Move over, “You are what you eat...” - by Meghan Fitzgerald

a10d

Helping young people own their attention and build the skills and mindsets they need to flourish as humans.

Move over, “You are what you eat..."

There’s a new, old and urgent catch phrase in town.

The phrase, “You are what you eat” peaked in popularity when I was a kid during the nutrition boom of the ‘80s. Today, even though our relationship to our food system is as complicated as ever, I’d love to see a different phrase echo through our minds, homes and communities:

“You are what you attend to.”

Great with kids

This phrase has proven a juicy prompt for sparking conversation about attention with young people. First, you may need to clarify what you mean by “attend to something” (kids are often subjected to a very narrow, “time on task” definition). But once you establish a common understanding of attention, kids really get this phrase.

Almost immediately, they generate ways that kids and adults give their attention away to things that they may not want to, like their phones, apps (especially infinite scroll platforms like Tik Tok), games, or even to compulsory activities they don’t really enjoy (especially at school).

I’ve also found that this simple phrase can inspire kids to identify all kinds of things that feel great to attend to. Or, the things they wish people (including themselves) paid more attention to. Want to be inspired? Scroll down for highlights from an ever-growing list of such things generated by a10d kids around the country.

Unlocking for adults, too

This phrase could have a pretty big moment in this era, as attention is central to graduation speeches and poised on the tips of our tongues. And, though it feels built for our age of phones, feeds, and algorithmic distraction, the concept of “You are what you attend to,” is not new at all. This idea has been evolving for centuries and across cultural traditions. It’s a strong signal of something’s universal meaning when artists, philosophers, scientists, and other thought leaders continually repackage an idea for their contemporary context.

What is also becoming clear is how attention has been sliced up and minimized by research over recent decades to merely our capacity to give a particular response when prompted or to complete a task. This recasting of attention–what should be a true human superpower–has enabled our attention to become a commodity, bought and sold in the attention economy.

I hope exploring how this notion, “ You are what you attend to,” has evolved over time, across cultures and through different lenses can help us to zoom back out to see attention in its fuller, more powerful form. To feel the universality of that fullness, all as we both stretch and sharpen a core truth: our attention is the architect of who we become. And, ultimately, this is a key step towards reclaiming our attention and helping our kids do the same.

The neuroscience

Though I think it wise to be careful not to over rotate on what is “measurable” and “provable,” I deeply appreciate when new understandings about how the brain works mesh with age-old wisdom. This powerful combination can breathe new life into old ideas, spark curiosity (even in skeptics), and inspire us to continue learning on the shoulders of giants.

Modern research has shown us how attention doesn’t only determine what we notice or where we focus; it rewires our brains. Neural circuits strengthen or wither based on where our attention goes. In other words: we build our brains by how we attend. That’s some strong scientific support for ancient Greek philosopher Epictetus’s urge to us to wake up each day and ask yourself, “What is it that I have to care for today?”

As long as we can resist the temptation to reduce our definition of attention to “time on task,” the discoveries of neuroscience blend beautifully with the wise observations throughout time. To follow are but a sampling of those observations.

“Attention doesn’t only determine what we notice or where we focus; it rewires our brains.”

Buddhist traditions

Around the 5th century BCE, in Buddhist teachings attributed to Gautama Buddha, attention (sati) was the foundation of the Eightfold Path–the Buddha’s practical framework for ending suffering and living well. “What we think, we become” was a poetic and keen observation of how humans think and behave. Our minds and, in turn, our actions are shaped, moment by moment, by what we notice and cling to.

“What we think, we become” –Gautama Buddha

Hindu & Yoga traditions

Around the 4th to 2nd centuries BCE, one-pointed attention, Ekāgratā (Sanskrit: एकाग्रता) is emphasized in the Bhagavad Gita, and later elaborated in the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. When the mind dwells on a single thing, distractions fall away and the mind unifies with that object. Today, yogic practices like the one in my community inspired by this tradition, focus on breath, body and movement to train attention so it moves from distraction toward calm, clarity, compassion, and self-realization. In a sense, how we attend becomes how we evolve into the values we aspire to most.

The Stoics of Greece & Rome

In the early centuries CE, in Stoic Greece and Rome, philosophers like Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius taught that freedom begins with noticing your “impressions”—the thoughts and urges that flood the mind. You become wise (the ultimate goal) by choosing which of those impressions to attend to and which to release.

Jewish & Christian monastic traditions

Early monastic writers in ~4th to 8th centuries CE exalted a quality of nepsis or watchful attentiveness. This often repeated idea suggested how our inner life could be shaped by what we notice, repeat, and dwell upon. Attention was held as a spiritual practice with the call to attend to what is life-giving or virtuous and try to diminish what is destructive.

Indigenous North American traditions

For millennia, Native People’s traditions have focused on honoring the things and people with which we are in relationship. For example, The Haudenosaunee Thanksgiving Address (also called the Ohen:ton Karihwatehkwen or “Words Before All Else”) encourages us to attend to the natural world with gratitude. Attend to water, plants, winds, creatures, other people, because what we honor becomes part of who we are. We are all in a relationship. Lakota and Ojibwe teachings echo this through the idea that “care grows where our care goes.”

“Care grows where our care goes.” –Lakota and Ojibwe teachings

Modern western takes

Flash forward to around 1890, when American psychologist William James wrote “My experience is what I agree to attend to.” For James, what we notice becomes our experience, and our experience becomes our life.

A generation later, French philosopher Simone Weil reframed attention as something deeply relational. She famously called attention “the rarest and purest form of generosity,” arguing that what we attend to—whether another person, an idea, or the world around us—reveals and shapes our humanity. It also connects us to one another. Attention isn’t just cognitive; it is interpersonal and ethical. And, if you’ve ever felt truly attended to by another person, you understand what Weil was driving at.

By the mid-20th century, psychologists showed how selective attention guides what we remember, how we decide, and how we regulate emotion. Our inner world turns out to be a map drawn by what we notice and take in as well as what we filter out.

Then came the media theorists. As television and advertising grew, thinkers like Marshall McLuhan and Neil Postman argued that our “information diets” shape us as deeply as our food diets. More recently, in Superbloom, the technology writer Nicholas Carr put it plainly: “What we choose to attend to is what we become.”

“What we choose to attend to is what we become.” –Nicholas Carr

And today, a growing movement of writers, academics, artists, and activists called The Friends of Attention are sounding what may be the loudest alarm yet. In their 2026 manifesto, Attensity!, they urge us to realize collectively that our attention isn’t just being distracted; it’s being extracted. Like a natural resource mined from deep within us, our capacity to give our minds and senses to the world has been captured and commodified by forces of enormous technological and financial power. They call it “human fracking.” And they’re calling on all of us to understand attention in its full form, organize and push back.

A radical invitation

No matter how you think about it, at its core, “You are what you attend to,” is a radical invitation: if attention shapes identity, then reclaiming our attention is one of the most powerful acts of becoming that we could offer to ourselves and our kids.

a10d kids’ wish list

A few of the things kids WISH people (themselves included) paid more attention to: