Insightful Blinders...Don't Get Distracted

Imagine you’re driving down a road and all of a sudden a hand comes out of nowhere and covers your eyes. You begin to panic. You grip the wheel a little tighter so you don’t lose control. Trying to keep your cool, you go to pry the fingers from your face. You peel off two fingers and see a sliver of road. Good, you're still driving straight. POP! More fingers smack onto your face and again you are blind to where you're going. Your panic starts to rise as you remember there’s a curve in the road up ahead and you don't know when it’s coming. You relinquish the wheel and give your all trying to pry the hands from your face. After a hard struggle you finally pull the fingers off, just in time to bend the corner, and pull over safely. As your breathing begins to become deeper, and your heart rate slows down, you go to look at who would dare blind you like that. Your heart drops into your stomach when you realize it was your own hands that played this trick on you. You were the reason you lost sight on your path. You want to get back on the road, yet it’s unclear if or when you will be blind sided again.

The Gap Between Wanting and Achieving is Doing

We all love a seamless flight with no turbulence or an enjoyable car ride with our favorite tunes and plenty of sightseeing. Whenever we start on a journey there is a specific destination in mind. With the utmost enthusiasm, we embark on our travels bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. Then like a large cloud rolling in, our path seems to darken. Our path seems harder to follow, while the sights on the side of the road hold our gaze a little longer than usual. We become complacent. The things we know we must do slow down, if not stop altogether. After a while of this, we don’t even have the drive to do the easy things.

When it comes to having dreams, we can get caught up in knowing what we want. The hardest part is realizing that we know what we must do, but that spark to act is no longer present. The only thing between you and what you want is the act of doing the things you must do to get it. Many stoics speak about the need for purpose in (hu)man’s life. A person without purpose is simply just going through the motions of life. They cannot lead themselves, and certainly cannot lead anyone else. Creating purpose for yourself is the easiest part of the whole ordeal I think. The hard part is doing the everyday tasks needed to bring life to that purpose. As you move forward towards what you want, you will get distracted. How long you let yourself be distracted is up to you.

Self Belief: Thoughts of Not Being Able to Achieve

Learning to believe in yourself seems like one of the hardest concepts to digest. We learn to praise ourselves before we learn to self-criticize. This is until we grow up around the ages of 10 and up. Unless you grew up with great parents or guardians who breathed life into you, you most likely grew up learning to think deeply about possible consequences before doing anything unorthodox. I learned it was important to be brave only when it pertained to playing sports or handling confrontation with others.

Sparsely you would hear that age old phrase, “you can do anything you put your mind to”. Although this phrase seemed very appealing, chances are you rarely saw someone living out their dreams. I think self-belief begins with seeing that someone has followed their dream first, this helps us understand that the impossible is possible. Then by using that example, you take your first step. Achieving the desired outcomes will reinforce this belief. Thinking you don't have the ability to do something, usually begins before you even try. There’s a concept coined by Mark Manson called the “do something” principle. This concept explains: taking action first is the best way to then feel motivated to continue on a task. Many times we overthink the activity before we take action which then results in inaction. If you just start your task without prior thought, you will begin to realize how easy it is to get into flow and keep going. The little wins that come from immediate action build upon the confidence and belief in yourself. If you think you can’t do something, your thoughts become your actions, and you won’t do anything. Although it may be hard to forge self-belief, the more intentional action you take the easier it gets.

Fear of Failure

Distractions will appear in many different forms on your life voyage. Most often it will show itself as the things most appealing to you. Something that deeply appeals to you doesn’t take much to capture your attention and therefore it is easier to become and stay distracted. Although distractions can be random, they come and go. However, distraction can present itself as fear, and this is a little harder to get past. I call fear a distraction because it steers your mind away from your goal. It also can hinder your performance even if you are focused on your goal. We fear what we don't know. We don’t know what people will think of us. We don’t know how something will turn out. Fear starts with lack of information. We may assume the worst about our desired actions, because we don’t know exactly how they will turn out. Therefore to combat fear, we should acquire that which we don't know. If you’re writing a story, you may be afraid of what people will think of your finished product. You won’t know if people like your writing until they read it. They can’t like or dislike something they haven’t experienced. So having that anxiety about putting out that story will not end until you officially show the world. When you put time into anything, there will always be people who don’t like it. There will likely be more people who do like it. If you’re purposefully creating something you enjoy, you can’t fail. As long as you like you it doesn’t matter who else likes you.

Don't Get Distracted

A distraction is anything that deprives your focus of your goal. Anything you're doing that isn’t involved in your necessary task at hand is a distraction. Fear is only a distraction when you have a lack of information. To get over fear is to get started and learn along the way. This is how you can jump start your tasks and the fear of others thoughts will diminish as you gain confidence in what you're doing. When it comes to focus, the best way to stay focused is to rid your environment of anything distracting. But first, it’s important to know what distracts you.

Most people mention our phones being a distraction, but there are other forms of distraction. If you are supposed to be doing homework but you’re watching youtube videos on mythical creatures, just because you are still “learning” doesn’t mean you aren’t distracted. It’s important to know what distracts you and get it far away from you when it’s time to put in work. Keeping your own fingers from blinding you on your metaphorical drive to your goals comes down to knowing what tasks are important and staying focused on those.

Abstaining from the shiny things that pop up is easy when your destination is much brighter. Keep front of mind where you’re going and how good it’ll feel to achieve that. All things that try to steal your attention will soon fall short and seem uninteresting. In no time, you will have a clear path, doing what you really want to do and fearlessly driving forward.

-J