Listen to Your Day | Paul Angone

What you pay attention to, you become. So do you want to become the things you're paying attention to online? Or do you want to become more like your Lord Jesus?

Or do you want to become a better dad or a better mom or a better spouse? Because that's what you need to pay attention to. Welcome to Building Relationships with Dr. Gary Chapman, author of the New York Times bestseller "The 5 Love Languages" . In today's world of constant hurry and distraction, it can be difficult to focus on what's important. Author and speaker Paul Angoni wants to help you pay attention to your life. Paul wants to help you embrace the life-changing practice of listening to your day.

We're going to talk about that straight ahead and you can find out more at our website buildingrelationships.us which leads me to make this observation, Gary. You seem to have learned early on in life how to pay attention, which is partly, you know, listening well is a part of that. How did you learn to do that?

Chris, that's a question I've never been asked. How did I learn to do that? No, I am very much into the moment. You know, my wife has a saying, wherever you are, be all there. And I've tried to follow that through the years.

You know, if I'm counseling a couple, they have my full attention for the time that I'm with them. And I try to be sensitive to people around me as I walk out of a restaurant. You know, if I see somebody, I don't even know them, but I might make a comment about how wonderful the food looks or hope you leave something here for me. I just enjoy, you know, interfacing with people. And I guess my parents, neither one of them were quite like that. But I think it's been a growing thing too, because I'm not by nature, I'm not an extrovert by any means.

You know, when you pay attention to people around you, they'll almost always respond in a positive way. Because in our world, especially today, we're not talking to people. We're not interfacing. We're just each doing our own thing. Even in the airplanes, they don't talk anymore in airplanes.

Most people just sit there, you know. You know, the observation I have about you, and the folks listening don't know this, when we do a Dear Gary broadcast and we play the questions for Dr. Chapman, it is the first time he's hearing them. He doesn't hear these ahead of time. When we record it, that's when he hears it the first time. And he will pick up on things, and I've probably heard him four or five times. He will pick up on things in the question that he responds to and remembers and addresses because he listens so well.

So I think there's a part of a spiritual gift, it's part intentionality on your part, but it's also part of the way that God has made you to really listen well, which leads right into our guest today. He is one of the nation's sought-after voices to young professionals, people going through change and transition, and those who want to live intentionally. He's the bestselling author of 101 Secrets for Your Twenties, and 25 Lies 20-Somethings Need to Stop Believing. He has a master's degree in organizational leadership, and his new book is our featured resource. Paul Angoni has written Listen to Your Day, The Life-Changing Practice of Paying Attention.

Find out more at buildingrelationships.us. Well, Paul, welcome back to Building Relationships. Thank you so much. It's an honor to be here. You know, last time you were here, you talked about millennials and some of the struggles that they're up against in today's world, but you're encouraging every age to learn to pay attention, right?

Yeah, that's correct. Yeah, I wrote my initial books, 101 Secrets for Your Twenties, 25 Lies, 20-Somethings Need to Stop Believing, because basically I felt like such a failure in my 20s. It was a real struggle in my 20s.

I became passionate about that specific decade of life and how do you do it well. Well, that was the same with this new book, Listen to Your Day, The Life-Changing Practice of Paying Attention, is I felt like I was failing at my ability to pay attention to what's important. I felt like I was really losing the skill set and the art of paying attention well. So is that what got you interested in this topic and writing this book?

Yeah, it really was. And I think for many of us, just even that setting on your phone, I don't know if anybody has this set up where it tells you at the end of the week how much time you've spent on your phone. It was really quite alarming for me where I would look at it and it would say five, six, seven hours a day that I was spending looking at my phone. And obviously we can be distracted by lots of things.

It's not just our phones. But obviously in today's age, that's one of the biggest distractions. And I felt like I was really losing that intentionality of my attention. And I was missing so much of what was going on right in front of me to where I couldn't even focus for five minutes to read a book, which is hard when you're an author and then you need to write a book. That becomes even a more difficult process. So I really had to live what I was researching, what I was writing.

I had to live that so that I could write this book. Yeah. So you say that our whole lives are influenced by what we pay attention to. So what do you mean by that? And can you give us some examples?

