The Power of Positive Distraction

I had an epiphany when I realized that after focusing on reading a book and completing seventy pages of it in a few hours, I had actually come out of my anxious mental state.

I was anxious for some reasons and my heart was trembling in anxiety from inside. A particular issue, which my mind had created was bothering me. To divert my mind, I picked up a book which I had started reading three days back and dealt with a lot of its portions today.

After I had read half of it, I could observe within me, the anxiety slowly receding and losing its clutch on me and by the end of the seventy pages I had totally come out of the grip of that anxiety issue. This is the power of Positive Distraction.

I distracted my mind from what it was thinking and worrying to something more productive and enjoyable to me, which is reading. I focused on my reading and in that time slowly my mind was getting unraveled subconsciously from the futile issues it was creating raucous about.

After my reading was entirely finished to the last page, which I did over many hours in many sittings, I found that the issue that was bothering me was still there but the constant strong feeling of- ‘it does not matter; it is irrelevant’ was predominantly sitting over the issue and kicking its butt which means that I could feel the sheer purposelessness of worrying about the issue and it was no more an issue for me.

‘It does not matter’ is a beautiful feeling. It makes you feel light and cozy and courageous. It takes the scare away and puts you at ease. I was feeling that and that’s how I realized how wonderfully distraction can be used positively to divert one’s attention from insignificant and useless matters by making things enjoyable and purposeful for the mind.

So, the whole principle behind how positive distraction works is that you have to make things enjoyable and purposeful for the mind. You have to do things which interests and can have the attention of your mind and do them with focus.

In my case my enjoyment and purpose was reading and focusing on an interesting book and covering some portions of it. But it could be anything- painting, singing, cooking, walking, running, sports, reading, yoga, meditation, playing board games and video games, solving sudoku, etc.  Do anything which is interesting to you and do with focus and slowly you find your mind getting back to its original state of calmness.

I am sure to use this tool more often now to divert my mind positively whenever needed. Perhaps it will be helpful for you too. It works for me and it worked wonders because I could not have imagined I could feel so normal about the issue that was constantly bothering me and, so smoothly come to a state of- ‘it does not matter; it is irrelevant.’