell someone you love them. Every single day, but if you never give them attention, they will never experience love conversely If you give someone attention every single day, but never actually say the words love they're experiencing it as love It it doesn't matter that you've never said it they're experiencing your love by the attention that you give them and It was just a really great reminder. You've maybe heard me say before that with my kids, little kids demand your attention and big kids wait for it. And I mean, there's not a day that goes by that I'm not standing in the kitchen and Quincy is literally like pulling at my jeans pocket or pulling at my shirt saying, mommy, pick me up. Mommy hugged me. Mommy snuggle with me. She's explicitly telling me here is what I want from you and I'm very task oriented somebody who thrives on being very productive. She's literally saying mom. I need you to sit down on the couch And touch me, hold me, snuggle me, give me attention. That's very helpful to me. That stops me.

But my older kids, they won't, they'll wait for me to do it. They won't ask me to put them to bed. They will eat breakfast by themselves. They will, you know, pack their lunches in the evenings in the kitchen by themselves. Like they won't ask for my time. And it was a great reminder.

Attention and love are the exact same thing and being present is not the same as giving someone your attention. Just because I'm home in the same building as them doesn't mean that they have my attention. And so,I would say I, probably not so secretly pride myself on multitasking and being able to get a lot done at the exact same time, but you cannot give more than one thing your attention.

There's times I'll like A bag of rice away in the refrigerator because I just wasn't thinking about the thing I was, you know, processing on something else at work or trying to solve something else in my mind. And what I was doing didn't have my attention. And so it was like, you know, kind of a bit of a mess. And you've done that before too.

And so, I don't know, I'm just going to carry that little nugget with me into 2024 that love and attention are experienced the exact same way. And so, how do I Decode quickly where and how attention can be given to the people that I want to be sure feel love for me. So, this is not to make you feel guilty at all, but it is to help refine the intention that I know everybody who listens to this podcast wants to have in their life and the people that they love and the things that they put their gifts and talents towards. This is just an encouragement for you in that journey from the bottom of my heart. Thank you for listening along. Thank you for being part of this journey with me. I hope it's enriched your life and I am excited to walk through 2024 with you as well. Thanks for listening.