How To Overcome Distraction & Live In Reality

Overcoming distraction is about knowing how to focus on two things at the same time, but exactly what those two things are not commonly understood or practiced.

Many of us go about our business in a state of sensual, mental or emotional distraction. An egregious example is seen in people walking around while phoning, texting or game playing - then walking into walls, falling into water fountains or wrapping their car around a tree. It would be funny if it weren't pathetic - like in the slapstick comedies of early film.

Distraction is a primary technique of hypnosis. When you're distracted you become open to the suggestion of the hypnotist or whomever or whatever is distracting you. A person standing on the corner looking up will cause many passersby to also look up. This is the power of suggestion.

To be distracted is to lose yourself - to lose your soul so to speak. Why? Because distraction is a departure or moving away from your center of being - which is your only true reference point as you interface with the world. Virtually all mistakes and misperception happens when in an incorrectly focused state of mind. You make the wrong decision every time.

Take, for example, the distraction of excitement. A stock technique of the high-pressure salesperson is to excite you about his product or service. Once excited you're virtually sold because excitement distracts you from your reference point of truth or reality.

When you get home and the excitement wears off, you scratch your head wondering why you bought or paid so much for that used car, time-share, "free" vacation or service you really didn't want or need. - Which is why many states require a 3-day cooling off period before a contract becomes binding. That the government has to protect us from ourselves reveals how little we understand about ourselves. How lacking in self-awareness we are.

The key to living in distraction-free reality is to cultivate a little distance from the person, place or thing you're relating to in a given situation. See, hear and respond both with your eyes and ears and your higher awareness. That's what we mean by "two things at the same time." It's relating with both a personal faculty - sense, thought or feeling, and your impersonal faculty - which is your awareness or knowing faculty, at the same time. One is necessary to check and empower the other.

Again, we're not talking about two personal things at the same time - like eating and reading; we're talking about one personal thing and one impersonal thing - like eating and awareness of eating. Distraction is trying to concentrate on two or more personal things at the same time, and that's the cause of distraction, misperception, error, and diminished performance.

http://ezinearticles.com/?How-To-Overcome-Distraction-and-Live-In-Reality&id=9625803

7 Ways To Beat Procrastination And Start Taking Action Today!

We all struggle with distraction, interruptions and ADD.

With the advent of the Internet, smartphones, and Wi-Fi, low productivity has become one of the most prevalent diseases across the globe. It will be a long battle to regain our attention control, and I recommend you to take baby steps during the process.

Below are 7 simple ways to help you beat procrastination so you finally take action on the goals you have set.

#1 No More "Someday I will... "

Recognize that the best time to take action is 10 years ago, the next best time is now.

Stop living in the delusion that you have millions days in the future to pursue something your heart desires.

If there's something that you really want to do - whether it's to start a blog teaching people your cooking expertise, or making the phone call and ask your crush out, or giving a surprise visit to your parents whom you haven't seen for a year - you've got to plan when you are going to do it.

Time doesn't wait.

According to Bronnie Ware, author of the bestselling book The Top Five Regrets of the Dying, the number one thing people regret is that "I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me."

Procrastination may be a short-term relief, but it's not going to get you anywhere.

Choose the pain of discipline over the pain of regret.

#2 Take Massive Imperfect Courageous Action

Forget about perfectionism, just aim for the "85% good enough" standard and get it out there.

Your life-changing products or services aren't going to change a single life until you push it out to the market.

Your relentless studying and reading won't do humanity any good until you go out and implement the wisdom.

Your genius ideas aren't going to turn into a billion dollar business until you pitch it in the Shark Tank.

The key to success, especially entrepreneurial success, is your speed of execution.

Results come from nothing but massive imperfect courageous actions, not affirmations, visualizations or meditations.

#3 Action Leads To Motivation

Do you think you need motivation first before you can take action?

Do you believe you need to wait for the "perfect moment or timing" before you can take action?

Do you trust yourself that you are good enough to at least start taking action?

In the self-help world, many people fall into the thinking trap that they need to "prepare more" before they can really initiate the task they want, whether it's about starting a conversation with a lady, starting an online business, or starting to workout.

Sadly, these preparations often become excuses for them not to take action.

The truth is motivation comes when you take that scary action.

If you're willing to force yourself to "do that thing" for just 5 minutes, you'll be surprised that action is easier than you thought and you'll be motivated to continue taking action and make some real progress.

#4 Plan Your Day The Night Before

You never want to wake up not knowing exactly how the next 16 hours will be.

Planning should always happen the night before, so that the moment you open your eyes, you are in automation mode and you don't need to spend extra thoughts to craft out your day.

Before you know it, you're already spending your first 2 hours doing the one big thing of the day that will yield you 80% of the progress.

#5 Stop Multitasking

Science has proven that our brain is incapable of multitasking.

All we are doing is reacting to that stimulus, switching our attention to a different task, finishing the unimportant stuff, coming back to the original task having no idea where we are at, spending extra time & energy to get back into flow.

CNN World has reported that switching tasks make you dumber than being stoned, because our IQ drops by 10 points when we switch tasks while our IQ drops by 5 points when we smoke marijuana.

Don't want to be an idiot?

Time to cut off all the emails, phone calls, Facebook, app notifications, news updates, or chit-chat with your colleagues while you work!

