I was chatting to a friend a few weeks ago about my distraction experiment and asked them if they could think of any potential distractions that I hadn’t though of. They made a suggestion that surprised me at first.
“Negativity and cynicism.”
This was a bit left field. I’d never really thought of these things as distractions. But, the more I think about it the more I’m drawn to his suggestion. A negative or cynical approach to life can be a massive distraction! I know that when I am feeling negative about something it is so hard to see beauty in life. Hard to see options in a situation. Hard to orient myself around what I know to be true and important. It’s like wearing a pair of sunnies which, instead of being rose-coloured, are painted black.
I think this is particularly significant for Australians as we tend to have a fairly sarcastic and cynical approach to life which can distract us from a lot of the good things and a lot of the possibilities in life. What do you reckon, am I overplaying it? Have you ever seen negativity and cynicism become a distraction?
Here are my rules: no negative and cynical statements. While allowing room for realistic analysis of things, to approach everything with a productive, forward thinking attitude…focusing on the possibilities rather than the problems, the achievements rather than the failures, the goals rather than the fears…and to use language which reflect this.
Why am I doing this??? Read about the experiment.
the green orange blog 