Yeah. A great example is what we would call an expert. You know, I think an expert is a great example of somebody who has paid attention to something to a focused extent more than anybody else. You know, an expert doesn't have to be just, you know, way more hyper intellectual than the rest of us.

No, I think it's the opposite. I think they've just chosen to focus in on something with a heightened focused intensity because they're passionate about it because they really care about it. You know, that's that's you, Dr. Chapman.

You focused in on relationships because you were passionate about it. And so you're an expert at that because you've just given it your focused attention. And, you know, that's what a doctor is. You know, a doctor doesn't just become a doctor overnight.

They literally become what they've been paying attention to for years and studying. And really, we really hope that our doctor has done a good job at paying attention to that when they're opening us up for surgery. We hope they've really focused their attention.

Well, correct. You know, and that's the same for all of us. You know, we have to we have to focus our attention and then we start becoming what we're paying attention to. You know, so if all we're paying attention to is the headlines on Twitter, you know, we're we're going to become what those headlines are. And I think that can be a scary thing for many of us. I think many of our listeners can agree with what you're saying, likely seeing it in ourselves, to be sure. Now, talk about the term that you use or one term you use, obsessive comparison disorder.

What is that and how does it affect our attention? Yeah, that's it's a it's one I coined years ago back in 101 Secrets for Your Twenties. And I just see it as such a problem in today's age. You know, you used to have to go to your 10 year reunion or 20 year reunion.

Right. And that's when you would buddy up and down to see who's who's doing better than whom. But you just had to fake it for one night. You know, you lose some weight, get a toupee, rent a BMW, you know, whatever it took just to fake it that you were you know, you were a success.

That you were doing something great with your life. You know, snapshotted images, those edited and filtered images with everybody else. And we're obsessively doing this, you know, at the back of a line or waiting in an airplane or an elevator, you know, any awkward, boring, quiet moment, where maybe we would even prayed in the past, you know, please, Lord, help me in this situation or talking to the Lord. Now we're replacing it with our phone and pulling up all these images and obsessively comparing ourselves. And man, how damaging is that to our peace, to our well being?

That's for sure. Well, you know, I spend a lot of my time reflecting on "The 5 Love Languages" , because that concept has so changed my life and the lives of a lot of my counselees and as well as millions of people who have gotten the concept. But I'm sitting here thinking that whole concept relies on the ability to pay attention to others and to yourself, right? Yeah, it's so important. And in my book, Listen to Your Day, I focus about four chapters on the topic of relationships.

And I talk about your book, Dr. Chapman, because it is so important. I think that the love languages have been so revolutionary for so many of us. But it really does start with that first ability of am I paying proper attention to the person across from me? Because really, it's hard to enact those love languages. It's hard to notice them if you're not paying attention to that person. And how do you how do you enact that love language if you're not there in the moment and seeing and hearing what they're going through so that you can then figure out, OK, this is when that love language needs to come in. This is the time.

This is the place because I'm paying attention to that moment. And if we're not, man, it's really hard. It's really hard to love anybody well if you're not paying attention to them. This is Building Relationships with Dr. Gary Chapman, author of The New York Times bestseller, "The 5 Love Languages" . For more ways to strengthen relationships or to take a brief online quiz to determine your love language, go to our Web site, buildingrelationships.us. You know, one of the ways that you can pay attention in relationships is to listen well to the other person.

Can you give us some some tips on how to do that? I think we can all relate that maybe we don't listen as well as we think we do. And maybe it just takes asking our spouse if we're a good listener or not.

Maybe we don't want to ask that question. Or to our co-workers, you know, asking or even asking our co-workers. And maybe that's a good exercise to start with. If we want to be humble and really start working at this, start asking the people, the most important people in our lives, maybe our children and ask them, do you think I listen well? That might be a surprising conversation for many of us to have. But there are simple things we can do.

This doesn't have to be rocket science. And it's even built into the phrase when somebody might say to you, can you please give me your undivided attention? And I think that's a great place to start because so much of our attention these days is divided.

You know, it's divided between so many things at the same time. So some simple things like sitting down with somebody and looking at them in the eyes. You know, your body language, pointing your body towards somebody. You know, you can even go to a coffee shop and study people.

