{"id":7170,"date":"2016-09-16T09:55:21","date_gmt":"2016-09-16T09:55:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.cvm.org.uk\/blog\/?p=7170"},"modified":"2016-10-13T23:51:31","modified_gmt":"2016-10-13T23:51:31","slug":"whats-distracting-you","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cvm.org.uk\/blog\/demolition-squad\/whats-distracting-you\/","title":{"rendered":"What’s Distracting You?"},"content":{"rendered":"

On last year\u2019s Christmas list I mentioned to Santa that I\u2019d like a copy of Focus<\/em><\/a> by Daniel Goleman. 2016 was going to be a year of concentrated effort, where I pick off one task at a time and get things done. Goleman was to be my tutor in single-mindedness.<\/p>\n

10 months on and I\u2019ve read Part I (out of VII) and the book sits alongside a dozen or so other books I\u2019ve dipped in and out of. This is no slight on the author – whose Emotional\u00a0Intelligence<\/em><\/a>\u00a0is a must-read – it just turns out that I needed Goleman to read Goleman.\u00a0I am perhaps as some might say, distractible (I prefer to think of this more as allowing my creative processes to be engaged by new ideas.) Jumping from book to book, idea to idea, keeps my mind inspired, sure, but, alas, also distracted. It turns out it\u2019s harder to hit goals when the goalposts are frequently moving.<\/p>\n

Current trends indicate that distraction – and especially digital distraction<\/a> – could soon reach epidemic levels. From social media, to online games, to TV, constant news, and photostreams – our minds don\u2019t ever have to sit still or chew over a single deep idea if we don\u2019t want to. In all this noise it\u2019s easy to become afraid of the silence. Asking questions of ourselves may be painfully hard, if we don\u2019t like the answers, so we turn on and tune out and the big questions remain unexamined. As 16th Century French mathematician Blaise Pascal put it, \u201cAll of humanity\u2019s problems stem from man\u2019s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Blaise<\/p>\n

If I\u2019ve had a particularly distracted week I may look forward to the weekend, which affords me the chance to rest my brain, reset, and start afresh on Monday. I have come to learn that distraction, or avoidance, or \u201cmulti-tasking\u201d, is incredibly tiring. Facing what we\u2019re dodging, invariably takes less effort than we fear it might, and much less than what we would spend trying to avoid it.<\/p>\n

Sometimes what we are manoeuvring around can\u2019t be tackled by a weekend off. When anxiety churns deep within we need a greater comfort than a lie-in, a late lunch, and a few beers. The Bible tells us that real respite for the soul is not for the put-together and perfect people only (if there are any) but for those struggling and tired: Jesus said, \u201cCome to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest.\u201d<\/p>\n

If we let multiple distractions run amok in our minds we will weary to the point of exhaustion. We have the technology now to satiate our schemes of avoidance, the motives of which are themselves as old as humanity. So let\u2019s not let distraction abound unchecked, but rather make it our guide, leading us to ask why it is we can\u2019t \u201csit quietly\u201d and then, turning to God, be led into true rest.<\/p>\n

<\/div>