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.

How to blog with a cat in your lap

As I was sitting down writing yesterdays post my cat sunny jumped in my lap and refused to leave me alone until he got some attention. He was given a few quick pets and then politely shown the door since I was on a schedule yesterday but it got me thinking. How do we deal with the distractions that creep up in our daily lives?

There are relay only two different kinds of distractions: the ones we expect and the ones that come out of know where. The ones we expect are easy to deal with we make time for them or we develop statageys to avoid them all together. TV shows, video games, and emails are just some examples of these distractions.

But what about the unexpected distraction, the cat in the lap, the phone ringing while you are working, seeing something wired out of the corner of your eye while taking to some one. How do you deal with these distractions and not let them interfere with our progress? It is actually a trick question: we don't deal with them we need to think in terms of recovering from them.
The moment something becomes a distraction to us it has already had it's impact. What is important is how quickly you are able to refocus yourself on the task at hand.

The same is true when we look at the things that distract us from our personal growth. For example I have been working to limit the number of online games I play. These are a huge time wast for me and in a way a defense mechanism for not dealing with the things that need to be dealt with. While this has been going well for me lately every once in a while a good game will pop up and I will put more time in to playing it then I really should. When I catch this happening I set a time of day were I am aloud to play the game and then try to refocus on the work I am doing. This works as long as I am aware of the distraction and act quickly to recover from it.

Distractions are going to happen to us every day, when we expect them and when we don't. We need to focus on how we recover from the distraction rather then the distraction itself. When you are faced with distractions what strategies do you employ for getting back on track?