Bringing Mindfulness to Habits of Distraction

This meditation provides practices to bring awareness to habits of distraction (e.g., constantly checking our phone, email, social media, or lost in thoughts and daydreams) so that we can be more present for our lives.

Transcript

This is a meditation to help work with and change habits of distraction.

These kinds of habits can manifest in constantly checking our phone for messages or social media posts or mindlessly watching TV or spending a lot of time lost in thought,

Daydreaming or feeling spaced out.

To begin this meditation,

Sit in a way that's relaxed and at ease,

With your eyes gently closed or half open with a soft,

Unfocused gaze.

Allow yourself to arrive and settle,

Taking a few deep,

Relaxing breaths.

Sit in a way that is relaxed and alert.

Now bring to mind a situation where you typically check out from your direct experience.

It might be when you spend long periods of time on social media without a particular objective or focus,

Or constantly checking your phone to see if any new texts or emails have arrived,

Or spending time channel surfing on TV or daydreaming,

Lost in thoughts much of the time.

If you can,

Put yourself in a situation where you typically check out and bring to mind the situation.

Who's there?

How are you feeling?

What's the context?

Try to bring to mind what you are feeling before you check out,

Before you move into spending time online or just watching a lot of TV or daydreaming.

Is it tension?

Loneliness?

Worry?

Boredom?

Kind of numbness?

Allow yourself to experience whatever feelings or emotions come up,

Open to how they feel in your body,

And meet the feelings with kindness,

Acceptance,

And curiosity.

A helpful question to ask yourself is,

What would I have to feel if I were not to check out from my experience?

What would I have to feel if I were not to check out from my experience by going online or checking social media or my phone?

Let yourself feel whatever is present.

Be aware of any thoughts or urges that come up.

For example,

I need to do X.

And let yourself feel the urge as it expresses itself in your body and your mind without acting on it.

Let any thought that comes up be seen as just a thought and let it come and go.

Become as familiar as you can with the feelings that spur the urge or the desire to move away from your experience and open fully to them.

Keep coming back to what is calling for attention.

And if there are no strong feelings or urges,

Rest in a focused awareness of your breathing and come back to the breath when your mind wanders.

So you could sit for a few quiet minutes and just be aware of what takes you away from your direct experience.

What are your patterns or habits of escaping?

Where you might feel the urge to check your phone or go look at something online,

Just to zone out,

Just to space out.

And notice what's underneath that.

See if you can stay with the direct feelings without acting them out.

Just the feeling of urges from your Instinct.

Reviews

Always a beautiful practice 💖

This is a wonderfully practical meditation for healing urges towards habits of distraction. The guidance is very simple, yet easily impactful. Thank you so much! 🙏🏼

Exactly what I needed. This helped me to realize that I’m masking my anxiety and depression with distraction, instead of just sitting with those feelings. Very healing 🙏🏽

Very interesting questions to contemplate. Thank you for new insight. 🙏

When I first started meditating I used to beat myself up for my mind wondering. I have a wonderful friend that sat with me and told me that is what our mind is supposed to do. I am so grateful I found your meditations. This will be good for me when my mind starts wandering like it has the past few days.
Thank you

really helpful questions to ask myself during the meditation and as well throughout the day. thank you ✨

That was wonderful Hugh, I want to develop and learn more about the practices of being aware of what causes distraction, in order to focus on all the things that really matter to me. Bless you my friend.

Throughout the long and difficult time of my husband’s terminal illness, caregiving and subsequent death I’ve been intentional in my actions at times. At other times, I’ve been unmotivated and indulged myself in mindless activities such as online word games, nightly tv binge watching, Facebook etc. I’ve excused all of this as self care. This meditation has helped me uncover that these choices have been an avoidance of my heartache, even all these months after his death. That coupled with perhaps fear of failing at the positive opportunities that I now have. I often talking about being mindful and intentional and this has helped me realize that my behavior is far from my intentions. Thank you, Hugh, for this insightful opportunity which I will surely return to again and again to stay on the track I want to be on. 💕🙏🏽

Just what I needed. Thank you.

Great pace. Great suggestions and thoughts to ruminate on. Nice on a Monday in order to prepare for a successful week.

Thank you, made perfect sense 😀

Simply helpful, thank you!

Quiet, small, succinct, targeted. Definitely relevant in my life. Thank you for uploading, Hugh!

Ohmigosh, I need to listen to this again and again...very apropos for me!

This is great! And much needed in today's world. I plan to share this with the students I work with.

I like this one. Going to take the lesson with me.

Much needed. Short. Simple. Useful. Thank you. Namaste.

Liked this a lot, thank you x

Great for introspection.