Your Attention Is Creating Your Life

 Have you ever picked up your phone to check one thing—only to find yourself scrolling minutes later, unsure why you opened it in the first place?

You’re not alone. Digital distraction has become such a normalized part of modern life that we rarely pause to question what it’s costing us. And yet, quietly and consistently, our attention is shaping our nervous systems, our emotional lives, and the meaning we’re able to create.

This episode of Mormon to Muse isn’t about declaring that phones or social media are “bad.” It’s about asking a more honest, more powerful question:

Is my attention being spent on what I want to devote my life to?

As Mary Oliver reminds us, “Attention is the beginning of devotion.” Wherever our attention goes, our life follows.

Distraction Isn’t Just Social Media

When we talk about distraction, we usually mean social media—but it’s bigger than that.

Distraction can look like:

• Endless scrolling

• Online shopping you don’t intend to complete

• Constant podcasts or audiobooks that feel “productive” but leave you mentally crowded

• Streaming, gaming, porn, or any form of constant input

Distraction often gets framed as harmless relaxation. But when it becomes constant, it fragments our attention, keeps our nervous systems activated, and pulls us further from stillness, creativity, and emotional depth.

The cost isn’t just lost time.
It’s lost intimacy with ourselves.

And there’s no reason to feel ashamed of that.

Sometimes distraction is regulating. Sometimes zoning out really is what we need. The goal isn’t guilt—it’s awareness. When we notice our habits without judgment, we regain choice.

The Full Picture: What Digital Media Gives Us—and Takes Away

Especially for those of us leaving high-demand systems, it’s important not to swing into black-and-white thinking. Digital media is not purely harmful or purely helpful—it’s psychologically powerful.

What Digital Media Can Offer

• Social support and connection

• Access to mental health resources

• Shared language for healing and self-expression

• Community across distance

• Learning, creativity, and cultural exchange

For many ex-Mormons, online spaces provided something that once felt impossible: “It’s not just me.” These connections matter.

What Digital Media Can Cost

• Social comparison and FOMO

• Emotional overload and fatigue

• Increased loneliness and isolation

• Distorted reality through algorithmic echo chambers

• Loss of depth, nuance, and nervous system regulation

We are not meant to swing between outrage, grief, humor, and fear every few minutes. Our bodies feel that whiplash—even if our minds normalize it.

Digital platforms aren’t neutral. They’re engineered to hold your attention, because your attention is profitable.

You’re not just “getting distracted.”
You’re being fed—opinions, outrage, desire, fear, urgency.
And your brain adapts accordingly.

The Cafeteria Metaphor: Infinite Scroll, Finite Depth

Scrolling a social media feed is a lot like lining up in a school cafeteria.

You get a tray. You move through a line. You get choices—but only among what’s been preselected. Corn or green beans. Chocolate milk or regular.

It feels like freedom, but it’s narrow.

Over time, you forget the cafeteria isn’t the world. You forget there are meals made slowly, flavors you’ve never tasted, nourishment that isn’t designed for speed or convenience.

This is how distraction works:

• Endless content, limited meaning

• Infinite scroll, finite depth

• A pre-selected menu of what to desire, fear, emulate, or resist

The cafeteria isn’t evil.
It’s just not home.

And remembering that is often enough to awaken your appetite for real life again.

Why Distraction Is So Easy (Hint: It’s Not Laziness)

Distraction isn’t a discipline problem. It’s a nervous system strategy.

Your lower brain is wired to:

• Avoid pain

• Seek pleasure

• Preserve energy

A phone makes that job incredibly easy. When discomfort appears—boredom, loneliness, uncertainty—relief is instantly available.

This reframes the question from:
“Why can’t I focus?”
to:
“What am I trying not to feel?”

Unprocessed emotion drives distraction. Digital input becomes emotional anesthesia—fast, legal, and socially approved.

That makes it understandable. Predictable. Human.

What We Lose When Distraction Takes Over

1. Emotional Agency

When we constantly numb discomfort, we dull our ability to feel anything deeply—joy included.

2. Self-Initiation

Distraction doesn’t just steal attention; it erodes authorship. We become reactive instead of intentional, consuming instead of creating.

3. Desire

Desire needs emptiness. Silence. Waiting. When stimulation is constant, longing can’t speak.

4. Tolerance for Discomfort

Discomfort carries information. If we drown it out, we lose the message—and keep solving the wrong problem.

5. Internal Authority

For those leaving high-control systems, this one hits especially hard. Algorithms become a new priesthood, telling us what matters, what has value, who we are.

But your inner authority is not missing. It’s just been crowded out.

A Kinder, More Effective Way to Work with Distraction

This isn’t about willpower. It’s about devotion.

Wake Up Instead of Shaming Yourself

When you notice you’re scrolling, try saying:
“Oh—I’m waking up.”
Not “I failed.”

Measure how you feel afterward, not how long you scrolled. Your nervous system already knows what’s nourishing.

Create a Boredom Window

Not productivity. Not rest. Just emptiness.
This is where desire, originality, and emotional processing return.

Add Friction, Not Shame

Small barriers restore fairness:

• Log out after sessions

• Put apps further away

• Use grayscale

• Remove apps from your phone

You’re not weak. The system is optimized against you.

Redefine Discipline as Devotion

Ask:

• Am I mostly consuming, or am I making meaning?

Meaning-making can be quiet:

• Journaling

• Art

• Long walks

• Voice notes

This is why I created the Anxiety-Calming Art Prompts—a gentle way to retrain attention toward presence and embodiment. You can download them for free at
mormontomuse.com/anxietyart

A Final Reminder

Distraction isn’t a personal flaw.
It’s a predictable response to a loud, demanding world.

The goal isn’t perfection or withdrawal. It’s intimacy—with your inner signals, your desires, your life. Your attention is a form of authorship. Wherever you place it, you are writing the shape of your days.

You don’t have to disappear from the digital world to come home to yourself.
You only have to keep choosing, moment by moment, the deeper signal over the louder noise.

As Mary Oliver wrote:

“To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work.”