Rapt, Winifred Gallagher
Rapt, Winifred Gallagher
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Rapt
Attention and the Focused Life

Author: Winifred Gallagher

Narrator: Laural Merlington

Unabridged: 7 hr 30 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download (DRM Protected)

Published: 04/16/2009


Synopsis

Your world, and even your self, is largely constructed from the thoughts and feelings, people and things you’ve focused on throughout your life. Much more than you probably suspect, you can, as you move forward, actively direct your attention to create the kind of experience you want and become the person you want to be. Drawing from the latest research in neuroscience and psychology, Rapt illuminates attention’s essential function: transforming the vast, chaotic world into your own orderly, user-friendly personal version. Your brain’s selective gatekeeper, it’s involved in virtually every aspect of life—learning and memory, thought and emotion, work and relationships. As the expression ‘paying attention’ suggests, you have a limited store of this cognitive currency, which you should invest wisely, because the stakes are high. On the deepest level, what you focus on can literally change your brain, and thus your behavior. On the experiential level, taking charge of your attention is the key to personal power and freedom—and the hallmark of the successful and satisfied. Along with organizing your internal and external worlds, attention opens the doors to the sublime experience best described as ‘rapt.’ By cultivating this ability to be completely engrossed—whether by rolling waves or a soaring aria, by rearranging your furniture or writing a poem—you improve your capacity for concentration, broaden your inner horizons, lift your spirits, and most important, feel what it means to be fully alive.

About Winifred Gallagher

Winifred Gallagher’s books include House Thinking, Just the Way You Are (a New York Times Notable Book), Working on God, and The Power of Place. She has written for numerous publications, such as Atlantic Monthly, Rolling Stone, and The New York Times. She lives in Manhattan and Dubois, Wyoming.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Courtney on October 11, 2009

I'm disappointed that this book about attention was not, itself, more sharply focused. Instead of building towards a thesis or providing an organized survey of her theme, author Winifred Gallagher begins and ends "Rapt" with scattered essays that don't seem to be much about focus and attention at al......more

Goodreads review by Scott on June 24, 2009

This book has changed the way I work. Author Winifred Gallagher has marshaled quite a bit of research into fourteen chapters and has made it approachable with a good takeaway at the end of each chapter that can be integrated into several areas of life where attention is important. If you have read M......more

Goodreads review by Bonnie on October 06, 2010

Rapt caught my attention after reading an excerpt in the Utne Reader. The thesis was pretty straightforward – what you focus on determines your experience of life. I was intrigued because I had always struggled with paying quality attention to my children, ostensibly the focus of my work as a stay-a......more

Goodreads review by Aaron on May 27, 2009

Like most people who read Rapt, I came to the book prehooked. I've never been much of an ace at focus – I was a poor student all the way through college, when I not so much snapped suddenly to attention as graduated to a curriculum based more on a few large tests than endless worksheets to be turned......more

Goodreads review by Bea on April 22, 2016

I hate not finishing a book but honestly if a book about attention and focus is unable to hold mine while reading it's not meant to be.......more