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Jigsaw puzzle
I play solitaire and various brain games. At times, I pick up a video game controller and have at it. And, of course, an occasional mindless movie or a favorite playlist is in order. So what? Well, some people find these activities, or equivalents thereof, a way to check out and decompress from a stressful day, to lower mental or emotional disquiet, or even lessen physical pain. Others consider them a waste of precious time serving no useful purpose. But the latter view fails to recognize what we can gain from such endeavors, which is considerable.
Now, that term—distraction—often earns a bad rap. There's a difference between being distracted willy-nilly, as happens with attention deficit disorder (a common condition in the digital age), as opposed to intentionally sidetracking one's focus. In grade school, my teachers often chastised my distractibility, which was a reflexive response to their goose-stepping approach to education. Demanding that young kids sit still at a desk and remain attentive for hours at a time is a recipe for mind wandering. However, as I subsequently discovered, deliberate distraction can be a way to feed one's imagination, solve problems, foster creativity and even reduce suffering.
So, while getting mentally sidetracked may be dangerous in some situations (like driving) and counterproductive in others (a heart-to-heart talk), it can be very beneficial at times. For example, there's research showing being distracted proves helpful when grappling with a problem or struggling to be creative. Often, in addressing challenges, the easiest way to make one's task difficult is to try too hard, meaning we become mentally impaled on the horns of our dilemma by constantly obsessing over it with a persistent laser-like focus.
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Engage the Subconscious
A benign distraction is a way to ease off, get the conscious mind to zone out, and engage the subconscious, which is the part of the psyche that usually comes up with solutions and innovations. Einstein noted he never realized any of his scientific epiphanies through rational thought alone. He relied heavily on his intuitive mind, which frequently offers up little tidbits of insight and wisdom when we are distracted. Spawned any great ideas in the shower?
So, from a psychological perspective, exactly what is a distraction? Basically, any activity that occupies the thinking mind so that it can't brood or obsess about something else. Optimally, it induces a sort of pseudo-hypnotic state that lulls the cognitive brain into a blur. The distracting activity occupies one’s awareness and all else fades into the background.
For example, an entrepreneurial woman consulted with me about her inability to tackle a serious challenge disrupting her start-up company. It became clear she was over-thinking the problem, a process called “paralysis by analysis.”
“Can't get it out of my head,” she confided. “I go to sleep with it, wake up with it, and think about it more or less all day.”
“You may want to consider distracting yourself,” I suggested, explaining why that could help.
She opted for needlepoint, which she could take pretty much wherever she went, including work. When she found her awareness glued to her conundrum too long, she pulled out the fixings and zoned out for a time.
“I'm surprised,” she later told me. “It helped me see other options for how to handle my business issue, and it relaxed me too.”
Distraction can also help us manage physical issues. We’ve long known that focusing on pain makes it worse, and, inversely, that distracting ourselves from it often brings a measure of relief. The brain’s ability to focus is limited, so a distraction shifts awareness away from one target (pain) onto another (game, book, music, etc.). What’s more, research shows playing board and word games, working puzzles and the like helps us control urges to overeat, smoke, drink and engage in other unwanted indulgences.
Often, a benign distraction de-stresses the psyche, turns off one's incessant inner chatter, allows imagination to bubble to the surface, and helps us manage pain and unhealthy impulses. Sure, we can be distracted too much. But, as my client discovered, we can also be distracted too little.
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