There are many things in life that will catch your eye, but only a few will catch your heart. Pursue these.

There are many things in life that will catch your eye, but only a few will catch your heart. Pursue these. – Michael Nolan

Can you go an entire meal without your phone catching your eye?

What does that mean?
To me, the quote is about having ADD. Everything around me is shiny. Everything around me catches my eye. If I don’t keep it together, I get side tracked and distracted.

In fact, I was just distracted by something shiny. The quote urges us to avoid chasing every shiny thing, lest we look like a cat chasing a pair of laser pointers.

The measure the quote asks us to use is our heart. If it catches the attention of our heart, then it is worthy of pursuit. That happens far less often.

You may still have to prioritize between all the things tugging at your heart, but you can at least screen out the worst of the shiny things.

Why is keeping your eye on what has captured your heart important?  
I imagine we have all been there. We have something near and dear to our heart, but then we blow it. We are distracted by something shiny. It catches our eye, and we lose focus. Our attention wanders, and we lose what our heart held dear.

It might have been a romance, or a job opportunity. It might have been a car or a house. It could have been pretty much anything. But we lost our focus, we were distracted, and we lost it. Sometimes we look back in time, but too often, sadly, we do not.

It can often be so much harder to get back than it was to get in the first place. And the loss is part of what we are trying to avoid by keeping our eye on what is important. Specifically, the things which have captured our hearts.

While it can be hard to avoid the distractions posed by the shiny things, if we are focused on something which has truly captured our heart, it should be much easier to stay focused. In that way, we can more easily pursue that which is worthy of our effort.

Where can I apply this in my life?
That would largely depend on how easily distracted you are. If you can keep a laser-like focus on a topic, and never stray, then you already figured this one out. Those with a well developed sense of self-discipline are also probably doing what this quote urges.

The rest of us have some work ahead of us. It may take a while, but it can be done, or at least made much better. Even those of us who are kind of scatter-brained can still focus at times. Sometimes we get involved in something and just can’t let go.

Sometimes it’s a TV show or a movie. Other times it’s a game on the computer or a console. But we can do it. We just have to train ourselves to keep the important things on our minds, in our sights, and foremost in our hearts. Then it is easy.

Think about your first time in love. That was something shiny, true, but it also captured your heart. How difficult was it to stop thinking about them so that you could do things like brush your teeth or do your homework? But somehow, over time, and through additional relationships, somehow that seems to fade.

But it isn’t always like that. However, we do need to focus, and apply a little self-discipline. Take a moment and consider what are some of your ‘shiny things,’ the things which catch your eye. Grab some paper and start a list of some of your personal challenges.

It might be something like a TV set, or a radio. Those distract me like nothing else. Are there specific shows or types of radio that get you all distracted? What about smells? If there is some cooking going on, I can easily lose track of what I am supposed to be doing, how about you?

Or perhaps the internet? I can start researching a post, and find that hours have gone by, as I am distracted by one shiny thing after another. Take a moment and see if you can come up with a few more and have a list of four to six things which tend to distract you.

What can you do to help with self-discipline? Can you make a new habit? If you know it is one of your shiny things, can you try to ask yourself how important is it? Can you come up with a thought, a saying, or an action to remind you of what is truly important?

What can you do to remind yourself to pursue that which captured your heart?

From: Twitter, @Priyafengshui
confirmed at : http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/26529-there-are-many-things-in-life-that-will-catch-your
Photo by David Hall

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