#6 Chunk Things Into Baby Steps

I am annoyed by this cliché but it's true: You eat an elephant one bite at a time.

One main reason we procrastinate is because we feel it's too difficult, too long and too much to do it.

Big goals are fantastic, but when it comes to action, you want to make them seem as easy as possible.

So chunk them into mini segments so that the pleasure of completion outweighs the pain of taking action.

#7 Reward & Celebrate

Nothing pisses your brain off more than enduring some painful discipline for a long time and not getting rewarded at the end of the process!

You've got to reward yourself kindly at the end so that you anchor massive pleasure to the beautiful moment of task completion.

Pet yourself on the back so that when you start another boring, mundane, yet significant campaign, you can motivate yourself to finish it as soon as possible and arrive at the end of the pleasurable tunnel!

I'm going to reward myself now, how about you?

http://ezinearticles.com/?7-Ways-To-Beat-Procrastination-And-Start-Taking-Action-Today!&id=9486485

Nine Nifty Nudges

Sometimes Life throws things in our direction with no thought as to how we're supposed to add yet more to our plates each day. Here's just a quick sharing of ways to cope based on some of the numerous issues that have come my way recently...

Archive paperwork and data you don't need front-and-center any more: I just moved all our documentation pertaining to Jim's mother's finances, health, etc. to a file in the garage for safekeeping.

Share your knowledge (when asked) and help others: I've offered help to a former colleague as he attacks boxes with years of paperwork so he can get onto enjoying his retirement.

Tackle your projects in a timely manner: happily, our taxes are now filed; refund received; file backup stored with other archived taxes in less 'valuable real estate' in the garage.

Be ready to 'adjust and adapt' at any time: family phone, computer and 'real time' are all a bit crazy right now as we assist my mum with preparation for and recovery from hip replacement surgery.

Opt-out and unsubscribe from emails you don't read or don't have time to read anymore - except this one, of course!

Turn off all pings, prompters and other ploys of distraction that keep you from focusing on the project at the moment: I've found myself surfing way too much lately because of certain enticing 'clicks' I see and have been wasting too much time. Even though I've not had these prompters on for years, when you are 'wanting' to be distracted, the Internet is there for you!

Employ the "20-second Rule" to help guide you into better habits: I'm moving my exercise DVD player for easier access so I have less of an excuse for not using my mini-trampoline. Shawn Achor, "The Happiness Advantage," uses this as one of his primary principles.

Action, not just thinking, planning and postponing, will get the results you're aiming for: learning how to use my new website won't happen by worrying about it - get in and do the work!

Organizing is not static, but a continual process: as I morph into caretaker for more of my mother's finances, I've had to start using a binder just to document conversations and move all her paperwork into a larger file carrier.

If you can see yourself in just one of these scenarios then I'm so happy to have shared and provided a bit of a nudge toward completion of something you've been wanting to get accomplished. Wahoo! Here's to your organizing success!

http://ezinearticles.com/?Nine-Nifty-Nudges&id=9334557

Change Your Life In 2 Seconds

One of the lines that I really like in Gaylon Ferguson’s book Natural Wakefulness is “Distraction is married to discontent.” You could test this out in your own experience. There’s nothing as real and direct and counterhabitual as being present with yourself, just as you are, with your emotions just as they are. 

As difficult as that can be, the result of that training is nonstruggle: not rejecting your experience, fully engaged with yourself, with the world, there for other people. Another result of coming back to being with yourself, just as you are, is that emotions don’t escalate.

Drop a stone in the water and what happens? The ripples go out. If the stone is big enough, it can rock a rowboat on the other side of the lake. 

It’s the same, generally speaking, when an emotion arises and you acknowledge, Oh, I’m getting worked up. Oh, my heartbeat is going faster. Oh, I’m feeling fear. Oh, I’m feeling resentment. Or just, Oh, I’m activated, triggered. 

At that moment, when you acknowledge it, there’s a space. Just by the very act of acknowledging or being present enough, conscious enough, you’ll find that space—and in that space lies your ability to choose how you’re going to react. 

You can either stay present with whatever it is you’re feeling—with the intensity or heat or edginess or shakiness of the emotion—or you can spin off. 

You can be caught in the momentum and carried away, which usually means you start talking to yourself about what’s going on. You churn it all up more and more, and it’s like the ripples go out and out and out.

When you choose to reinforce the emotion, when you choose to exaggerate it, when you choose to let the emotion run you, to let the emotion carry you away, then a whole chain reaction of suffering starts. 

It sets off an automatic chain reaction like those ripples. So in meditation, we train in letting the rock, the emotion, drop without the ripples. You stay with the emotion rather than turning to the automatic reaction, a reaction that has been habitual for you for years and years.

And believe me, two seconds of doing something so radical, so counter habitual, of not setting off the chain reaction, completely opens your life to this working from the space of open awareness. And if you don’t reject the emotions, they actually become your friends. They become your support. 

Your rage becomes your support for stabilizing, for returning the mind to its natural, open state. Emotions become your support for being fully awake and present, for being conscious rather than unconscious, for being present rather than distracted. That which has been an ogre in your life has the ability to just sweep you away—or it can become your actual friend, your support. It’s a whole different way of living, a whole different way of looking at the same old stuff.

http://www.mindbodygreen.com/0-9329/change-your-life-in-2-seconds.html