How you focus your attention plays a critical role in how you deal with stress. Scattered attention harms your ability to let go of stress, because even though your attention is scattered, it is narrowly focused, for you are able to fixate only on the stressful parts of your experience. When your attentional spotlight is widened, you can more easily let go of stress. You can put in perspective many more aspects of any situation and not get locked into one part that ties you down to superficial and anxiety-provoking levels of attention. A narrow focus heightens the stress level of each experience, but a widened focus turns down the stress level because you’re better able to put each situation into a broader perspective. One anxiety-provoking detail is less important than the bigger picture. It’s like transforming yourself into a nonstick frying pan You can still fry an egg, but the egg won’t stick to the pan.

* provoke: 유발시키다