At the end of 2025, I wrote about our intentions for this new year. Today, I start the 2026 blogging with the topic closest to my heart as a liberation practitioner: the quality of our attention. Let’s think about this for a moment: what are we paying attention to, and what impact does it have on our daily functioning, holistically and collectively?
As we enter the year in this interconnected world, our collective attention cannot help but notice the overwhelming mainstream narrative of political chaos, the looming prospect of war and constant stories highlighting the misuse of power. Power is something we centre and explore openly in sessions run with liberation psychology in mind. However, the continuous focus on the issues of misuse of power, such as global violence, interpersonal abuse, corporate greed, nations stealing neighbours’ land, generally the entitlement to normalise simply claiming what doesn’t belong to us (including other people’s bodies and psychological wellbeing) is exhausting to our nervous system. We may not think about it much. Now, if that input is left unaddressed, it will be stored somewhere in us. If we don’t rest from this work now and again, it will impact our health and wellbeing.
On the other hand, we could switch off the intense negative feelings and decide (or pretend) we don’t care. In fact, this is probably why so many people switch off empathy, thinking about healthy boundaries. If we do so, we switch off many other emotions – especially the positive ones. Here’s the issue: positive emotions are soft and subtle – we need to cultivate them carefully together with the openness, the ability to allow those gentle emotions in: awe, joy, kindness, compassion, inspiration. In that sense, boundaries that are too firm – such as complete media detox and blackout – may be counter-productive. If we put firm boundaries up, we also lock ourselves out of the world, out of those positive experiences and connections. Here is where the extreme social isolation is born, and, psychologically, it costs us a lot (I read somewhere – sorry, lost the link – that some measured impact equalled smoking a pack of cigarettes daily!).
The question arises then: how do we find the right balance and boundaries that are firm but also flexible – on our terms and serving our wellbeing instead? In my experience, the answer may lie in the quality of our attention. In my conversations with friends and clients, I often challenge the assumption that (social) media is always toxic. It’s so much more complicated! Even when we flippantly sneak those expressions into our daily chat: “Oh, you know, the news and social media, again…” – what do we actually mean by that? Yes, of course, news can be upsetting, and it can indeed be biased towards negative stories. Yes, of course, online interactions can be toxic if amplified by the algorithms. But what do we do with that? How do we choose the stories we follow and people we interact with? What do we pay attention to? As free adult individuals, we have the agency and choice to decide how we access the news, what we pay attention to and how we manage the impact of those stories on our functioning.
What I find most upsetting these days is that social media and other online platforms initially gave us the freedom to choose the stories we wanted to see. Unlike the structured TV schedule or printed press, online, we can direct our attention to stories and interactions we want, need and wish to engage with. And yet, here we are, submitting our agency and the power of choice to the algorithms and the assumption that all is not well.
So as we enter the year, I invite a different perspective:
- Let’s take the agency and choices back. Let’s practice them. Join the communities that uplift us. Follow stories that are explained, contextualised and grounded in reality.
- Let’s actively practice shifting our attention away from toxic, unkind or dysfunctional spaces and people towards those that raise us up and nurture our capacity for compassion and kindness. They don’t have to be positive or great, good, supportive, informative or lightening up our mood.
- Let’s reconnect in a meaningful way. Detox is great for those of us who actually lose the capacity to regulate addictive behaviours (in the studies of dysfunctional online gaming, the stats point towards 2% of users, which actually is not a lot). Instead of disconnecting, switching off and, as a result, shutting down – let’s engage in meaningful dialogue, rest and work.
Why is this important? The responsibility for our wellbeing is partially ours too. Yes, the environment and systems we live in have a significant impact on our health, but so do our choices – at least while we have them. So let’s not give them up in times of increased automation tailored in many offline and online spaces towards negativity and hostility. In that sense, paying MORE attention and practising engaged dialogue (with ourselves internally and with others) is actually very important for our collective wellbeing.
I have been so focused on building Voxel Hub that I forgot to include reminders about our work in our posts. Let me start now. If you find any of our stories helpful and wish to chat more or seek support in any of those areas, do book a free consult here. Let’s connect!
