From Confusion to Clarity: The Power of Distraction

It's time to harness the power of the impending eclipse season and the harvest full moon to let go of old habits and align with your true intentions. 
You can use the art of distraction to shift focus onto the things that stir your inner excitement and curiosity but it can also be your downfall as, if not intentional, distraction can take you from your path.
In today's episode I'll lead you through this intriguing exploration. 

Confusion and uncertainty are inevitable in today's times, making it even more crucial to understand the difference between the art of distraction and the challenges distraction can bring.
 In today's conversation I discuss practical tools to reclaim your focus and reconnect with your inner self, transforming stress and anxiety into meaningful growth. 
You'll learn to use distraction as an art, train your mind to focus on the positive aspects, and set boundaries on what you permit into your world, so  you'll be more aligned with your higher self, heart, and mind. 
Whether you're navigating a new season in your life or seeking ways to connect more deeply with your true self,  let's embark on this journey and enter a new season with intention, clarity and alignment

Christina Fletcher is a Spiritual Alignment coach, energy worker, author, speaker and host of the podcast Showing Up Whole.
She specialises in practical spirituality and integrating inner work with outer living, so you can get self development off of the hobby shelf and integrated as a powerful fuel to your life.

Through mindset, spiritual connection, intuitive guidance, manifestation, and mindfulness techniques Christina helps her clients overcome overwhelm and shame to find a place of flow, ease, and deep heart-centered connection.
Christina has been a spiritual alignment coach, healer and spiritually aware parent coach for 7 years and trained in Therapeutic Touch 8 years ago. She is also a meditation teacher and speaker.
For more information please visit her website www.spirituallyawareliving.com

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Hi and welcome back to Showing Up Whole the place where we discuss alignment in mind, body, heart and spirit in every aspect of your life. And today, on this eclipse season, on this harvest full moon, today we are going to be discussing letting go and making sure that you have the focus to do the deep dives that this time of year calls you to do. Hi, I don't often do seasonal conversations because I like to make sure that these conversations flow timelessly, and yet I do find that this season of eclipse seasons full moons coming after equinox it's a powerful time of year. It always seems like we come in in September and whether you are celebrating autumn equinox in the middle of the month or whether you are celebrating spring equinox in the middle of the month, it still feels like it's a time of really weighing up where you've come from this year and what path you're charting as you head into 2024 or whatever year. You are listening to this it is really, in so many ways, what it comes down to is the decision to do that deep dive and to find alignment into knowing what you need to uncover, what you need to let go of and also how to realign and redefine the stories you tell yourself. So I want to dive a little bit into that, but I also want to just talk a little bit about distraction, because if there's one thing that keeps coming up with clients, with my family and with myself over the last little while, it's the wonderful art or issues of distraction.

Speaker 1: 2:07

I always laugh because when I think of the art of distraction, that was something that I used to talk about as a parent coach, where you would have a child who was just headed into doing something that they really shouldn't be doing. Rather than just getting mad or frustrated or saying no over and over again, I used to advise parents to just simply use the art of distraction. So find a game, a toy, a pretty bird out the window, something that is going to resonate with the same level of curiosity that whatever they are into would be sparking for them, and just distract them onto a new curiosity, same vibration, same feeling, space, same excitement, same eagerness, different focus, so that they're not sticking their fingers into electrical plugs and things. So the art of distraction was a phrase that I've used in coaching for a number of years. However, there's also the negative aspect of distraction, where we easily get suede and out of focus and we easily get scrambled and intention is thrown to the wind as we can all get scrolling or starting things and stopping things and procrastinating about what needs to be done. And ironically and I am always fully transparent on this podcast, before jumping on to record I was sitting there on my phone for about 10 minutes just reading a few interesting articles and watching a few interesting posts on Instagram. I shared some of my story. Feel free to check. It does come into this interesting question of alignment and question of intention and question of focus. And as I deep dive more into alignments, into the aspect of yourself, I will say that your sense of distraction, that level of procrastination, that level of scrambledness, it sits deeply, deeply, deeply into your mental, energetic world and where that is out of alignment. So I want to talk about that today because I think it's an important thing to lean into in this time of unpacking and reintending for the rest of the year. So if you've been listening to my work for any long period of time, you know that at the end of every year I always do an annual creating an intentional new year workshop. We always deep dive into releasing the full year and charting a path for the new. It's a lot of deep practices that really excite and spark new life, energy to flow into the coming year. We'll be doing it again this year for sure, because it's one of my favorite things to be doing in the holiday season. But the reason why I bring that up is because this is not that, this isn't oh. I need to learn from everything from this year and release what doesn't serve. Yes, by all means, it's full moon. It's always good to release what isn't serving, but this is a deeper meaning.

