Embrace Distractions (sometimes)

Mother: Beta, you are too distracted in life. Today, you came up with yet a new fascination towards the armed forces. Just in the previous month, you expressed a desire to get a gold medal in Olympics. In the previous year, you told me that you would like to see yourself as an entrepreneur in the next decade. Be honest with me, how many lifetimes did you plan to accomplish all the above.

Father: Sonna, be focused. To avoid external distractions in the form of akashavani’s from your mobile phone, keep it in another room while you are studying.

Reader: Heyy, Heyy, you are using the same template of your previous post. You are a copy cat.

Me: The context in My first blog post was different to that of what I am trying to tell in this. So, please don’t call me that. 

Reader: Ok, then it must be inspired by your previous post, as I can see the only difference is you replaced the mind by father and heart by mother. In one way this replacement also seems to be fitting well with your previous post as mothers are mostly emotional (heart) and fathers are usually the head (Mind) of the family.

Me: Whatttt? Is there any logic to this? Anyways, Please don’t judge before completely reading, it’s not inspired by my first post.

Reader: Ohhhhhhhhhh, I got it, I got it, Now I finally got it. Your intention behind this conversation is to publicise your previous post, isn’t it?

Me: Nooooooo Noooo Nooo Noo No No No………….. (rhythmically)

Reader: Yesssssss Yessss Yesss Yess Yes Yes Yes…………… (rhythmically). Anyways, It made me smile. (Me: I guess?)

Me: This was my actual intention. 😃😃😃

I got distracted while writing the post on the topic of distraction. 

I like distractions and in fact, I would love to get distracted at least a few times daily. By no means I am talking about the weapons of mass distraction like social media, video games, YouTube etc. My topic of interest is a special type of distractions that occur on a daily basis. Those are positive distractions that have the potential to:

1. Uplift your mood.
2. Break the state of lethargy.
3. Pull you out of the vicious loop of YouTube or any other similar platform etc.

While we are studying or working on a project or doing something important for us, after an hour or so into it we feel like taking a short break of 5 minutes by watching Tiktok or any social networking site or a news website etc. Unfortunately, the short break expands into an hour or two (even more in some cases) thanks to the weapons of mass distraction that disturbs our schedule and make us feel regretful. During our short break (😂), we often encounter distractions such as:

• A request from a family member to bring items from a supermarket.
• A phone call from your close friend.
• The arrival of a relative to your home.
• Add some more that are specific to you. 

The sad part is most often, if not, almost always we look at these distractions as the obstacles to our state of (false) happiness. The even sadder thing is that we resume our short break after we got distracted because we are usually super focused during our breaks. Moreover, we get irritated and experience intense anger towards the source of the distraction which in most cases is our family members or close friends. If we can look at these distractions as opportunities to bring us back to what we are supposed to be doing then in my humble opinion it makes a significant difference in our productivity.

Thank you for reading. I thank Medha Sri Ji and Anu Ji for being catalysts for this blog post. I am grateful to every person on OS.ME family who commented on my previous post and my friends and family members who appreciated it. Finally, I am very thankful to my brother Hari Teja for encouraging (forcing, scolding, insisting, add some more verbs (few positive ones too if you can) ) me persistently to read books roughly a decade ago. My life has changed in ways unimaginable because of this one habit of reading books. 

Lots of love. Keep smiling (always). 🙂 🙂 🙂