Tips to Help You Deal with Distractions

How do you deal with distractions? If you’re like most people, you cope with them some days more effectively than others.

It’s Monday (or any day), and you’re hit with seemingly endless distractions. You no sooner start one task than you’re interrupted and must jump into something else. Before long, not being able to finish anything starts to weigh on you. All the while, however, your mind races with a hundred thoughts.

No wonder you feel like you’re sliding down a slippery hill.

“If you have a hundred thoughts, you will have a hundred helpers in your meditation.” -- Mingyur Rinpoche

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Tips to Deal with Distractions

Here’s a slightly different way to regard those hundred thoughts and deal with distractions. Think of them as helpers in your quest to achieve balance and serenity.

It takes a little imagination to view distracting thoughts as anything but distractions. Since they will come regardless of how you paint them, why not cast them in the form of helpers?

Deal with Distractions: Monday Mornings

Let’s see how this might work with one scenario. You head to work on Monday morning. There’s a top-priority project you must immediately dive into. You’ve been consumed with thoughts about it most of the weekend.

You tossed around a million different ways to either get out of the task or get it over with as soon as possible, then felt guilty or ashamed or beat yourself up for being a skater, irresponsible, or worse. This is the setup you must deal with. Your mind is already whirling with distractions, with a hundred thoughts.

Thoughts Can Be Helpers, Not Distractions

While you might believe all those thoughts were a waste of time, they served a useful purpose. Your mind was expressing multiple emotional responses to a pressing issue that bothered you. You needed to process each one, even if you didn’t want to.

As such, they helped you get where you are right now, dealing with what’s most important.

Thoughts Prime You to Act

You arrive at your desk and go through your morning ritual – even more critical on Mondays. Yet you haven’t even booted up the computer when another hot project lands. Which one should take priority? You have a quick decision, people to alert, resources to tap, assignments to prioritize or delegate, and no time to waste. Yet another hundred thoughts assail you. Your stomach roils, your blood pressure increases, and you feel a sinking sense of failure.

But these multiple thoughts are priming you to act, even though you may not recognize them that way.

To deal with distractions:

·??????? Instead of fighting a hundred thoughts, please take a few moments to embrace them, for they are here to help you.

·??????? Acknowledge their presence and permit them to leave.

·??????? This opens space for you to focus on the task at hand.

·??????? Furthermore, embracing these thoughts will help you better deal with distractions heading your way today.

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