Speaker 1: 5:28

At the beginning of every year, we subconsciously set an intention. We subconsciously tell ourselves who do I want to be this year? How is this year going to be different? Right, like that's a key phrase. How is this year going to be different? This year will be the one. And after the holiday season gets packed up and we head into the dreary winters or we head into the dreary springs or whatever, you want to see that as we start to play around with falling back into old neuropathways, old patterns, old habits, and life just settles back down again, september is the time where you start to unpack that and go oh wait, now we're actually headed into the end of the year. What's missing.

Speaker 1: 6:26

Over autumn, equinox, I was talking a lot about the harvest. I was talking about how this is a time where you actually harvest all of the fruits and vegetables, all of the nourishing activities, all of the juicy bits of life that resonate as the person you want to be, and you look at those and you go, okay, do I have enough juiciness in my life? Do I have enough spark, enough fulfillment, enough empowerment, enough tangible eagerness and life flow to sustain me going into 2024. Am I on track? And if you don't, big wonderful news there's still time. So October is that time of putting those things in place and stepping into the arena and actually giving yourself permission to say, okay, that's not what I'm talking about. Okay, now is the time.

Speaker 1: 7:32

Back to the art of distraction. That's where this comes in right the art of distracting yourself from not serving you, of what's not serving you, and the issue of distraction as your brain, which feels those neural pathways starting to shift, giving you reasons to not do what you need to do. What do I mean by that? Okay, so basically, you notice what you're missing. You feel around into saying, oh, I've actually gone off track on this aspect of my life. I'm not feeling at the level of joy that I wanted to feel this year. I'm not feeling the intention of flow that I wanted to feel. I'm not resonating with security and freedom. I'm not. By the end of this year, I really wanted to feel safe, I wanted to feel grounded, I wanted to be present with my family all of the above.

Speaker 1: 8:45

So it's a question of if that's how you're feeling and you've fallen back into the old way of being. Your brain was sensing change and in that change, it sort of panicked and put up blocks in order to stop you from making those changes completely. And because a brain is programmed to walk those neural pathways and it's just like those paths in a cornfield they just get beaten down and beaten down and you are creating a new path in the same field, it's important to remember that your brain will do what it can take in order to shift your focus from creating that new path. Your brain is going to say it's hard to create that new path. Why would we do that? This is what we know, this is what's been beaten down, these are the habits we keep, this is the way we run our day, this is what we do, and so, therefore, the issue of distraction is that, all of a sudden, you'll just get distracted. Your brain will throw out something, an interesting post that will catch its attention, an interesting anything will catch its attention in order to distract you from fully shifting that path. In that cornfield.

Speaker 1: 10:17

It's almost like when you start to notice that you are procrastinating, when you notice that you are distracting, when you are noticing that you are avoiding doing what you want to do or what you felt like you needed to do in order to step into that better version of yourself. Rather than shaming yourself, I want to encourage you to simply ask why? Why is your brain distracting you? And is it because you're actually getting that close? Is it actually a question that your brain is actually starting to feel the threat now that you are actually just edging into cracking through the change? And as you were inching into cracking through that change, it felt under threat that those changes were gonna be taking place and it, quite frankly, needed to throw you off course. I know it sounds like I'm talking about your brain like this other being, but the truth is is that your pathways are strong. You've been practicing them for a long time, so they've got this iron will of keeping walking that way, your brain will snap back into the place. You know, it's just like an elastic band, and so, because of that, it's really important to give yourself the grace of acknowledging that you are changing patterns. And if you start to notice that you are procrastinating or that you are swaying from your purpose, feel around the why.