You know, don't do it. Don't stare at them too long. But study conversations that are taking place. I did this when I was writing the book and I watched a couple as they were talking and their bodies were kind of tilted away from each other. And then I watched the gentleman. I could tell that conversation was getting serious. And he literally rotated his chair so that he would point his shoulders and his face directly at the person instead of being at an angle. And even that simple thing, and he leaned forward. And then I watched that other person reciprocate and they leaned forward.

You know, because we match each other's body movements. And I could tell that the conversation really picked up. Because basically that person made an investment in the relationship with their body language.

And it was really simple, but it had a profound effect. Yeah, I can certainly see that. Well, you know, all the love languages first start with our ability or inability to pay attention to the other person. So what's the relationship between building healthy relationships and our attention? Yeah, again, I think our connection and meaningful relationships, it all begins with paying proper attention to somebody. And so another thing that we can do, and you touched on this at the beginning of the episode. It's something that you're really good at, Dr. Chapman, is asking good questions of somebody. And so I even encourage younger people, let's say you're even going to like a networking event.

You know, those would always terrify me. You know, you felt like you had to like, you know, give out your business cards, like you're, you know, a car salesman, or like you're in the Wild West and you're like pulling out your business cards as fast as you can to hand them out to people and tell people your 30 second elevator pitch. You got to have that down to tell people how amazing you are, right? And I started realizing that that was all wrong. You know, and I started encouraging younger people, don't network like a machine, you know, go in relationship like a person. And the way you start doing that is don't even worry about talking about yourself. Throw out the elevator pitch.

Nobody cares, to be honest. Go in and ask other people really good questions and try to get the other person talking about themselves for the first five minutes. Almost make it a game. Can you ask good questions to somebody else so that they'll talk about themselves for the first five minutes? And I bet you when they leave that conversation, even if you haven't said more than two words about yourself, what is that other person going to be thinking about you? They're going to be thinking, man, I really like that person. Wow, I really connected with them. I want to introduce them to my boss to, you know, whatever it might be. And they might not even realize that you never even said a word about yourself, but you just showed them love and respect by asking them good questions.

And now they like you. That's for sure. You know, my wife can strike up a conversation in the grocery store and she's really good at asking questions. And in 30 minutes, she knows the whole life story of that person. So questions are important. Exactly. Now, you use the word currency, attention as a currency. What do you mean by that phrase?

Yeah, it's actually built into the phrase. It's right there, you know, pay attention. And I think it's helpful to even think about it in those terms of what payments are you making with your attention? So what are you investing in with your attention? You know, are you investing in, let's say, your children?

Are you making payments with your attention with your children? Or are they just a distraction? Are they just in the way? Are they a nuisance as you go and do more important things? Well, that's probably going to show up in your relationship with them. It's kind of that old adage that kids are misbehaving. They're real troubled kids. It's just a cry for attention, right?

And so it's like they'll do whatever it takes, good or bad, to get their parents' attention. And I even see that in today's age. We talk about younger people being narcissists by all the selfies, showing selfie after selfie on the internet.

It's a bunch of narcissists. Well, I don't really see that. Narcissists, back to the old mythology, he fell in love with his own image.

And that's why he couldn't leave the pond, because he fell in love so deeply with his own image. I don't see that with young people and them posting selfies. I see it as a cry, as a yearning from their heart for somebody to see them, for somebody to hear them. That there's that cry that's a yearning of their soul, and so they're doing it in this misplaced way.

But let me show another picture to get validation. And so we as parents, even in that way, we can pay attention and we can make those investments in our kids. And then also, where are we in debt with our attention?

Are we in debt to CNN and Fox News? Is that getting our choice attention every day or to TikTok or Instagram or whatever it might be? Where are we in debt to with our attention? Because we are in an attention economy. Everything wants your attention. So we have to fight and be intentional about paying our attention into important places that we're going to reap the dividends for the rest of our lives. Yeah.

Wow. I had never thought about attention as a currency, but I get it. Paying attention. In chapter five, you write about the importance of awkward, boring, quiet spaces. Is there a place for the mind to be silent?

And how important is that? Oh, man. Our minds weren't made for constant noise.

