What You Water Grows

Dear community,

I want to share a vulnerable truth with you. A story that has played itself out more times than I care to admit.

I'm on the floor with my daughter Mia, and she's playing with her beloved stuffies. She's got them lined up, taking them to the potty, dressing and undressing them, giving them rules to follow. Her gestures, her expressions, her little turns of phrase are unbearably cute. These moments are everything.

And then, without thinking, I reach for my phone.

I'm not even opening it for a reason. There's no notification, no purpose. It's pure reflex. And in that small gesture, something shifts. Mia glances at me, registers that I've gone somewhere else, and quietly turns away. She finds something else to do. The connection breaks.

When I catch these moments, they're heartbreaking. And revealing. Because I see exactly what I'm practicing. I see what I'm watering.

Our first Weekly Pause practice this month introduced this phrase: what you water grows. Your attention is like water in a garden—it nourishes whatever it lands on. Worries, resentments, gratitude, presence, fear.

The question isn't whether you're watering something. You always are.

The question is whether you're watering what you actually want to grow.

There's a neuroscience lesson here that I find both humbling and hopeful: what you practice grows. Every time you repeat a thought pattern, a behavior, a way of responding, you strengthen the neural pathways that make it easier to do again. Neurons that fire together wire together. This isn't a metaphor. It's biology.

Which means distraction isn't just lost time – it's practice. Every time I reach for my phone without intention, I'm doing a rep. I'm strengthening the circuitry of absence, of being pulled rather than choosing. But the reverse is also true. Every time I notice I've wandered and gently return—that's a rep, too. Every moment of undivided attention strengthens the capacity for presence itself.

Here's the context that makes this feel so hard: we're living in what I like to call the Age of Overwhelm. I've started sharing this as a kind of public service announcement in every workshop I give. If you're feeling stressed, stretched, exhausted, or overwhelmed—you're not alone. Constant notifications. Endless information. The pressure to respond immediately to everything. In this environment, our survival brain takes the wheel. Attention gets hijacked by whatever feels urgent, loud, or threatening. That's not a personal failing. That's the water we're all swimming in.

So many people come to our community with some version of the same concern: I feel like I have ADD. And there's truth in that—not necessarily clinical, but in the very real experience of attention fragmenting. Our most precious resource is scattered before we even notice it's gone.

As the wise teacher Pema Chödrön put it:

“My granddaughter realized that her whole generation was getting in-depth, intensive training in being distracted. To me, this underscores how important it is for her generation, and the generations that follow, and the generations that came before, to counter this trend by getting intensive training in staying present.”

After a month exploring non-striving (our January theme), turning to focus might feel like whiplash. Weren't we just learning to let go? But I've come to understand that focus and non-striving need each other. Focus without non-striving becomes white-knuckled strain. Non-striving without focus becomes drift.

The kind of focus we're exploring this month isn't about forcing your mind into submission—it's about choosing, again and again, to return to what matters most.

This is why I believe so deeply in single-tasking. Not multitasking, which neuroscience has shown is really just rapid task-switching that depletes our brains and mental energy. Single-tasking. One thing at a time. Full attention, even briefly, on what's actually in front of you.

It sounds almost embarrassingly simple. But in a world engineered to split our attention, choosing to do one thing fully is a subtle act of rebellion. It's how we stop practicing distraction and start practicing presence.

The world isn't going to protect your attention for you. The platforms, the pings, the endless menus of consumption—they'll keep getting more abundant, more personalized, more seamless. It's on us to treat our attention as the finite, irreplaceable resource it is.

So I'm experimenting with something new—a new pathway, if you will. I'm trying to leave my phone in another room when I'm with Mia. Not because I've conquered the reflex, but because I know I haven't. I'm not trusting my willpower. I'm designing for presence. And when I catch myself reaching for distraction anyway—in whatever form—I try not to judge. Just notice. Just ask: is this what I want to be practicing?

This month, I invite you to protect your attention like it's precious—because it is. When you sit down to work, to read, to be with someone you love: can you give that one thing your full presence, even for a few minutes? When you notice you've been pulled away, can you return without self-criticism?

What you water grows. What you practice grows.

Let's practice something worth growing.

Best,

Ryan

Ryan James Kenny, LCSW

Pause Cofounder