Speaker 1: 11:59

Now, what about the art of distraction? The art of distraction is you choosing to distract yourself. You intentionally noticing things you don't want to notice, noticing things that don't walk the path of who you really want to be, and, rather than giving them your attention, you switch over to something else. So what do I mean by that? Well, okay, let's use the word, let's use the idea of money. So, for many, many people, the current global quote unquote cost of living crisis is hammering at everyone's door, and it is a question of walking with that stress and feeling that stress potentially in your body. It's a powerful time, and the way things have been just isn't working anymore.

Speaker 1: 13:05

If you've been feeling disjointed, overwhelmed or scattered, you're not alone. Many are feeling that there's a feeling of needing more, something's missing. What this feeling tells you is that it's time to claim your inner self and step away from the stories you've been taught to follow. It's time to listen to your heart, to heal your hurts and learn to lean into the universe having your back. It's time to take all of that self-help book knowledge and embody it, assimilate it and make it your own.

Speaker 1: 13:39

I'm Christina Fletcher and, as a spiritual alignment coach at Energy Healer, I can help you take spirituality off of the hobby shelf and into your everyday, sometimes messy life so you can truly show up whole. Through coaching, courses, books and more, I make sure you have practical tools to support you through these challenging times. To learn more, check out my website SpirituallyWareLivingcom, where you'll find information on how I work, as well as a free guide to releasing the beliefs that have been holding you back. I look forward to connecting with you. Love and Light.

Speaker 1: 14:15

There's a lot of things that are providing stress on people right now. As you might have heard me say, psychologists say that over the last four years, basically, people have been walking in a certain level of post-traumatic stress. The nervous systems are triggered, everyone's living in a heightened sense of lack of security and safety, so therefore it might respond in defense. It might feel like everyone's just on edge, everyone's flared out. So therefore, if you're in that and if you find yourself in a space of feeling insecure, unsteady, fearful, anxious, on edge, then the art of distraction can actually be a really good friend of yours, because you can actually give your nervous system a break by distracting yourself onto something intentionally I'm not talking about scrolling on your phone and I'm not talking about just being aimless.

Speaker 1: 15:20

To take the art of distraction and use it as an art, it means that you actually divert your attention to something that fulfills you and that doesn't need to be a big activity. It's not like all of a sudden, you need to knit a sweater. It's a question of looking at a beautiful flower and giving it your attention. It's a question of distracting yourself by going for a walk. It's about training your mind back to what's working now and making those lists. It's about fine-tuning the boundaries that you have to what you'll let into your own world and what you want to let go of. So, rather than allowing your mind again this wonderful thing that can fall straight out of alignment and get scrambled in the process it's about actually telling your mind. We're not thinking about this right now, until we feel better and distracting your mind onto something that's empowering. We're not exploring these options until we are feeling in a state of deep connection and alignment.

Speaker 1: 16:54

And when I say we, I mean your higher self, your heart and your head. It's really important to not give your head solventry over your life. It's really important to let your heart set the tone, because the heart, first of all, is so much stronger and it also is what's connected to your highest self, but it is also giving so many messages to the head and the head kind of runs panicking, trying to keep to the patterns. Keep to the patterns, keep. You know it's like keep to the plan, but it's really important to actually let your heart tell you whether you need distraction in order to get back on focus or whether you need to regain your focus and call yourself back to center. Okay, let's talk a little bit about back to center, right, because we've talked about the issue of distraction and we've talked about the art of distraction. Let's actually just get into focus and alignment and talking about the moving parts in this.

