Distractions Are What You Trigger in Your Own Mind.
Welcome back to Mid-Week Meditations , Lifehacker’s weekly dive into the pool of stoic wisdom and how you can use its waters to meditate and improve your life.
This week’s selection is taken from the book of Marcus Aurelius and his Meditations . He has some thoughts about things that distract us from our goals in our daily life:
The outer things, the pursuit or avoidance of which bothers you, do not impose themselves on you, but in some way you go to them yourself. Be that as it may, remain calm in your judgments about them, and they too will remain motionless – then you will not be noticed, neither pursued nor avoided. – Meditations, 11.11
What does it mean
One of the main ideas that Aurelius focuses on in his Stoic writings is the idea that the mind is immune to all external things. For example, you cannot control the circumstances of a situation, but since they do not affect your mind, you can control your reaction to them. The same goes for all the “outside things” that you pursue or try to avoid when trying to get the job done.
You are not distracted because they tell you to do it; you chase them because your mind desires it. You don’t avoid distractions because of their nature; you avoid them because you think you cannot control yourself around them. Basically, something is distracting because you let it be because you think so. All distractions require your input to exist – otherwise they are just a thing in the world.
But if you adjust your contribution, if you choose to treat these external things simply as things , they will lose their appeal. When you don’t pursue or avoid something, it just is. Out of judgment, out of mind.
What to take from there
This concept can be difficult to grasp at first, so perhaps a real-world example is the best way to explain its practicality. Let’s say you have a video game that takes up all of your free time. You know you have side projects to work on, things to do, and relationships to maintain, but this game keeps you from doing anything of value.
So this game is a distraction, an “outer thing,” because you made it that way. You rated it as what you want, or even what you think you need. Your mind has contributed by turning a simple object into something that requires your attention. Of course, you can try to avoid it or hide it, but it still distracts you. Your opinion about the game hasn’t changed – you still decided what you want – so you just applied a patch to the wound that needs stitches.
But what if you took a step back and decided to reevaluate the game, rewrite your contribution? You can judge it in your mind as a simple thing – like a tree, or a blanket, or all the other things that don’t force themselves on you. Then play is not something that you pursue or avoid, it just exists.
So, when you’re distracted, try this mental exercise. Remember, your distractions – be it a game, TV show, book, etc. – are not imposed on you. They can not. They are inanimate beings without such power. You force yourself to them .