Welcome to the Buddhist Boot Camp Podcast. Our intention is to awaken, enlighten, enrich, and inspire a simple and uncomplicated life. Discover the benefits of mindful living with your host, Timber Hawkeye.

So you choose a new path in life, a diet, a relationship, a book to read, a goal to get out of debt, or time to meditate. But despite your best intentions, distractions keep pulling your attention away towards

something more stimulating.

So the challenge isn't necessarily choosing which path to take, but staying on it,

without taking every exit that has flashing lights to see what's there.

Reminds me of a friend with the urge to look out the living room window every time he hears something outside.

It doesn't matter if he's in the middle of a movie, dinner, or a conversation.

He gets up to look through the curtains, which from the outside looks like a turtle

peeking his head out and it always makes me laugh. Even if we make a conscious

decision to focus on something it actually takes strength to say no to anything that isn't that.

But the same way we develop muscular strength at the gym through exercise, we can develop

mental strength through practice.

What we currently practice, however, is the exact opposite of paying attention.

We glance at our phone when a notification alerts us of a new text message,

we try to read a book, but after one chapter we crave something

salty so we put it down, grab a snack and two pages after we get back to reading we want something sweet.

Then we're thirsty and we forget what this chapter in the book is all about, so we give up on reading and check our social media feed instead, where one post leads to another, and we get lost in stimulation. I believe it's actually by design the way our

mind works to avoid the extreme discomfort of looking at itself, at our true

feelings of loneliness or disappointment, anything but that, right?

But what about that goal we had, the intention we set, the vision we want to manifest?

Distraction is destruction of all our dreams and aspirations.

So we decide to get serious.

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