Breaking Free From Distractions | Intentional-Living Mindset

In this episode, we’re diving into the truth about distractions — how often we choose them, why they hold us back, and how to take ownership of our focus. Learn how to break the cycle of distraction, make powerful decisions, and step into more freedom and intention in your life.

Transcript

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Wild Freewell podcast.

I am here today to talk to you about distractions but more specifically I am here to talk to you about taking ownership of our distractions and really coming at them from a place of self-responsibility and self-sovereignty.

So what I mean by this is I'm I was talking to a client recently and I've actually had this conversation with my partner quite a few times because he is I would say he's prone to getting distracted but I think that the most important place to start whenever we're doing any kind of mindset work and including now the conversation that we're having about distractions is to really understand that language matters.

The way we use language matters,

The story that we tell ourselves based on the language that we're using matters,

It all plays a role and so so I want to break down this idea of getting distracted because we often say that right and sometimes it's true something can distract us and what happens in those moments is that something kind of comes out of nowhere and grabs our attention and we get momentarily distracted.

So for example we're walking down the street,

We're talking to a friend,

All of a sudden we hear like a siren and we get distracted maybe we lose our train of thought.

When we are talking about our habits,

When we are talking about the things in our daily lives I want us to really be honest with ourselves about whether we are actually getting distracted or if we are allowing ourselves to be distracted because there is a huge difference between those two.

Let's take my favorite distraction of all that I talk about on the podcast often,

Social media.

Social media is distracting,

Full stop.

I don't think that there's really a way that we can have a conversation about whether or not that's true,

Some people might think it's not and if that's the case then that's fine.

For me this is like inherently,

This is one of the things I find or I believe to be inherently true.

I think that social media is inherently distracting,

I think it is designed to be distracting because something that's important to remember when an app is free meaning you do not pay for the app,

You do not pay for the service that it provides,

Then you are the product.

When an app is free,

You,

Your attention,

Your focus,

Your time,

Your energy that you put into the app via the time that you spend on it is the product.

This is not my idea,

This is something that was taught to me over time and I feel like it may have come from the Netflix documentary about social media but I'm not 100% sure,

Don't quote me on that but it's,

But I want to give credit where credit is due.

I did not come up with this idea,

This is something that I learned over time and that I genuinely believe.

So when we are on social media are we getting distracted,

Something just popped up out of nowhere and now we've lost our focus or are we allowing ourselves to be distracted?

Okay,

I think it's really important to kind of assess this and to assess the language that we're using around it because when we get distracted the blame and I don't even like that word,

That's not really,

That's not really the best word to possibly use but the idea here is really that we're not responsible for the fact that we were distracted.

If we take the example of walking down the street and we hear a siren and the siren distracts us,

We're not in control of that situation.

There's a series of factors that have been,

That are involved that pulled our attention and our focus away from what we were trying to kind of focus on which was our friend and the conversation that we were having.

Whereas with social media or cell phones in general or tech in general we are not getting distracted.

This is not something that just pops up and comes into our lives.

This is something that we are choosing to allow into our space,

Into our time,

Into our energy,

Into our field,

Like pick whatever word works best for you.

So why this is so important is because people could say well I got a notification.

Okay but who runs your phone?

Like you're in charge of the notifications that are on your phone right?

You're in charge of these,

Of these things that are kind of coming in and taking up your time and this could be anything okay.

This could be you know maybe feeling the pressure to respond immediately to text messages.

This could be games on your phone.

This could be social media.

This could be just your phone in general and like even like things that we use it for good can be distracting.

Like I have affirmations on my phone.

I have an affirmations app.

That can potentially be distracting but it's a distraction that I've chosen.

It's an interruption into my daily life that I have made the conscious decision to engage with and I have to then also make the conscious decision to make another choice if that initial decision no longer serves me.

And the reason why I bring this up is because I was talking to a client recently and we were talking about one of his external goals,

Something that he is you know interested in working towards and one of the things that he had mentioned is that you know we're struggling,

He's really struggling with focus because he's very easily distracted and I hear that a lot and I'm going to go and into something that I think is going to be an unpopular opinion.

I'm going to preface what I'm about to say by saying that I'm obviously not a doctor and I have no medical experience and this is just something that intuitively and kind of just it reflecting on the situation makes sense to me.

I find it really interesting that so many adults and children in this day and age are now being diagnosed with ADHD.

I find it interesting and I wonder and I'm not saying that there is or there isn't but I wonder if there isn't a connection between the decisions that we make in our daily lives to allow ourselves to be distracted,

If that isn't playing some kind of role on our long-term well-being.

We are still in the relative early stages of the digital era so we don't actually know what the long-term effects of our current decisions will have on our well-being but I would be interested to see you know 30-50 years from now if there is some kind of connection between you know we're already seeing it with a lot of kids we're and even adults that people are are being people are less and less able to process long-form material.

