Taking the time to enjoy the cat in your lap

Yesterday I told you how my cat jumped in my lap while I was trying to wright and that got me thinking about distractions and how to avoid them. However sometimes when the cat plops down in our laps we decide to make time for him, rather then avoiding the distractions it is sometimes better to embrace them. By this I do not mean the tendency to avoid working on the things that we need to work on in favor of doing something else. Some times we find our selves overwhelmed by all that is going on around us; at times like this it is nice to step back and let our selves be distracted. Other times Distractions can lead to wonderfull life enriching experience. How do we know when to cout our selves some slack and when to keep slogging away on the task at hand.

The only real key we have for this situation is our intuition and knowledge of our selves. We know when our stress levels get to high and we need that moment of rest or to hear that conferting voice on the other end of the phone line. If we do not allow our selves these mometns of peace we let even the things we are doing for our selves become toil. Being able to spend time with our loved ones or set things aside for a half hour to have coffee with a friend is at the hart of the entire purpose for creating the lives we want. If we can not control our schedules to include time for joy and friendship then we are right back were we started.

The other type of positive distraction is the one that leads us to opportunity for life changing experience and creating great memories. If we close our selves out to everything that is going on around us and only focus on the things we are working on we miss out. How do we know when an opportunity is going to become something more? We don't other then to trust our gut, fallow our intuition, and fallow our hart.

The true key to all this is knowing what you want and what you need and knowing how to tell the two apart. Knowing when to indulge and when to be strict with our selves. In the comments to yesterdays post Patty of why not start now fame left this thougth wich gets cuts right through this decision making proses.

Things like a purring cat, a phone conversation with my husband, a beautiful song on the radio - I want to stop for a few moments and relish those because they are meaningful to me. That makes it easier to get back on track. But a lot of the other stuff, like games or internet surfing, yeah, those are a huge time suck. And there's an addictive quality to them. So sometimes I can get back on track by asking myself, "what do I truly need right now?" Usually it's not the distraction I truly need.

So when the cat of distraction jumps in your lap how do you deal with it. Do you give it a few scratches behind the ear and send it on it's way or do you get out the cat toys and enjoy some quality time with it? I advise you to do some of both. Doing to much of one and to little of the other will not lead to a balanced happy life.