Why are you so distracted and how to beat them?

Have you ever wondered why you get distracted so easily? 

Lori Gottileb in her book, "May you should talk to someone" says that most of our destructive habits start with the need to fill an emotional void. You find something easy to distract yourself and hide behind to forget the void. Before you know it the habits become so strong that you can't stop. 

To break the destructive habit, you have identify and fill that void. 

The best way to identify and break that is by giving yourself the space to observe the behavior from a distance. Meditation is exact tool that caters to this need. Once you become an impartial observer to your own thoughts, you can understand your needs. 

Then begins the real work required to meet those needs. You no longer need to hide behind a distraction.  

Welcome to Holland

 Today I want to introduce you to a thought provoking article written by Emily Perl Kingsley - about her experience about parenting a child with a disability. I came across this in the book - "May be you should talk with someone" by Lori Gottileb

I'm reproducing it in full here - 

When you're going to have a baby, it's like planning a fabulous vacation trip - to Italy. You buy a bunch of guide books and make your wonderful plans. The Coliseum. The Michelangelo David. The gondolas in Venice. You may learn some handy phrases in Italian. It's all very exciting. After months of eager anticipation, the day finally arrives. You pack your bags and off you go. Several hours later, the plane lands. The stewardess comes in and says, "Welcome to Holland." "Holland?!?" you say. "What do you mean Holland?? I signed up for Italy! I'm supposed to be in Italy. All my life I've dreamed of going to Italy." But there's been a change in the flight plan. They've landed in Holland and there you must stay. The important thing is that they haven't taken you to a horrible, disgusting, filthy place, full of pestilence, famine and disease. It's just a different place. So you must go out and buy new guide books. And you must learn a whole new language. And you will meet a whole new group of people you would never have met. It's just a different place. It's slower-paced than Italy, less flashy than Italy. But after you've been there for a while and you catch your breath, you look around.... and you begin to notice that Holland has windmills....and Holland has tulips. Holland even has Rembrandts. But everyone you know is busy coming and going from Italy... and they're all bragging about what a wonderful time they had there. And for the rest of your life, you will say "Yes, that's where I was supposed to go. That's what I had planned." And the pain of that will never, ever, ever, ever go away... because the loss of that dream is a very very significant loss. But... if you spend your life mourning the fact that you didn't get to Italy, you may never be free to enjoy the very special, the very lovely things ... about Holland.

Source: https://www.dsasc.ca/uploads/8/5/3/9/8539131/welcome_to_holland.pdf 

It is not just about parenting a child with disability. It is an apt metaphor for any kind of dream cut short. It was really beautiful and impactful. Whatever your life situation, if you come across a situation where you cannot achieve something you always wanted, then this gives you a new perspective. Look around and see how to have whale of a time in Holland! 

 

Past, Present & Future

 We expect something to happen in a certain way. We have built a future on that happening. It doesn't and we get depressed. 

There might be something that happened in the past either done by us or done to us. Either way, it caused us pain and we regret that. We keep going back there and hope to erase that. 

In both of these situations, what we are doing is not helpful. Both of them are a story that we tell ourselves and we have the power to rewrite the story. 

Lori Gottileb in her book - "Maybe you should talk to someone" talks about how to manage the pain the past and the future. 

Pain feels like it's in the present but it's actually in the past and the future. If we don't accept the notion that as much as we try and fix what happened years ago, our pasts will keep us stuck. We need to change our relationship to the past.  

Our notion of future can be as powerful roadblock to change. Future happens later but we're creating it in our minds everyday. When the present falls apart, so does the future we associated with it. 

If we try to spend the present trying to fix the past or control the future, we will remain stuck in place in regret. The solution is to focus on the present and focus less on the future. 

My health journey and thanks to my wife!

 
 I'm a vegetarian. I don't eat much street food or packaged food. So I expected to be healthy. So imagine my shock when I learned that I was pre-diabetic when I went for annual health checks a few years ago. That triggered my interest in learning more about food and improving my health.  My wife is also very interested in health and food and she was game for it. Thus began our research and experimentation with food.  The first change we made was to try slow carb diet. It did improve my markers a little bit. Then I had to move to Boston and got busy and food habits went back to the old ways.

In my next test, I discovered that not only was I pre-diabetic, but I had unhealthy cholesterol levels. This prompted us to work on our diet again, this time with more focus. We learnt more about seed oils and how they are dangerous. We changed oils to healthier ones and reduced the oil consumption. We improved our diet to add more salads, more beans and lesser rice. With all these changes, I'm happy to report that my blood markers have returned to normal levels.

Now if you read the above it might seem like simple changes. But the most important thing is to be consistent. For that, I'm super grateful to my wife. She took upon herself to integrate these changes into our life. She cooked the meals daily with fresh and healthy ingredients. Cooking meals daily from scratch three times a day is grinding work. Without her efforts, it wouldn't have been possible. I'm taking this chance to express my gratitude for her unsung and invaluable efforts!