Distractions

It’s frustrating when you can’t fight the interrupting behavior causing distraction. To just be clear, I’m not talking about others here. I’m talking about our own behaviors. The grabbing of your smartphone multiple times per hour. The busy body tendencies to keep your mind running and task list piling. It’s a vicious tornado that starts out harmless gradually growing and sucking everything in its path spiraling to an uncontrolled state.

Here are a few distraction behaviors to be aware of and counter actions that may help break the destructive habits:

Quick smartphone grab and look. This happens subconsciously and we don’t even know it’s happening. The average person looks at their smartphone 344 times per day! At work, at a stop light, in the grocery register line, having a meal with friends. Another quick check on the apps to see what people are doing.

Counter Action: Out of sight, out of mind. Put it in your desk drawer (ringer on high if people need to find you). Determine when you need your phone and when it needs to sit on the charger away from you. Reflect when you grab the phone the most, why at that time? Fix the response instead of the trigger. Instead of grabbing your phone when working on a hard task at work, replace with a fidget toy, movement break or other 1-2 minute actions such as doodling. Adding more screentime is an additional input. Your brain is asking for a break. Give it that space.

Notifications. On your phone, computer, wristwatch. Beep, ding, ping all day long. All sounds, vibrations, pop-ups taking you out of the current flow and present back to response mode. When living in response mode all day long it drags over into a zombie mode state. Living based on others requests instead of driving the narrative to your own story.

Counter Action: Besides emergency calls from a family or friend, all other notifications can wait. Turn off notifications, noises and vibrations to focus and reduce the distractions driving your day.

Busy Body. Are your hands in everything? Other departments, other people’s lives and business? If you are in other places, who is taking care of your own? I found myself distracting that silent time and space by serving others. It was a good feeling to help people but no one was taking care of my business, processing those feelings that need to be released or worked on. The interesting thing about this one is most people I see in my workshops are caregivers, high performers, non-profit industry or other professionals that serve others.

Counter Action: Reflect if your own thoughts and self-care actions are not being taken care of. List out all the current tasks you are doing during the week and what actually needs to be done. Being over-responsible may in fact be making someone else under responsible. It could even be delaying their growth in a event because you are diving in ‘to save the day.’ Understand by distracting yourself with busy work, you are piling up events in your mind, body and soul that will eventually surface. The more build up, the worse the crash will be.

This topic may seem off the radar to some people. But during a point in my burnout recovery, I thought I was healed but I was just distracted. It was a discouraging feeling. The above is preventative work to avoid that period of your recovery. To step into true healing and evolve into your best self. 

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