They just really weren't. And I almost equate it to that sponge at your kitchen sink that probably smells a little bit and you probably should have thrown it away a few weeks ago. And yet we keep using it all the time like it's still cleaning our dishes.

It always baffles me that we do this. But a sponge, if it's constantly in water or if it's constantly soggy, it becomes that way. It becomes mildewy. It becomes smelly.

Because it's never been given that chance to dry out. And I equate that to our minds. We're not giving our minds the ability to just dry out. To be quiet. To be at peace. To be at rest. To be praying or meditating, asking God, fill me with your thoughts.

Fill me with your peace. And if we're constantly giving ourselves noise, we're becoming that sponge that's constantly in water and it begins to smell and lose its effectiveness. Why do you think so many of us are uncomfortable in these quiet spaces or other things are going on and we just feel like... We're not wasting time though, are we? Yeah, I think we've lied to ourselves a little bit that we always have to be doing something. And I think we've kind of lost it on the altar of productivity sometimes where I always need to be productive. But actually I would argue that by always jumping on your phone, any space, any boring moment that you have, you're probably being very counterproductive. That's probably the least productive thing you could do.

And actually I found while I was writing my book, I started scheduling into my day a 30 to 45 minute walk. Where that was on my calendar and I would schedule that in. And I wouldn't listen to anything. As amazing as this podcast is, I wasn't listening to any podcast. I was just listening to my day. I was listening to the Lord. And I was just listening to the birds and my footsteps on the ground. And I'm telling you, those 40 minutes, I wrote so much of my book on those walks.

Because that's when I was getting the ideas. Aha moments, they don't happen by accident. They happen in those quiet still moments where our minds and our hearts are at rest so that the Lord can speak to us and we actually are listening. I've had a personal devotional time with God, of course, for years. But in the last, I don't know, three or four months, after I read the Scriptures and talked to God about what I read in that conversation, I've just been sitting there and saying, Father, I just want to sit here in your presence and just enjoy your presence. And it's absolutely incredible, the sense of warmth and awareness that He's with us. So, yeah, I'm identifying with that for sure. Wow. Why is it important to intentionally decide where our attention is placed?

Because we're the ones that decide that, right? Yeah. You know, I think there's been a lot of studies through psychology and neuroscience that's been studying attention and our ability to pay attention. And I dive into a lot of that in the book to kind of get the neuroscience behind this as well. And there's a theory called inattentional blindness. So actually, psychologists have been somewhat alarmed or surprised that we actually don't see so much of what comes in front of us every day.

So I mentioned a video that maybe some of us have seen a video like this. I'll do this in my keynotes when I'm talking to leaders about attention and paying proper attention, where there's a team in white and a team in black and they're throwing the ball around. And the narrator asks, how much passes does the team in white make? And I tell people, you know, really focus.

I want to see who's paying attention in the room. And the video starts going. They start throwing passes around and the narrator stops and I say, well, who got the answer right? And everybody shouts out seven. And sure enough, the answer is seven. You know, and everybody cheers that it was seven passes. But then the narrator stops and says, but did you see the moonwalking bear? And everybody's like, what?

You know, and they rewind the video and sure enough, a man in a full sized bear costume moonwalks across the entire screen. But you don't see them because you only see what you're looking for. So really, paying attention is not a passive endeavor.

It's an intentional choice. So we actually make our minds up and we choose what we pay attention to. You know, that's why you can see somebody who's made their mind up, even when they're going through the worst things in their life. And we know people like this, they're going through such hard things, but they're still joyful. They're still at peace.

They still have rest in their lives. It's because they've chosen to pay attention to the good things instead of dwelling on the bad. That's an intentional choice that they've made. So attention is not a passive thing. Paying attention is an intentional choice. Gary, I think that this is one of those relational things in marriages, in friendships, whatever.

If you only see what you're looking for, then you're not seeing what you're not looking for. So that could change a marriage. It could change a church, couldn't it? Yeah, I think you're right, Chris. No question about it. I think the concept of this book, the heart of this book, is something we need to regain in our culture.

