Happy Sunday!
And welcome to today’s edition of ‘Conscious living with Purnima’. Every Sunday edition will prompt you to focus on one aspect of your life to pay close attention to. Today we will focus on ‘distraction’. And by distraction, I mean anything that takes you away from what should matter most to you - your life.
All the joys, beauty, lessons, opportunities are to be found in your own unique life. If you don’t pay attention, then you can miss them. Many things distract us from being present with our lives and staying connected to our purpose. I will talk about 3 of them for you to pay attention to in the coming week:
1. Fears and Regrets:
When we are fearful about how something will turn out we are not in the present and have gone into the future. While some amount of fear is good for taking action, too much can be debilitating.
And when we look at our past and feel regret for our mistakes, we are once again pulled away from the present. While studying the past is good and perhaps even necessary to understand why our present is the way it is, spending too much of time in rumination can be a distraction from focusing on making amends.
When I look back at my own life, I see many mistakes glaring at me on the face making me wonder how I could be so blind. But when I think deeper, I realize I just didn’t know better at the time. And Maya Angelou’s quote comes to mind, “I did then what I knew how to do. Now that I know better, I do better.”
2. Comparisons:
Comparisons distract us from honoring our life and journey. Each of us matter and we have unique gifts to share with the world. When we are busy comparing ourselves with others, we lose perspective of our own unique strengths and goodness.
3. Seeking validation and people pleasing:
Seeking validation is a distraction from authentic self-expression.
And when we succumb to people pleasing like saying yes when we want to say no, we are distracted from honoring our needs and respecting our own thoughts and feelings about a situation.
As a new week starts tomorrow, I invite you to pay attention to how these play out in your life. Ask yourself:
Can you see the beauty and joy that shows up in your day?
How many mindful moments are you creating?
Do you know what nourishes you? what activities, people, places feel supportive and good for your well-being?
How often are you distracted by fears that prevent you from taking action?
How often are you consumed by regrets from the past?
How often do you compare your journey with others? How does that make you feel?
Are you running after people, situations and opportunities trying to control outcomes or do you spend time working on aligning yourself to what is meant to be in your life through positive actions?
Are you saying yes when you actually want to say no? How often does this happen?
Answering these questions will give you a sense of how distracted you are from your life, needs, strengths and purpose.
Note in your journal every time you catch yourself getting distracted. Inspect what situations, thoughts, actions and feelings trigger the distraction. And see if that awakens you to something deeper.