Posted by Eric Wilson
I was at Publix (a local grocery store) last week when I overheard a conversation that stopped me in my tracks.
“I’ve been a manager here for fifteen years,” one employee said to another, “and I’ve never seen customers this on edge. They can’t wait in line without checking their phones, they get frustrated over the smallest delays, and everyone seems constantly worried about everything.”
She’s not alone in noticing this. Anxiety rates have skyrocketed across all age groups—not just since the pandemic, but steadily climbing for the past two decades. We blame social media, economic uncertainty, political division, climate change.
But I’ve discovered something deeper: We’re not just living through anxious times. We’re living with anxious minds—and we’ve trained ourselves to think this scattered, worried state is normal.
The Anxiety Epidemic by the Numbers
The statistics are staggering:
- Anxiety disorders now affect 40 million adults in the US annually
- Teen anxiety has increased by 52% since 2005
- Even children as young as 6 are showing clinical levels of worry and restlessness
- Prescriptions for anxiety medications have tripled in the past decade
Everyone assumes this surge has external causes—more stress, more uncertainty, more threats to worry about. But here’s what I’ve observed: The external world has always been unpredictable and challenging. What’s changed is our internal relationship with uncertainty.
The Scattered Attention Connection
Through my research for my book “The Attention Compass,” I discovered exactly how our cultural shift toward scattered attention creates the perfect conditions for anxiety to flourish:
East (Future): Constant planning, worrying, anticipating what might go wrong West (Past): Replaying mistakes, regrets, things we should have done differently
North (Identity): Obsessing over our image, performance, how others see us South (Comparison): Measuring ourselves against endless social media highlights
When attention scatters in these directions simultaneously—which is now the cultural norm—anxiety isn’t a disorder. It’s the inevitable result.
The Attention Training We Didn’t Know We Signed Up For
Here’s what happened: Over the past two decades (with advanced cell phones especially), we’ve unconsciously trained entire generations to live with divided attention as the default state.
Notification culture: Phones buzz every few minutes, training us to expect constant interruption.
Information overload: We consume more data in a day than previous generations processed in months.
Multitasking mythology: We praise people who can “juggle everything” while their nervous systems suffer.
Always-on connectivity: There’s never a moment when something isn’t demanding our attention.
This isn’t just changing our habits—it’s rewiring our brains. Neuroscience shows that brains adapt to their environment. When that environment demands scattered attention, scattered attention becomes our new normal.
And scattered attention feels exactly like anxiety.
Why Traditional Anxiety Solutions Fall Short
Most anxiety treatments focus on managing symptoms or changing thoughts. These can help, but they miss the deeper issue: We’re trying to calm anxious minds without addressing the scattered attention that creates anxiety in the first place.
It’s like trying to still turbulent water by scooping out the waves while continuing to stir the pot.
The real solution is learning to return scattered attention to center—not as a technique for anxiety relief, but as a fundamental life skill for navigating an increasingly chaotic world.
The Cultural Tipping Point
We’ve reached a cultural tipping point where scattered attention has become so normalized that centered presence feels weird, slow, or even suspicious.
I watch people become uncomfortable when I give them my full attention during conversations. They’re so used to partial attention that complete presence feels intense.
My son Aidan, who is autistic, naturally operates from a kind of centered presence that our culture has forgotten. While most people’s attention scatters across multiple concerns simultaneously, he can focus completely on what’s in front of him. What our society often sees as a limitation is actually a profound gift—the ability to be fully present without the constant mental chatter that creates anxiety.
We’ve made anxiety our baseline and forgotten what natural calm feels like.
The Simple Practice That Changes Everything
Here’s what I’ve discovered works better than any anxiety management technique I’ve tried:
Before engaging with anything—checking your phone, starting a conversation, beginning a task—pause and ask:
“Where is my attention right now?”
If it’s scattered into future worries (East), past regrets (West), identity concerns (North), or comparisons (South), take one conscious breath and gently guide it back to center.
Then engage with whatever you’re doing from that centered awareness.
This isn’t about eliminating anxiety forever. It’s about returning to your natural state of calm alertness instead of living in chronic scatter.
The Ripple Effect
When you consistently practice centered attention, something remarkable happens: The people around you start to calm down too.
People especially are like tuning forks—they immediately resonate with whatever frequency you’re broadcasting. When you operate from centered presence instead of scattered anxiety, they naturally settle into that same state.
This is how cultural change happens: One person at a time, returning to center and inviting others to remember what natural calm feels like.
The Real Solution
The anxiety epidemic isn’t solved by better medication or more therapy (though those can help). It’s solved by remembering that scattered attention isn’t natural or inevitable—it’s learned.
And what’s learned can be unlearned.
The calm, centered awareness that feels so foreign in our culture is actually your birthright. You don’t need to achieve it or work for it. You just need to stop practicing the scattered patterns that cover it up.
Tired of feeling anxious and scattered? The solution isn’t managing anxiety better—it’s learning to center your attention so anxiety doesn’t arise in the first place. Email me at eric@theattentioncompass.com
Eric Wilson helps people transform scattered attention into centered presence. His approach shows how returning to center naturally dissolves the anxiety that scattered thinking creates.