I see this even in myself.

I find it sometimes taxing to read long captions on Instagram in part because I don't really care and in part because it's that's not what the app is for I feel like we're not necessarily searching for that in that particular context but it is really interesting.

I'm a big reader I've always loved to read I've read since I was a child like it's always been very much a part of me and reading a book is not difficult for me but I do find that even when I'm reading sometimes I'm like oh I can get I can get easily distracted like I can allow myself to be distracted by other things and I think in my case at least and this may not be true for everybody it is certainly because I have built up a habit of allowing myself to be distracted.

Now I think it's really important for me to say that I am allowing myself to be distracted and I am also somebody who is very much into tech hacking so I have changed almost all of the settings on my phone it does not beep it does not ring it does not vibrate it does not light up I mean it rings only for like the people that are closest to me where where it could potentially be like an emergency situation that they're contacting me otherwise like I don't get notifications from any of my apps I do not have the little red dots that tell me how many notifications I have on most of my apps like my phone has been really like I've tried to make it in a way that it serves me and I'm not just a slave to it okay and I still allow myself to get distracted by it.

I remember when I lived in my old house I had a couch and the couch had like the arms of the couch were flat so I was able to put my phone there and I remember that when I would make the decision to put my phone like to charge my phone or to put it in another room I had this habit of like reaching over and looking for my phone while I was doing other things so I'm reading and I'm reaching for the phone I'm watching tv and I'm reaching for the phone like I had this like kind of it was it was insane how like the muscle memory of that movement was more powerful than my conscious decision to not use my phone like it's really really really interesting and the reason why I think it's so important that we get you know we really step into sovereignty self-responsibility and taking ownership of ownership of our distractions is because we want to feel free and we will feel so much more free when we are choosing to break this habit of allowing ourselves to be distracted because it probably has become a habit and then really I would encourage you to to think about how often your distractions stop you from going after what you really want so in this case my client has a very clear goal of something that he wants to achieve and he has not been able to achieve it because he hasn't set to some extent boundaries I would say with his like with his distractions maybe with his devices but he also hasn't really set a boundary with himself or made a really powerful decision about how things are going to be moving forward because we do have control over our lives in that way like we are not owned by these devices even though sometimes I think it can feel like we are like they're very much in control of our lives in a lot of ways but we have the power within us to make another choice especially if we are talking about these things getting in the way of us going after what we really want like what a shame to be in a position where you're not going after something that means so much to you because you're just allowing yourself to be distracted by whether it's messages or whatever it might be do you know what I mean not giving yourself that hour of time to focus on whatever it is that you need or want to focus on to be able to get what you want so this can look like you know setting time aside from your phone to like work on a hobby or it can mean setting time aside to work on your business outside of like the regular things that you do in your life because maybe you're building a business while you're working like full-time or part-time or whatever so you need to be really mindful about that about how you're dedicating your time to that goal or maybe it's wanting to get in shape or eating healthy and like those things sound relatively easy but sometimes they take a little bit more effort so things like if we want to get healthy that could look like you know looking for new recipes to make and that takes time and even there it's easy to get distracted because we're probably using tech to look for those recipes so if we're using our phone we have our phone in our hand and we're getting a bunch of notifications then that can be distracting okay well then maybe we need to modify the way that our notifications come in maybe we need to put our phone on do not disturb maybe we need to turn off notifications maybe we need to put it on airplane although it would be very difficult to look for recipes in that case if we were to do that.

