Are You Distracted?

When I was going through chemo, there were many slow days. And hard days. I was zapped of energy, so I spent a lot of time reading, thinking, and taking life a bit slower. A life that at times, wasn’t all too bad. Except the chemo part. Don’t want to do that again, that’s for sure!

But one thing I realized in my own life, is that I can be easily distracted. And I do it to myself. We are constantly bombarded by things in life that are trying to get our attention. But we are the ones who choose to succumb to them.

A distraction is anything that causes our minds to go a different direction from what we truly want to be pursuing or doing in that moment.

I am most distracted by social media and/or my phone. Anytime I have a “moment”, I hands down, most often go to my phone. But here’s the issue. It gets in the way of way too much. I once read that there are 3 types of phone users. Those who have one, but put it away when engaging with others. Then there are those who have the phone by them, while engaging with others, but if someone texts or messages them, will right away respond, disengaging themselves from the conversation. Then there are those who outright are on their phones while with others, completely disengaging themselves the entire time.

I’m sure you’ve seen them all and actually have been them all at one point in life, if you have a phone. I have too. And it makes to cringe to even realize what our phones have done to us.

They have ripped out the idea of just “being with” and just “being”. We can’t just be in silence, letting our thoughts sink into our minds. We can’t just sit and read a book, without first trying to stay up to date on the latest via apps. We can’t just look out the window, in peace, without wondering what we are missing. Maybe you grab your phone before your Bible or devotional book in the morning. I know I have! Convicted.

We fear that we might miss something. That the social media world will miss us. We feel the need to leave our mark. To like, share, or comment so that people know we care. But is that really how we want to portray our love to our friends and neighbors? Just by our interactions on social media?

I need to do better. I want to do better. And I need to put down my phone. Awhile back I set app limits on certain apps, to only 3-5 minutes a day. It’s been fantastic. But how sad that I even have to do that. C’mon, Kristin! Your self-control is THAT bad? Yep. But it has stopped that mindless scrolling.

I want to live an undistracted life. I want to sit in silence and be comfortable in it. I want to fully engage with others when I am with them. Maybe there was something to the corded phone. You could only go as far as the cord could reach (and boy we all tested that out :)), but it was just all talking. Okay, maybe you could fold laundry too. Multi-tasking probably started thanks to a corded phone! But in all seriousness, when we are with others, we need to be with them.

Don’t get distracted. You in?