“We won’t be distracted by comparison if we are captivated by purpose” — is a quote from Bob Goff.
Everyone likes a good quote. One of my favourites is “comparison is the thief of joy“. An effective quote will obviously resonate with the reader. What I like about “We won’t be distracted by comparison if we are captivated by purpose” is that it tells us what to do instead of just making an observation.
Advice like “cheer up” and “don’t be sad” is pretty useless. Wouldn’t it be great if we could flip a switch like a robot and change our mood? Unfortunately, it’s not possible so instead of issuing and listening to pointless instructions we are better off stating and hearing solutions.
So if you agree that comparison is bad for your mood (which I find hard to argue with) then being captivated with purpose is undeniably the solution. I would take it a step further though as purpose prevents distraction on all levels and not just comparison.
So I would rephrase it to: “we won’t be distracted by comparison if we are captivated by purpose”.
Holidays ☀️
I was on holiday recently and characteristically I was in a better mood and had better sleep than when back at home. It got me thinking why do our moods improve when we’re away? I doubt it’s one thing. Better weather, less stress and not doing the jobs we hate obviously help, as too does purpose. We wake up on holiday with things to do and there’s always something new to experience (at least on a good holiday).
While holidaying in Sri Lanka I got to experience a lot and meet new and interesting people. Needless to say, in this environment, there was no urge to consume mindless smartphone media.
I’m often thinking up ways to consume less media and to be less distracted by technology. I wrote about this in Stop wasting life. The crux of why many of us spend so much time glued to a screen is due to a lack of purpose or put another way, we don’t have enough meaningful things to do. Which means mindless scrolling fills the void.
Looking for the next great hack or tool for wasting less time such as a distraction blocking VPN or Screen Time is likely to eventually fail. Instead, we need to look deeper at the issue and resolve why our lives lack purpose.
Put another way: when was the last time you felt the urge to check your phone when you were doing something interesting? I’m guessing, rarely.