Yeah. What do you say about that, Paul? Have you not seen the moonwalking bear in your own marriage? Yeah, you know, I have. And it really, again, forced me to live out what I was writing. So I even took the time to, let's say my wife and I are going to have a serious discussion.

We all know these, right? Where you're kind of dreading talking about something that's important. And I'm passive-aggressive. I don't like conflict, so I run from it. That's kind of what I learned from a young age, is when conflict was going on, I would run.

In my household, I would hide. And I feel I do the same thing, so I've had to become better at that. But I made a choice, and I thought, well, let me just try this. So instead of just going straight to, here's what's bothering me about you, or here's what I'm annoyed with, I tried to pay attention and really set a foundation for the conversation by directing our attention to, you know what, I know we both really value trust and respect with each other. And I know we both want to build a better relationship every day with each other. And that's why I want to talk to you about this, because I want us to just keep doing a better job at building this trust. So directing our attention to the foundation, to, hey, we're both in this together.

We're in this foxhole together, basically. We both have each other's backs, and we're going to look after each other. And to do this better, I want to talk about this. And that really had a more profound effect. Instead of me just throwing it right in their face, which I think is what happens most of the time. Instead of serving it up kind of on a platter in front of somebody, we just take that platter and shove it right in their face and say, listen to me. Well, that doesn't have a great effect, I think most of us have learned in our marriage, that that's not a great place to start.

That's a powerful point you just made. Tell them why you want to talk about this, the foundational thing. We want to keep growing, and I know you want to keep growing. So let's talk about this.

Yeah, that's great. Thanks for joining us today for Building Relationships with Dr. Gary Chapman. You can find us online at buildingrelationships.us. We have some great resources for you, a list of seminar locations coming up for Dr. Chapman. You can hear a podcast of the program and find our featured resource, Paul Angoni's book, Listen to Your Day, the Life-Changing Practice of Paying Attention.

Just go to buildingrelationships.us. Paul, we've been talking about, so far, that in our culture, we seem to have lost the art or the skill or the practice of really paying attention. Why is that? Why do you think we've gotten to this place, and what's the hope of regaining it? Yeah, I think this is such an important topic, obviously. This is why I wrote about it, because I think there is such a battle for our attention these days. As we spoke about before, we're in an attention economy. Every app and social media platform, they're all battling for our time and attention. They are getting more and more advanced with AI and all these different systems that's tracking our every move. It's just showing us what it knows we want to see, because it wants to suck us in and take our time and attention. Even technologies that I talk about in the book, the infinite scroll is one technology. That's on lots of them, but let's say Instagram Stories, where you click on a story and it shows you something, and then what does it do?

It just scrolls right to the next one, seamlessly. It doesn't even give you a chance to think about it. They've done that intentionally, and one engineer that I researched for the book, he called it behavioral cocaine, is what they've created.

They've done it to be as maximally addictive as possible, and they don't want your brain to catch up to what you're watching, so that you will continue to just watch 10, 15, 20 minutes of mindless videos so that you get sucked in and spend more of your time on that platform. That's why I do think it's so important now more than ever for us to be intentional with our attention and really take it back, because we used to answer our phones only when they were ringing. Now we're answering our phones when they're not even making a sound. You think that the technology has been a big part of getting us to where we are and not paying attention to the things that surround us?

I definitely think so, and I think it's only going to get more intense. There was a gentleman by the name of Vance Packard, and he wrote about the master manipulators that were invading the privacy of our minds. He was really worried about this, and he felt like, man, we really have to protect the privacy of our minds because they're invading it. He called it the hidden persuaders.

This was a book that he wrote in 1957. He was worried about this in 1957 with the advertising and marketing that was taking place, and people were really alarmed about this. Well, gosh, how much more advanced have those master manipulators become where it's not even people anymore? It's not the madmen in the office drinking whiskey thinking about how they're going to influence us. These are dialed-in AI systems that might know us better than our spouse knows us, and that's alarming. It's catering sometimes to the worst part of us, to our sinful nature, and that's what it's going to cater to. So I do think it is such an alarming and an important part of our history to take back our attention and say, this is mine.

I need to choose where I'm placing this and not let somebody else or something else make that decision for me. Yeah. So you were talking about the mindless scrolling and our social media, and our mind is still working. What effect can this have on our mental health?