I think it's important though to note that it takes courage it takes bravery and it takes a lot of resolve to really make the decision to do things differently to not allow yourself to get swept up in the way that you have been doing things or the way you've always done things and really focus on what you truly want right and and really be being mindful of what you are giving time energy and your resources to in your life right where are you putting your focus like let's flip the script for a second and stop talking about distractions but where are you putting your focus because when you get distracted you're focusing on whatever that thing is that has distracted you right that's where all of your energy is your focus is there your time is there um so if that's not what you ultimately want if that's not getting you where you really want to go perhaps it's time now to make a shift and it starts with that first powerful decision and like some of the things that I say to friends like the other day I was talking to a friend of mine and I mean I say it to clients too but I say it more to friends because because it's a little bit like aggressive but um when we when I was talking to a friend the other day and she was like you know I'm really getting down on myself and um you know I'm not really feeling great and whatever and just being like really hard on myself and I feel like I should do this and I should do that and I was like okay hang on we don't do that here anymore and then in brackets I said you know that often or for long periods of time because of course we do that of course we have moments of self-doubt of course we have moments where we are you know kind of questioning ourselves of course we have moments where we get distracted okay of course we have moments where we allow ourselves to get distracted or where we choose the distraction okay but otherwise we don't do that here anymore because we know what we want because we've listened to other episodes of this podcast and we've gotten clear on what we want and we're working towards it and so now we're making a different choice now I want you to think for a second about the energy of what I have just said to you we don't do that anymore because we do this and the energy around that is completely different and part of this has also to do with identity which is its own podcast because identity work is a really really kind of big beast in and of itself but it's this idea of like the way that we view ourselves so if I view myself as someone who is easily distracted what do you think the odds are that I am then going to be easily distracted versus somebody who says well no I find it really easy to focus now I'm not saying that we're necessarily going to just speak things into reality although of course we can but the more that we repeat the story of it's easy for me to get distracted I'm always distracted I easily lose focus I'm blah blah blah as we as we feed that it becomes bigger truer and it becomes this story that we latch on to so that in and of itself is something that we can also shift so it's not just about the decisions that we're making in terms of being distracted and not allowing ourselves to be distracted but it is also around the story we tell ourselves about how we behave in those situations and our natural state of being because you see we've said well I'm easily distracted I am and I am is one of the most powerful phrases that we can use and without like I mean I'm going to oversimplify this for a second but when we say something I am something and we say it with conviction that thing automatically becomes true it's something that we've already bought into we believe it and so if you are telling yourself the story of I'm easily distracted you're cutting your nose off to spite your face so it's not worth it right we can reframe that story while we also really reassess the way that we are engaging with our distractions with the things that are our kind of maybe vices maybe weaknesses call it whatever you want the things that are getting in the way of us really moving in the direction that we want to move because we are so capable we are so so capable and we are so powerful we are co-creators with the universe we can make amazing things happen but usually we are way too busy telling ourselves a crappy story or getting in our own way and blocking ourselves before we've even begun and now comes the time where I am going to quote to you one of my favorite movies which if you have not seen it you should because it's fantastic Sister Act 2 which I think came out in like 92 or 93 it's with Whoopi Goldberg she is pretending to be a nun if you haven't seen both of them watch them both they are a delight but in any case the idea here is that I am you know she's she's in the second movie she is a teacher and she's talking to some students and she's basically saying to them like you know if you wake up in the morning and all you can think about is writing and you get up every day and you write then you're a writer if all you can think about is singing and you get up every day and you sing then you're a singer and it really is that simple it's not about the external recognition of other people seeing me as a singer other people seeing me as a writer it's about my own self-validation that I am showing up for myself and I am doing what I want to be doing and that is what makes it real it is that because I want it okay so if there is a goal that you are going after you are capable of doing that thing achieving that goal and really embodying the identity of the person who can have do or be that thing right because you choose to and I know that's a little bit scary and I know it's probably a lot uncomfortable but it's true the sooner we own these things the sooner we take responsibility for the ways that we're getting in our own way the sooner we take responsibility for the things that we want that we allow ourselves to want the things that we want even the things that scare us even the things that seem too big too unrealistic too whatever okay the sooner we allow ourselves to do all of these things the sooner all of it will come to us and the sooner we can begin making progress towards it if that makes sense so to recap are you getting distracted or are you allowing yourself to be distracted okay that would be the first step the second step is to really get clear on what are your vices so what is your weakness what is your distraction of choice is it tech is it social media is it I don't know smoking drinking it could be a million things is it eating it could be anything everybody is different so think about what is really getting in the way of you going after what you ultimately want okay and then think about the ways that you are identifying with the thing that you don't want okay so if you're trying to get healthy maybe the story that you're telling yourself is I'm lazy yikes friends yikes like again just it's that's shooting yourself in the foot and it's so easy to just stop we just don't say that anymore we don't say it we choose to not believe it we stop giving literal oxygen to it because that is literally fueling the fire right we stop saying it and we begin slowly to write another story I'm in the process of getting healthier I'm in the process of being more active I'm in the process of taking steps towards my goals pick your poison right whatever works for you and then from there we work on the identity of that thing so if I want to be healthier then I would begin saying something like I'm healthy or I am you know whatever I'm learning to run or I'm improving in this way right the same thing it's it's like an affirmation as well but it goes a little bit deeper than that we'd need to have a whole discussion just about that so yeah there's just a lot of things that we can do though and then all the while remembering that we are worthy of what we want and we are allowed to dream bigger we are allowed to want amazing things we're allowed to go after them and we are capable of going after them yes the end this is where I leave you um if you liked this episode please uh subscribe or follow or leave a review or leave a star or all that good stuff um and yeah if you have anything that you'd like to share with me about this episode um you can message me you know where to find me um otherwise yeah I just I hope this episode serves you and I hope that you begin taking steps towards what you really want and that you kick those nasty distractions to the curb because you don't need them so yeah uh have an amazing weekend and uh I will see you on the next episode ciao