611: How To Limit Distractions

Bob Roberts is a larger-than-life Baptist Preacher turned global engagement pioneer and independent global diplomat whose best friends are with people far outside of his own East Texas tribe. Bob began mentoring me two decades ago with his words, his actions, and his time.  I’ll never forget the day he drove me to Barnes and Noble in the mid-cities of the Dallas/Ft. Worth metroplex and loaded me up with what today are foundational books in my personal library. Dallas Willard's The Divine Conspiracy, and Thomas Friedman’s The World Is Flat were two of the books that he bought for me (still two of my top 5 all-time reads).  There were a couple of nuanced books that threw me off; a book from Henri Nouwen and another about the now renowned Impressionist Vincent Van Gogh. Perplexed, I dove into the books on global engagement as they spoke to my inner desire for circumnavigate-able adventure.  Nouwen and van Gogh would wait.   Twenty years later I picked up a book entitled Learning from Henri Nouwen and Vincent Van Gogh, that then led me to another Nouwen title The Way Of The Heart.   We are asked frequently by business owners, “why do I feel like I work day and night and yet get nothing done?” Nouwen makes reference to a “wordy world” that we inhabit and then lobs this thought, “we move through life in such a distracted way that we do not even take the time and rest to wonder if any of the things we think, say, or do are worth thinking, saying, or doing.” Van Gogh is said to have been largely unrecognized while alive except among those who knew him and his tight circle of outcasts.   Although, van Gogh had long sense passed when Nouwen was alive, Nouwen wanted to understand van Gogh’s relentless pursuit of a compassionate life… a life that compelled him to shed ministerial garb for the poverty-stained garments and conditions of Dutch peasants.   Nouwen built a relationship with Dr. Vincent Van Gogh, the artist’s nephew who was key in the realization of the museum that bears his last name in Amsterdam.   Carol Berry writes in Learning, “Henri asked (Dr. Van Gogh) why so many people flocked daily by the thousands to look at his uncle’s paintings.  What was it about Vincent that touched a chord that resonated deeply within us?  Henri related Dr. Van Gogh’s answer: ‘Because people feel comforted and consoled.  Vincent was able to crawl under the skin of nature and people and find there something truthful, something beautiful, something joyful, and something worth seeing.  He was able to draw out the inner secret of what he saw.’” Here is the question for us as business owners.   How was Bob able to make the time to take me to a bookstore two decades ago and plant powerful seeds of books that would circle back to make influence twenty years later? How was Carol Berry able to share wisdom and insight from two major influencers of human compassion from the academic world and the art world?   How was van Gogh able to “crawl under the skin of nature and people and find there something truthful?” Each one made a singular decision; ignore the other things they could have done and commit to the important things that require their uniqueness and imagination. Skye Jethani writes in his book The Divine Commodity that van Gogh, “warned other artists, ‘Do not quench your inspiration and your imagination; do not become the slave of your model.’” Put another way, do not become a slave to monotonous distraction.   Jethani goes on to say, “we’ve been conditioned to avoid silence at all costs lest we be confronted with our own inner chaos…and where there is no exterior noise we feverishly work to produce it.”  When we submit ourselves to constant distraction, to the latest, loudest voice, or worse, when we manufacture our own distraction, we are selling our soul, our creativity, our narrow brilliance for the empty currency of non-caloric entertainment that will need to be refreshed and even more outrageous in an hour.   How do we limit distractions?  Begin practicing solitude. Isolation is not solitude.  Nouwen describes solitude as “the furnace of transformation. Without solitude we remain victims of our society and continue to be entangled in the illusions of the false self…solitude is not a private therapeutic place.  Rather, it is the place of conversion, the place where the old self dies and the new self is born.” You will not find solitude, you must make…make time, make place, make opportunity to sit and be confronted with imagination, with thought, with anger, frustration, joy, and excitement.  Without seeing those things, we cannot experience those things. For some of you business has become a tired, repetitive cycle moving from frustration to frustration.  You have become the slave to your model and the freshness of your dreams and imagination have died. Distraction is not just robbing productivity…it is robbing your soul. Might I suggest you make time to walk into a bookstore and find a book on Van Gogh and just stare at the pictures for a while, and may that help rekindle your imagination and inspiration for the mission of your business. Or, you go back to scrolling your feed.