Distraction
How do we distract ourselves? Let me count the ways.
Distraction is our largest addiction. All of us do it, it just a matter of degree.
How hooked are you? Look at your life. It’s a barometer of how otherwise occupied you are. If you continually miss where you’re aiming, you’re a candidate for a yet to be formed support group – DA, Distractors Anonymous.
All the counseling assurances apply. “You’re not alone.” “Here’s a step-by-step program to get you focused.” “Here’s a friend to call when you feel the urge to distract yourself.”
The secret to success is to find out the core cause of your distraction and act on it. There is one central cause for distraction – the fear of feeling.
I got one of those rare, in the middle of the night visits from The Grasshopper last night and I wrote down what he said in my Grasshopper Journal.
“The price of distraction is the loss of our feelings.”
Notice that there is a certain feeling in your body when you begin the process of distraction. You push that feeling away. You want to distract yourself from that feeling. This is the precise time to act; to feel. Most people wait until later and beat themselves up for distracting once again. That’s a story with a guaranteed unhappy ending. And that reminds me of a story . . .
I used to work for a man who had a track record of success using a formula of delivering all the pain up front. His expertise was in takeovers. He was a radio general manager who would come into a new station that was performing poorly, make his assessments as to what needed to be done to get it back on track, and then act on those assessments immediately. I got to ask him about his methods one day over lunch. He said that his philosophy was that all the bleeding that was to be done would happen right away. It couldn’t be done piecemeal or the working environment would be fraught with fear. All who survived knew there was no sword hanging over their head, and they could rest assured, that as long as they performed their job, they would have a job to perform. He dealt with that distraction up front.
The remedy for distraction is to feel the feeling until it’s no longer there. That means not delaying the feeling but to act on it right away. The fear of the feeling keeps you distracting yourself from it by engaging in other activities that don’t support your stated objective.
Notice the feeling that’s about to drive you to distraction and sit with it. The reason it keeps coming back is because it wants you to feel it fully. The quickest way to the other side of a feeling is to wade straight through it. No piecemeal attempts will get you there.
“I don’t want to feel this feeling” is the biggest distraction known to personhood. If it keeps knocking on your door, the best response is to let it in and the distractions will cease.
This feeling is an ally rather than an enemy. It has the ability to get you to where you need to go next. It’s a basic tool of change that we keep at the bottom of the toolbox while distracting ourselves with the newest 12 in one gadget.
I hope this blog post has been a productive distraction.
All the best,
John
http://cdbaby.com/cd/johnmorgan
http://www.cafepress.com/grasshoppernote/3580301
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