Oh, man. We're seeing those, and as you know, Dr. Chapman, all the studies that are coming about, about anxiety levels going through the roof, depression levels, suicide, especially for younger people. This is an epidemic, and obviously we can't equate it to just one thing. This is a multilayered thing in our society. But I do get alarmed, and especially with younger people, when the email that I would get the most from them, and these are people that are highly connected online, that might have thousands and thousands of connections online, and the email I get the most from them is, I feel so alone. And that's such a paradox in our society to be instantly connected globally, and yet you feel more alone and isolated than ever. And it goes back to that obsessive comparison disorder. It goes back to just that lack of authentic and vulnerable relationships with people, because it's also highly manicured and it's built on this online system. So I think it has great effects to our mental health, this lack of connection and real relationships with people.

No question about it. The research talks about loneliness on college campuses, for example, that it's a huge problem. Here they are, intelligent people, all over, gathered together. They don't really know anybody, but they're doing all this studying and all the other things online, and yet feel alone, around people all the time, and exposing themselves on the screens to people all the time, and yet not having any real personal interfacing with people on an honest level, building friendships and that sort of thing.

It's tragic, really, to see what's happening. Why is it important to do physical things in a physical world? I think sometimes we forget that we are physical beings. I remember thinking how much my back and my legs and my body was hurting from my complete lack of movement.

Not because I was overexerting myself, it's because I had no exertion whatsoever. I was just sitting at a computer all day. I think there is something so powerful with doing something physical in a physical world, something that you enjoy. Gardening for me is something I really enjoy. We're digging in the earth, planting things, seeing it grow, doing it with my children. They know all the vegetable plants, they know what's what, and they're out there picking the tomatoes before I can get there. That's the biggest problem. They pick the choicest tomatoes and they gobble them up before I can even know they're ripened. That's sometimes the only way they'll eat a vegetable is if it's coming from the garden and they see it. Those are such important, rich, meaningful times that we just kind of step into God's creation, to the way that He has designed things, and to get away from the screen. I think we would do more for our mental health by digging a hole in the ground for a meaningful purpose than we would from 15 minutes digging in some drama, some dirt online. That's what people are dishing out the dirt online. You would do more for yourself if you just dug a hole in the ground.

You would probably learn more about yourself and you would get more feelings of peace and contentment than you would the other way. You're talking about the garden now. You're taking me back to my childhood because my father had a garden. As long as I can remember, we were out there planting potatoes and beans and all that other stuff, and then bringing them in and my mother canned them. We didn't even have television in those days. I'm telling you how old I am. Those were those rich, seminal memories.

That it's still coming back to you shows you that level of importance and probably that connection that you grew with your father during those times. Oh yeah, absolutely. Again, if we always have devices around and TV and everything, like you said, there's such a disconnect in all our connection.

Yeah, yeah. We're talking about so much information. We're talking about being saturated with information, information, information, information. How can we break free from information overload and actually comprehend what we're consuming and understand what's going on?

We're kind of blinded to it, it seems like. Again, I think we've bought into a lie of sorts that information equals wisdom. The more information you get, the more wise you are. That's not necessarily true. I think we can look in today's age and really paint a pretty bleak picture that the sheer volume of information has not led to a sheer increase of wisdom.

Obviously, wisdom is information and knowledge applied correctly in the season and the time and the place that you're living. You could say the same thing, but you could say it at the wrong time and it could lead to a bad outcome. Really, we would be better off, I think, sometimes of just hearing something, let's say even from a podcast. Even if somebody's listening to this podcast, if they heard something that really struck them as profound, I think they'd be really well off to just pause. Pause the podcast and think about it. Think about what you just heard. Write about it.

Really reflect on that. Again, we get so much good information. There's so many great teachers out there and we're hearing so much great information, but we'd be better off just taking even just one nugget at a time and pausing and reflecting so that we can digest it and we can figure out, okay, how do I translate this to wisdom in my life?

How do I really take this in and make it a part of my life instead of just more information that's just going in one ear out the other? This is Building Relationships with Dr. Gary Chapman, author of the New York Times bestseller, "The 5 Love Languages" . Our featured resource today is Paul Angoni's book, Listen to Your Day, The Life-Changing Practice of Paying Attention.

