Many years ago, when taking a year-long spiritual counseling certification, I was introduced to a term: distraction energy. This refers to energy that gets in the way of fulfilling that which you are committed to creating in your life.
This energy can take the shape of a traffic jam that makes you late to work, a tempting alternative to a previously made commitment, or just about anything that distracts from events, people, goals, and experiences that are actually important. I immediately loved this term because it gave a name to something I had experienced but didn’t understand.
The discovery of the term itself was helpful, but the experience of assigning a name to an experience also lent structure to my life. The term itself didn’t necessarily make the difference but rather the acknowledgment that there is in fact a type of unintelligible chaos energy. This simple act of naming provided a new way to look at what was going on when I was being pulled out of alignment.
When you push things right up to the line, distraction energy has a field day.
A story or system might create distraction energy in our lives. For instance, once upon a time I would run late for things. I told myself the story that I could wait until the very last minute before walking out the door. And we all know how that goes. When you push things right up to the line, distraction energy has a field day. It loves nothing more than a person in a hurry. As soon as I replaced my story about leaving on time to a story about leaving early, I closed the door to distraction energy.
Think about where distraction energy might show up in your life. Social media has become an amazing source of dangerous distraction energy because it slowly numbs you with feel-good sensations until you’re trapped. If you zoom out, you will see that distraction energy is anything that keeps you from that which is important. So if social media is pulling you away from important things, perhaps you should remove the distraction.
Food, shopping, sex, television, etc, can all be sources of distraction energy. None of these things is inherently problematic, but you must train your mind to pay attention to these kinds of distractions!
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