Speaker 1: 18:20

So how do you actually find the intention of the person you want to be that can scramble people and if you are finding yourself in the issue of distraction, always being swayed off and always kind of running and totally out of you know, the indicators of being out of alignment in your mental, energetic world range from lots of head traffic and telling lots of stories and always kind of swirling about, to just things like headaches or feeling really ungrounded or feeling like everything is always just needs to be examined and lose a pros and cons list and all of that head traffic. So if you are in that space, then it's really important to call yourself back into a state of simplicity. It's important to get to rewind, to find your heart again in order to connect there so that you can hear what you need to hear, because the head is like a loud speaker that is trying to tell you what to do, whereas really there's a deep whisper within you that knows what you need to do. So the key to refocusing in these times, even if you are looking at doing, you know, your eclipse work or releasing over the full moon or diving into a reassessment of how the year is going, the trick is to take a moment and be. There's a lot going on right now, and I don't mean in the world, I mean in your actual self.

Speaker 1: 20:29

There is a processing. Your heart is processing emotions that it's picked up from the year and it might be trying to release those. So allow those to be released. Allow the disappointments and the fears and the hurt and the frustrations and the anxieties to be released from your heart, rather than thinking you need to think through them to let them go. Thinking through them never works. You have to just let it go from your heart.

Speaker 1: 21:10

Give yourself a moment to feel your body against the chair, the sofa, the bed or if you're walking around right now. Just take a moment to feel your feet on the floor and look around you and acknowledge with focus and awareness where you are who have you been in this skin of yours and who are you becoming, and observe whether your mind is trying to rationalize this and be like okay, I've got to make this list, or can you feel it? Can you allow the feeling of that person to kind of rise to the surface? Can you feel the emotions flying off of you as they're processed? Give yourself a moment to just breathe and be aware of your breath as it flows in and out of your system, or just appreciate being here in this moment now. And when you do that, observe your mind. Is she chattering? Is she trying to distract you? Is she trying to stop you from settling, or has your thoughts gone quiet?

Speaker 1: 23:04

This is the base of finding focus. We have a tendency to think that if we squint our eyes we might focus better, you know. Or if we, if we write it all out, we'll focus better, or if we talk about it with other people, we'll focus better. When the truth of the matter is is that until you actually allow yourself to embody the focus, until you drop into the vibration and frequency of focus, it's all just talk and you won't know the intention of what you're feeling called to until you've felt it. And this is where the brain really, really, really does lose its battle. Because the truth is is that once you've felt it and once your heart resonates with the intention of your focus, then you enter into a state of different flow. Your mind no longer has control over where that attention is going. Instead, your heart is resonating with what needs to happen. So I don't want to make this too big of a quest. It's not like all of a sudden, your heart resonates with moving across the country. This is not what we're talking about. We're talking about resonating with wholeness, and then you start to examine from that place of wholeness.

Speaker 1: 24:54

Do you, when you look back over the year, when have you felt like that? When have you felt whole? How often are you feeling this wholeness and what are the steps that you take in your day that really resonate with that? Are you distracted from doing those steps or doing those activities that make you resonate that, or are you fully focused in those moments? Do you intuitively sense that there's something out there that is holding you back from that? Is there a story that's being told? Is there a situation that keeps you from that? Is there something that you need to turn down the volume of so that you can turn up the volume of yourself? And in many ways, can you distract yourself with something that resonates more like the person you want to be? Can distraction serve you or is it just distracting you and swaying you off your purpose and keeping you where you've been? What comes up for you? How does that flow for you?

Speaker 1: 26:17

So this is what this time of year is about. It's a time of entering and crossing a threshold into a new season and it's a time of just taking a little bit of an assessment period, of going. How's my heart? What's she telling me what am I panicking about or what am I pushing for or what am I distracting from, and what does she need to become? Louder and louder and louder.

Speaker 1: 26:56

As always, I would love to hear any insights that you have upon this. So, by all means, feel free to just make a post on social media and tag me, please. You can always tag me at at Spiritually Aware Living on any social platforms, and make sure that you're liking the page first, of course, and at the same time, just lean into what this feels like for you and let other people know too, because the way I find it is that so many people are feeling the scramble right now, so many people are feeling bogged down and swamped by the various things that are happening in their lives, and when we start talking about oh well, this is the time of year of going heart center and releasing that just for a few minutes, then suddenly we're connecting a golden thread and we're creating a sense of compassion and unity with everyone in our path. So share, comment, let me know how you find it and all of this. I send you all my best love and light.