Find out more at buildingrelationships.us. Paul, we mentioned phones several times in our conversation here and you write that often our phones is really a method to escape. What do you mean by that and why do you think that's true? Yeah, I really realized in my own life and as I looked at others as well that we've become really good cultural escape artists, where again we can escape any awkward situation that we're in now. Like we even mentioned before at the onset of this conversation, we talked about even an airplane ride. Now when we sit down next to that person, it's like that 10 minutes before you can take out your devices again. It's kind of like the scariest moment of the plane ride. It's not because you're taking off and flying thousands of feet in the air, it's because I can't have my computer. What am I going to do? I can't talk to this person.

Let me put my hood on and just pretend like I'm sleeping for those 10 minutes. That's how much we dread almost that conversation. We talk about chance encounters with people and I started thinking about it as not so chance encounters. Because what are the odds that you're sitting next to that person on the plane right now? What are the odds? They're astronomical. What are the odds that you're in line with that person right now or that you've struck up a conversation with somebody at the coffee shop?

The odds are out of this world. And so what is God orchestrating? And at least should we give God the chance and should we at least pay attention to maybe what God is trying to show us, what God is trying to bring into our lives through these not so chance encounters? And I'm telling you, even with what I call an awkward wander at conferences, that's what I encourage young people to do. I say, go do an awkward wander around a conference with no set idea what you're doing.

Just awkwardly wander around and strike up conversations with people. And I'm telling you, that's how I got one of my book deals, which is awkwardly wandering around at a conference. I went up to the lady selling books at a major publishing house. I complimented her. I complimented the setup.

I mean, it was really well done. I just wanted to talk to her. I had no ideas. I didn't even think it was possible for me to get a book deal with them. But just that one conversation with her led me to her introducing me to the VP of marketing, and that's where I got my book deal.

And so we never know those not so chance encounters that we're missing every day because we're, again, escaping, cultural escape artists into our phones and missing the profound things that God wants to do in our life. You know, I had an experience like that just recently on a plane. A man walked in with a long beard and sat down beside of me. And I don't remember how we started the conversation, but he eventually said to me, I have not been in civilization for five months.

I've been in Alaska taking people on hunting trips and fishing trips. And this is I'm going home because my mother is sick and I want to see my mother. And we had one of the most meaningful conversations, you know, and he just poured his heart out to me. And, you know, and I walked off the plane and said, thank you, God, the chances of our sitting together.

I mean, what are the chances of that? You know, the whole book here is talking about listening to my day. So how can I know if I'm listening to my day? Well, first off, you know, obviously pick up the book, right?

That's the answer. But no, but in the book, I really do. I leave a lot of places for people to write. And I'm asking readers poignant questions throughout the whole process and giving people exercises so that you can begin to practice paying attention. And again, I do think this is something that we can practice. We can improve upon our ability to pay attention to what's important.

It doesn't just come naturally for many of us. It's something that we need to work on. And I'm telling you, if you do put in that time and that work, man, you're going to see amazing outcomes. You're going to see forward movement in your life, clarity in your life, stronger relationships and building those stronger connections with people. And in the last five, six chapters of the book, I even talk about mindset models, which is basically kind of like exercises for somebody to practice paying attention in a different way. So I even have something like the entrepreneurial mindset model. You know, how do you look at your day, listen to your day, but do it through the lens like an entrepreneur would. Even if you don't think of yourself as entrepreneurial, well, let's think like an entrepreneur today and see what that changes. You know, an entrepreneur, they probably pay attention to their problems in a different way. Where they might see a problem in their day and where other people might get frustrated and get mad. An entrepreneur might see a problem and they might get really excited. Someone must have done something about this problem.

Let me research. And then they get even more excited if it figured out no one's even touched this problem yet. Because now that's led to a chance for a product for their purpose to step in and solve that problem. So there's lots of these different things that are really helpful to kind of get out of our lane, our frame of looking at things. And to look at our day from different angles. And I'm telling you, it's been really profound for me to do these in my own life. Because I've seen so much different things that I wouldn't have done because you need that different perspective.

