Minister’s Message for October 2025

The following is an excerpt from Rev. Sharon Wylie’s sermon “Wrestling with Digital Distraction” offered on September 21, 2025. You can watch the full sermon on Chalice’s YouTube channel.

We start each day with a certain amount of cognitive resources—like a mental bank account. This is based on well-regarded psychological theory. We can’t measure cognitive resources precisely, but many of us can recognize these patterns in our own lives. So I’m suddenly using the term “cognitive resources” because it includes attention, but isn’t exclusively about attention. “Cognitive resources” includes our memory, our language skills, reasoning and problem-solving, things like that. And they are limited. When they run low, we get distracted, overwhelmed, and mentally exhausted.

Everything we do has some impact on our cognitive resources: everything drains, conserves, or restores those resources….

What drains our cognitive resources? Making decisions, solving problems, learning new things, generative work (where we’re creating things), multi-tasking, task-switching, and regulating our negative emotions. Think about how you feel when you read the news. If you’re having negative emotions, that’s a drain on your cognitive resources.

What conserves our cognitive resources? Habits, routines, structure, low stakes work, familiar work, single-tasking (no interruptions), well-practiced skills, and what I call spirit-led work. Spirit-led work—when we’re aligned with our purpose or calling—often feels less draining, even if it’s demanding.

What restores our cognitive resources? Taking breaks, eating, staying hydrated, light exercise (like going for a walk), light social connection, nature exposure, positive emotions, sleep. AND…research shows this is true: our cognitive resources are restored by mindfulness practice, meditation. Not yet, but we are going to be talking about mindfulness practice quite a bit in this series….

We also need to pay attention to how we’re thinking and feeling as evening comes. By then, our cognitive resources are often depleted—and that’s when many of us become prone to poor decisions. This is when we spend too long scrolling on social media. This is when we engage in too many numbing behaviors: binge-watching television, drinking too much, and then perhaps topping it all by going to bed much too late. Understanding how our mental bank account works explains a lot about why so many of us fall apart a little bit after the sun goes down.…

I’ve titled this series “Wrestling with Digital Distraction,” but it could just have easily been called “Intentional Living.” There is so much that calls us away from who we aspire to be, how we hope to live in alignment with our values, and how much time we spend on what’s important to us. And let me also be clear: It is okay to intentionally choose to be distracted at times, to lose ourselves in a great television show, a funny book, or even just cat videos. We need our times of rest and leisure. But it turns out, rest and leisure are things we need to be intentional about as well.

Blessings,

Sharon

The post Minister’s Message for October 2025 appeared first on Chalice Unitarian Universalist Congregation.