Day 163

[Dealing With Distraction]
The action item from this lesson is:
• Notice how often I get distracted, by phone or something else? Do that by keeping possible distraction away from reach and see how often I reach for them.
• Pause during the day and focus, maybe use the visualization of attention flow learned from the previous course.

I noticed at the beginning of my meditation, I had some rapid eye movements. I felt it when my eyes are closed. My eyelids kept fluttering, almost pried open by my eye movements. And during the meditation, I felt the eye quieted down when I got into the focus state. Sometimes when I had some thoughts and wandered off, the eyelid fluttering came back. I might be able to use this as an indication if I am in a focus state. Or maybe I can control my eye movements, calm it down, to get into the focus state faster.

Another thing I noticed today is that if I write down the thoughts and action items, I can get back to focus state faster. There were always a lot of thoughts during my meditation, even more than when I was focusing on my thinking and emotions. It might be because I didn’t notice them during my day or some other reason I don’t get yet. My previous method of “tagging” the thought to get back to it after the meditation didn’t work too well. During the session, I always had an urge to find the thought, make sure I still remember what that is, and track where it is. It’s also kind of weird to “track where the thought is”, but that’s what I wanted to do. That was really distracting. It wasn’t what I wanted either. So I think it’s better to open my eyes, grab a pen, write down some keywords of my thought, and go back to meditation. My eyes will flutter a little right after I get back from writing, but I calmed down fast enough that the peace of mind that my thoughts are on the paper for me to check afterward warrants the brief interruption of my meditation. Maybe it’s not the best strategy in the long run, but it’s very attractive right now. I will give it a try and maybe can develop the ability to track my thoughts without distracting my meditation nor interrupting meditation to write them down later. Only time will tell. Right now, I will bring a pen and paper when I meditate.

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