It’s amazing what will distract you during the day.
You set the intention to work. You’re ready and geared to reduce your inbox, create some content, do those admin tasks that have been building up. Today is the day!
Start time approaches.
You’re about to walk to your desk, and you notice the house is a mess. You wonder how it managed to get to this state while picking up after the other family members.
Your focused is on tidying. Your eye catches the pile of dishes in the kitchen that was left from breakfast.
Without even thinking you’re stacking the dishwasher and wiping the benches. Then work pops into your mind. You say to yourself, “I’ll get to it in a minute, I’ll just finish here first.”
You’re 30 minutes behind when you make your way to the office.
Your eyes dart to the piles of papers, the leftover cup from yesterday, little grubby paw prints over your laptop keypad from someone eating something sticky.
#Mydeskismysanctuary… A few choice words to the family member responsible.
You can’t focus on what you have to do without having a clear and clean space to work (deep sigh).
You’ve tried to work in the mess before. But the mess in your environment creeps into your headspace and you can’t seem to collect your thoughts. You’re frustrated at others, you’re upset they don’t think of you and you have to do so much around the house.
Plus, you’re a perfectionist and want things to be ‘just right.’ Your environment has to be perfect, your work perfect, you have to be the perfect spouse, parent, friend.
I know this experience to be true for many people because it’s a common problem that clients who run a business and a household (plus work from home) raise in a session.
As you know your clients can sometimes be a reflection of yourself so I’ll put my hand up to say I’ve focused on cleaning and not working at times (it happens now when I am stressed, some people bite their nails, I clean).
I have dug deep into the depths of mine and others’ internal thinking to understand why.
Here is the top learning that has been the most helpful in transforming this experience.
Life is like a juggling act of priorities. Which thing is more important than another?
You’ll know what’s important by the decisions you make in your life.
Essentially, every point in your life is a decision.
You wake up in the morning. You decide what you’re going to do next. Do you pick up your phone and scroll through social media to see what the world is doing? Do you open your emails to see if any income work came through overnight? Or read your mission statement in your notes? Or channel your pre-2008 life version (no smartphones peeps) and lay there contemplating your day?
8 am comes around and you’re deciding (if you’re in a job or have your own business) what you’re going to do next.
At night when the kids are in bed, you have another decision point. Do you read a book you’ve been contemplating for weeks that sits on your bedside table or Netflix all night? Do you stay up one more hour and watch one more episode because you can’t go to sleep without knowing what happens next? (Which it does for every episode and you say to yourself “I’ll go to sleep earlier tomorrow night”).
Have you ever stopped to contemplate are the decisions you’re making leading you to the goals you have in the future?
Consider it.
Reflect on your last week.
Did you do the things to help move the needle a little closer in the direction you’re aiming for?
Or did the decision distract you?
If it’s not tidying the house that distracts you, maybe it’s something else like mindless scrolling of social media or family/relationship distractions or other people’s problems in business.
Whatever it is for you, you’re the captain here. No one else is making you do anything you don’t want to do with your life.
Remember the quality of your life is determined by the quality of questions you ask and the quality of answers you provide.
You can ask the question at every decision point what is more important right now for my future self?
Is what I’m about to do leading me to where I’d love to grow and go?
If yes, great. Go take a step or a leap forward.
If not, pause. Look at the drawbacks of what you don’t want to be doing. Drawback. Drawback. Drawback. And find the benefit of what you’d like to do instead. Benefit. Benefit. Benefit.
Inch by inch. Day by day. You’ll start to notice that your life is unfolding exactly in the way that you’d love it to be.
Because let’s face it. Do you want to be known for a tidy home or for sharing your light with the world?
Go shine bright stardust.
With gratitude,
Leadership Coach & Master Certified Demartini Method Facilitator
BAppSoSc (Counselling)
Maximum Growth
One on one & group coaching available
Helping leaders to level up using a transformational mindset work.
PS. Feeling a little distracted with low priorities and want to redirect your focus? Keep an eye out next week for our New Years Classes to refocus and create an inspiring 2021.