Yeah. You also talk about giving the mind a path and a purpose for each day. How does that bring clarity? Something as simple as how we're starting our day.

I know there's been tons of books and tons of people have talked about this. But it's really a travesty if we start our day with distractions. We really have to be intentional about how we start our day. And you have to make your day bigger than your distractions.

And this goes back to your why. This goes back to your purpose, your reason for each day. And so even starting your day with a question to yourself of what do I really want to pay attention to today? What's important to me today? What do I really want to focus my choice attention to today?

And we'll all have different answers to that question. But at least by asking yourself that, you're giving your mind direction and a purpose to that day. So that when you do start going down the rabbit hole of distraction, that might be the thing that stops you and say, you know what, my day is more important than this distraction. So I need to stop because I really want to pay attention to this business idea, to the next page I'm writing, to my spouse, to my kids, to my co-workers.

I really want to pay my attention there because, again, I want to pay dividends with this investment of my attention. So that's how we start making those intentional choices to give our mind a map and a pathway to paying better attention. Well, Paul, we've been talking a lot about this topic. I think our listeners are listening and will begin to take some steps. So what is one action step that our listeners should take after hearing our conversation on this topic today?

I think we've mentioned quite a few of them. There's been great examples of things that people can do, again, to be more intentional with their attention and how important this topic is right now. One simple thing I've done is, even with my phone and the relationship I have with my phone, is I've put in my home screen image. When I pull up my phone, it's a sentence, and it has a picture of my book on it, but there's a sentence that says, do I need to pick up my phone right now? And that's what I look at when I pick up my phone because at least that stops me sometimes.

At least it helps my mind catch up with this reflex response so that I at least can make an intentional choice or not to say, okay, no, I was just doing this because I was feeling awkward. I was escaping. Let me just pray. Let me just sit. Let me be silent. Let me think for a moment instead of just mindlessly jumping on the phone.

So that's even something simple we can do. Put your phone in a different room. Really start rethinking your relationship with your phone. Are you just doing it as a reflex response or are you using your phone with intentionality? Just by nature in our culture, if we don't have something to do this very moment, we pick up our phone, right? And that takes us, you know, Lord knows where, whereas if we didn't pick up the phone and just thought about what would be good for me to do the next five minutes. It's amazing how different life maybe would be. And when I go to speaking engagements, I'll ask people who after 20 or 30 minutes on your phone on Instagram or X or whatever, Facebook, how many of us leave that time and think to ourselves, man, I feel so much better about my life.

I feel like that was a great use of my time. I feel so much more productive and energized, right? We don't usually leave feeling that way. And so, I mean, honestly, isn't that the telltale sign of an addiction in some of our lives where it's something we don't even want to do and it's not healthy for us to do. And yet we keep smoking that cigarette or we keep eating that junk food. You know, it's that same concept that we have to have a discipline, really a self-discipline and a spiritual discipline with how am I choosing to pay my attention. And it really is that important because what, again, you pay attention to, you become. So do you want to become the things you're paying attention to online or do you want to become more like your Lord Jesus or do you want to become a better dad or a better mom or a better spouse?

What do you want to become because that's what you need to pay attention to. Yeah. The other place I've noticed this is we're so addicted to the phone that when we're having a meaningful conversation with our child or with our spouse and our cell phone rings, 99 out of 100 are going to answer the cell phone.

And communicate to their spouse or their child, somebody out there is more important than you are. And I don't know, that's not what we're thinking in our minds, but that's really what we're communicating. Well, Paul, this has been a great conversation. It's a good book. I hope our listeners will not only listen to what we're saying today, but will get the book and eat from these concepts and begin to change some patterns in their life, being more intentional to see where they are and to focus on what constructive things do I need to be doing today that are more constructive than simply just picking up a phone and seeing what's going on in the world. So thanks for being with us today. Thank you so much for this rich conversation. It's been an honor being here. Again, 866-424-GARY. A big thank you today to our production team, Steve Wick and Janice Backing. Building Relationships with Dr. Gary Chapman is a production of Moody Radio in association with Moody Publishers, a ministry of Moody Bible Institute. Thanks for listening.