"Hey Look! A Squirrel!!" - When Distraction Get's The Better Of You All Too Often

Ian Hawkins 0:02

Are you ready, ready to release internal pain to find confidence, clarity and direction for your future, to live a life of meaning, fulfillment and contribution to trust your intuition again, but something's been holding you back, you've come to the right place. Welcome. I'm a Ian Hawkins, the host and founder of The Grief Code podcast. Together, let's heal your unresolved or unknown grief by unlocking your grief code. As you tune into each episode, you will receive insight into your own grief, how to eliminate it and what to do next. Before we start by one request, if any new insights or awareness land with you during this episode, please send me an email at info at the end Hawkins coaching.com. And let me know what you found. I know the power of this word, I love to hear the impact these conversations have. Okay, let's get into it.

Kids cartoons? Just a wealth of knowledge, comedy. Trivia, the amount of trivial answers I've added, I've been able to answer because of a reference from a cartoon. It's been. Yeah, it's been amazing. There's one I want to reference there. And if you've seen up, I think pretty sure it's a Pixar movie where they tie the balloons to the house and the house takes off because he doesn't want to sell his house. And he's got the translator for the dog. And the dogs talking your way through this translator, and then goes, Oh, look, a squirrel runs off, right. And it's that distraction that we all face in our life at different times. Now, I know I'm guilty of this at different times. And I was particularly noticing it in the last couple of weeks from people mid sentence, just getting completely sidetracked by different situations and losing their train of thought and not being able to get back to where they were in the conversation with me. And it made me think about how often that is a thing. How often that would show up for you when you are having these similar experiences, sometimes is when you're working, you're working on something and then a message pops up. And then you go oh, look at the answer that or because you're not having a level of fulfillment satisfied in different areas of your life, you're actually looking for any sort of distraction to get you from away from what it is that you're doing. And this is exhausting. When this distraction happens, because every time you change direction, every time you take on a new task, it's different, it actually causes your brain to have to change the way it's processing, and trying to then reengage in something and then get back to the same level of concentration you were before. It just takes so much energy. So yeah, you're left drained, and no closer to what it was that you wanted to get done. How that plays out in personal life is you have a lack of presence with the most important people in your life. You are getting distracted, you're having conversations you're there, physically, but not there. Mentally, you might be on your phone or distracted by a notification coming through. You could be having a conversation and you're thinking about something else trying to solve a problem. Particularly if the constant conversation you're having is with a family member, and they've presented something that you processing. And what ends up happening is is that you realized later that either you've missed something important missed an opportunity, you don't remember what they told you. And then you're left feeling less than you want to because you'd like particularly for your children, you feel like you've missed the trick. So this happens because you've got so many different conflicting demands of your attention and your time. Now, you might have a number of different work priorities, you might have different stuff going on with your family, with your partner with your children, you might be facing challenges in any of those areas or with other any of those areas and with other relationships, extended family, friends, colleagues, whatever it is, you might have your own health challenges. You might have some big stuff going on with your own children that they're having struggles in different areas. And then you can also have things like habits that you just can't get to stick. You might have

like something like exercise that you wanted to get back into. So you get back into it and a great starting to feel good again. And then suddenly the setback comes and so now you're left going well. This is the only way I knew how to to deal with my physical well being, and I've got this injury that I can't. So now I'm gonna use that as an excuse to not be able to do anything there. And then I've got this more of this overwhelming and a desire to do all these different things, but no time, no energy, and now my body's letting me down and all sorts of things that are way that it could be playing out around habits. Generally, the exercise is one that most people can identify with, because at different times, they've probably been in that that pattern of, or they've seen other people in that pattern of trying to get into an exercise, exercise habit, but having these setbacks that then derail them. So all of these elements that are playing out in your mind are distracting because you haven't got clarity, you don't know what's most important, you don't know how to prioritize each of them. And you're also trying to process massive amounts of it all on the one time. So what do you do about it? Life priority list? What does that mean? Well, this is something that I give all my clients, whether it's in my group programs, and my one on one programs, and it's about narrowing down the most important areas of your life to a list of say, five or 10 areas. And knowing what order of importance they are. So I always recommend, I never force anyone to do anything, but but for my clients, I always highly recommend putting themselves at the top of that list. Because you can't show up for those other people in your world. If you're not putting yourself at the top of that list in terms of your well being your health, your own time and energy. Then what's next, usually a partner children work, and all sorts of different things. But again, you're gonna have a different order. So making sure you've got it in the right order, so that when different things come up, you know, okay, well, I've got here conflicting elements, which ones are most important at this time. Now, I've had some big moments. And I've referenced this in previous episodes where I've had loss, experienced loss, the death of a friend, or something like that, where I've just had to reflect and go, Wow, what's most important at the moment. And I can tell you, those times what's not most important is work. And what is not most important is all of those other things that are other people's priorities, other people's agendas, it comes back to me, my health, and the relationships with the most important people in my life. And then it's usually a reality check of I'm probably not living there at the moment, I've got it out of order. So for you, it's identifying what is most important, what order that list would fall, and what needs to change to make sure that you're living true to that list. Then the next most important thing is what's getting in the way? What's stopping me from making that happen? And what do I do to fix it? What's the solution? Now, if you can't answer the first question, what is this getting in the way? Then journal on it? Write down your journal, I know there's something getting in the way. What might that be that allow your unconscious mind to solve that problem? If you know what's getting in the way, but you're not sure how to find a solution. And let's face it, if you knew how to find the solution, you would have done it by now. And if you know how to find the solution, and you have an act on it, then what's keeping you stuck is not that it's the fact that you can't act on the solution. So if you're not sure of the solution, same thing, journaling it, like I know this is getting in the way. Please help me to find a solution. What is the solution, however you want to ask it allow the unconscious part of you to find the answer to which I've talked about in previous episodes, then you're well on the way to be able to get really focused on what's most important, because you'll know the quick when it comes to time and energy and attention. It's not a question of time. It's a question. It's a question of time and attention. It's a question of priorities, what's most important? And I my prioritizing that in my life that is most important, because why would we not want to prioritize those areas? So we get there really clear. We know what's stopping us we start setting in motion for those solutions to come. And then when they do come you act on them. When the solution shows up, act on it. There's no point in asking your mind to find you an answer if you're just gonna go Oh, but I never want to do that. That sounds scary. Or I don't want to do that because of x y Zed reasons why not? When you've asked for the solution and it is shown itself to you. It's time to act.

So if you are getting distracted, and you know that you are in that space of a look a squirrel you want to come back to what's most simple Want to be present for yourself, you will have clarity of thought and be able to present be present for the most important people in your life. Do these activities that I've shown you here, and please do share this episode with someone, if you know, we've seen that that's what they're experiencing that they're easily distracted, they're not able to stay present, and when you're talking to them, that they're often chasing that squirrel. Have an awesome day. Speak to you soon. I hope you enjoyed this episode of The Grief Code podcast. Thank you so much for listening. Please share it with a friend or family member that you know would benefit from hearing it too. If you are truly ready to heal your unresolved or unknown grief, let's chat. Email me at info at Ian Hawkins coaching.com You can also stay connected with me by joining the Grief Code community at Ian Hawkins coaching.com forward slash The Grief Code and remember, so that I can help even more people to heal. Please subscribe and leave a review on your favorite podcast platform