31 Days of Mindful Parenting: Day 9

To explain this a bit further, often we put ourselves in the way of distractions so that we do not have to tolerate something (a feeling or a task) difficult. We can get away with this only so much. Eventually, if we don’t do the task or feel the feeling, it becomes bigger and even harder. Social media is an example of a nested distraction - we may initially get on it to distract ourselves from work. Then we read an article that makes us feel discouraged and we distract ourselves from that by going to a funny video. Then, that funny video reminds us of a book we need to buy for our child…you get the point. There are thousands of distractions in our day. When we are in a mindful state of awareness, we can notice them, stay with the present task or emotion and process or do what really needs to be done. This list provides some ideas of what to pay attention to with regard to what may be distracting.