Attuning to the Neutral: Finding Joy in the Middle Moments

Most of us live like our attention is a spotlight swinging wildly between the highs and the lows. The really great moments—the wedding, the promotion, the touchdown. The really terrible moments—the fight, the loss, the trauma. Those are the moments our brains are wired to notice.

And for survival’s sake, our brains are wired even more strongly to notice and encode the negative. Psychologists call this the negativity bias: the tendency for our minds to hold on to painful or threatening experiences more tightly than the positive ones. Studies suggest that negative experiences are processed more quickly, stored more deeply, and recalled more vividly than positive ones (Baumeister et al., 2001). That wiring kept our ancestors alive—but it leaves us at risk of missing out on the fullness of our lives today.

Because the truth is: most of life is neither extreme.

If you plotted every moment of your day on a graph—ranging from the absolute worst experiences of your life to the absolute best—95 to 99% of today would likely fall right in the middle. Mundane. Ordinary. Average. Not especially bad. Not especially good.

And yet, because the human brain is designed to fixate on the extremes, those middle moments pass by unnoticed, half-lived, slipping through our fingers on autopilot. For many people, this means whole days—sometimes whole weeks—go by without ever being anchored in presence, joy, or connection.

The Cost of Missing the Middle

When our awareness skips over the “neutral” moments, the effect shows up in our mental health.

• Depression roots us in the past—regretting, replaying, and rehearsing what’s already gone.

• Anxiety pulls us into the future—worrying, anticipating, bracing for what might come.

But the present? The present is where neither depression nor anxiety can survive. The present is the only place joy, peace, and meaning are actually possible.

And yet, when we miss 95–99% of our days by living on autopilot, is it any wonder that nearly one in three U.S. adults will experience an anxiety disorder at some point in their lives (National Institute of Mental Health, 2023) and over 21 million adults have experienced at least one major depressive episode in the past year (Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, 2022)?

We are starved for presence.

The Practice: Bringing Life Back to the Neutral

Here’s the shift:

When you train your attention to land on the middle moments—not just the extremes—you wake up to your life.

That sip of coffee.
The way the light falls across the floor.
The hum of your breath in your chest.

As you linger here—eyes awake, senses open, heart available—what was once “neutral” becomes vivid. Colors brighten. Sounds deepen. The body feels alive. The heart feels connected. A moment that was once just average becomes profoundly meaningful.

And here’s the kicker: it doesn’t just change that single moment. It changes the whole.

Because if—without awareness training—you unconsciously miss 95–99% of your life, imagine what happens when you start reclaiming even 20–30% of those neutral moments. That’s 20–30% more of your life actually lived. Fully felt. Fully connected.

The Invitation

The practice is simple, but not easy:

• Pause.

• Breathe.

• Notice something in the middle. The way your hands feel on the steering wheel. The sound of your partner’s voice. The rhythm of your own heartbeat.

This is the practice of attuning to the neutral. It’s not about chasing highs or eliminating lows. It’s about learning to live in the fullness of the present—the place where life is actually happening.

And here’s the question to carry with you:

If you could shift even 20% of your day from autopilot to alive, how would your experience of life change?