Last week, I was asked to name one of my personal heroes/heroines. Her name is Amishi Jha - she’s a neuroscientist and associate professor of psychology at the University of Miami. 

Her work over the past decade has helped us to understand more about the brain’s ability to pay attention, the impact of stress and how to grow resilience. In particular, Professor Jha has spent years studying “the forces that degrade and weaken attention.”

In her recent article in Mindful magazine, Professor Jha explains that we are living in “Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, Ambiguous” times - a description she shortens to ‘VUCA‘.  The pandemic has meant that we “are all living in VUCA conditions.” So if you have been feeling overwhelmed or unfocused, struggling with staying on task or overcome with emotion, she reassures us that we are not alone.

So what is attention? Jha explains that our attention system is like a flashlight....