This post is by Brett Jarman.
When a small child is in pain, emotional or physical, we can often relieve it with a simple distraction: a song, a piece of food, a book, or a bright shiny object. The effect can be dramatic and the pain is forgotten or diminished to the point that it’s hardly felt.
As adults we do the same thing to avoid or relieve pain. We distract ourselves with something more appealing than what we have going on at that time. A webpage or six, social media, a piece of food, a drink, or a bigger bright shiny object than we might use with a child.
The pain of doing a tax return, making sales calls, developing a product, or even writing a blog entry can all be relieved with such things. It’s the Law of Distraction. Procrastination if you prefer.
We Still Get By
For the most part, such procrastination slows things down but doesn’t bring us to a halt. Tax returns get done, albeit at the last minute; sales calls are made, though just enough to get by; the product gets developed, eventually; and the blog entry gets published, finally. The procrastination slows us down but we still get by.
For entrepreneurs and the self-employed there is often a deeper level of pain with a more subtle level of proscrastination that does more than just slow us down; it keeps us stuck.
Ironically this pain is caused by the very success we might be pursuing, whether it be financial, creative, physical, relational or otherwise. On one hand we might say we want these things we are pursuing but on the other hand there might be an associated pain – the discomfort of change, fear of the unknown, and uncertainty.
Usually this pain or fear will be below the surface, often overshadowed by the excitement of the goal we are pursuing. But the ego doesn’t miss a trick. It’s primary goal is safety and protection. So, it uses the same old tactics, distractions, to relieve the pain of change and uncertainty.
We find ourselves drawn to a training course that we “must do” to help us reach our goal. A business opportunity comes up that’s even better than the one we are working on now so we drop the current project and move on to the next one. The latest cutting edge marketing program appears. It promises to
be much better than what we were doing so we stop and go back to square one with the latest and greatest.
Sound familiar? These are the bright shiny objects of the self-employed and entrepreneurs. The distractions that help ease or avoid the pain we don’t even know we are feeling.
My coach and mentor, Derek Rydall, calls them ’tricks of the ego that keep us where we are while giving the illusion we are moving forward‘.
We pay a heavy price for this relief in time, money and lost opportunities. In return we get superficial and short term satisfaction at the expense of a deeper sense of fulfillment and purpose.
So What’s the fix?
Become present to the fear and discomfort that comes with taking risks.
- Are you unconsciously holding your breath for no reason?
- Do you find yourself more restless and agitated than you normally might be?
- Spending more time staring into the fridge than you normally would?
- Constantly checking your email or twitter feed hoping for a bright shiny object to magically appear and distract you from the task at hand?
These are all signs of discomfort wanting to be felt. You can of course ignore them and go for the distractions, the bright shiny objects. Alternatively, you can feel the uncomfortable feelings and thus make progress to heal them at the same time.
The goal isn’t to make the feelings of discomfort go away, its simply to make them known so you are fully aware of what’s going on and what’s driving you.
From this place you can recognize the bright shiny objects for what they are. If they truly support you, you can take them as a conscious choice.
But, if they’re just a distraction, a form of pain relief, you can pass them by knowing that your awareness of the pain is relief enough. That’s how you master the law of distraction.
What could you start doing to keep yourself from getting distracted and to procrastinate less often?
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Excellent post. Well done. It’s me to a ‘T’. Thanks for pointing it out and especially for the closing question.
Hey Charles – glad it resonated with you. I have to give credit for the closing question to the crew at Expert Enough. That was a value add from them. I hope the answer proves useful to you.
I can *so* relate to this. I could feel my heartrate rising and my breathing become faster just reading it! Thank you for bringing it to my attention.
Today I’m going to practice acknowledging the discomfort and see if that changes anything.
Hi Shan – How did that work out for you?
My guess is that the ‘reaction’ was a fight or flight thing – the ego offering up some anxiety because it knows its game is up and feels threatened (Arghhh – more change to deal with!!).
The value of becoming still and present to the discomfort is that we can turn a reaction into a response. We are literally improving our ‘response ability’. I hope it helps you get where you want to go.
Edit for the comment above…
We are literally improving our personal ‘response ability’.
Great post Brett! You really nailed the “law of distraction” perfectly.
I must say tho, I disagree slightly with awareness of the issue being sufficient for healing. It’s certainly a great first step.
But I think the practice of calming the inner critic, using daily “certainty anchors” to buffer the discomfort of the unknown, and anchoring in positive proof through gratitude are also required.
Thanks Tahlee.
I think we’re actually on the same page as far as awareness being the first step towards healing, hence the reference to ‘make progress to heal them…’ rather than just ‘heal them…’
Interested to know what you mean by certainty anchors. Is that anchors in the NLP sense or something else? Do you have an example you can share?
Ah yes – “make progress…” Absolutely on the same page then
So…
A certainty anchor is a small daily ritual that helps ground you and create something familiar to attach to during a day that might be otherwise filled with unfamiliar, risky or creative activities.
So “morning pages”, described in the book The Artist’s Way, where you write 3 pages of streaming consciousness first thing in the morning, helps me get all the mind “stuff” out of the way so I can focus on what lies ahead.
Other little rituals could include yoga, meditation, or an early morning walk.
Jonathan Field’s book – Uncertainty: Turning fear and self doubt into fuel for brilliance – describes certainty anchors in more detail. Also highly recommended reading for any entrepreneur!
Thanks Tahlee. For me it’s meditation. Haven’t heard it described in that context but it makes perfect sense. I’ll add the book to my reading list.
It’s amazing how difficult it is to consciously overcome procrastination and distraction and really move on with what matters most. I guess one of my problems is that I truly believe or believed that some new shiny ideas of mine were of paramount importance once they imploded into insignificance and well… distraction along the way.
But then again, I have some sympathy for the role of distractions in my creative process and I find myself coming back to these brand new exciting projects I dumped mid-sentence. And they also inform my focal tasks in lots of ways. So I wouldn’t completely discount distractions.
In fact reading this post has been one
Good one! For me it often works to make myself conscious about the distraction at hand, and then deciding my body will have to do what my mind dictates – then force my mind to go on with the task instead of giving in to the distraction. I even successfully stopped smoking that way.