Reacting to interruptions

Interruptions are highly in accordance with the ways of your personality. A phone that rings simply ásks for a reaction, e-mail requests a short processing time, people who approach you at work have to be dealt with immediately, your children and pets ask for their share of your attention in similar ways, etc. All these seemingly interruptions seem to be able to interfere with your own thoughts and activities that you were dealing with until this interruption occurred. And only after you have perceived the interruption, your personality knows whether or not it is more important than what you were dealing with before, only this is always áfter having shifted the focus of your attention. On the other hand, there is a bonus in it for your personality: somebody seems to need you, and that alone usually justifies our tolerance for these interruptions: the feeling to be important or needed or, opposed to that, prevent yourself from missing something or making someone feel bad.

Interruptions seem to be able to limit the freedom of your personality, since they come from outside of you, and it seems that they can only be controlled by him in a very limited way. Until you have judged otherwise, they seem to be able to be more important than what you were doing at that time (since they interfere with it in the first place), and this is not a very attractive idea to your personality. So interruptions are a more or less continuous flow of small or more profound attacks on the illusion so carefully maintained by your personality about free will and importance of himself in comparison with others. Furthermore, each interruption needs to be mentally processed and your reaction to it (or the absence of it) be justified within the thought system of your personality, and labeled with a judgment. Now this can cause quite some mental activity during the day!

Your personality states that an interruption implies that you either need to react to it, or you have to ignore it or not go into it. Which basis is used for these decisions is extremely vague by the way, and you cannot avoid having to perceive the interruption in the first place. Your inner Self does not use this kind of mechanism. Your personality states that life would be easier if these interruptions were less frequent. Your inner Self knows that a real solution is about your choice who is in charge of dealing with these interruptions. Each interruption can be a moment of choice in favour of your inner Self if you like. Simply by asking your inner Self whether and how you should react to it. Start by introducing questions like: am I to answer this phone call? Do you want me to focus my attention on this? I do not know what I really have to do with this. Now these questions and statements introduce the first doubt in a thought system that over time you have taught yourself to assume is a truth in itself, and leads to automatic responses. Then question yourself: what do I want to use this interruption for: to focus on doing and the action itself, or (also) for becoming aware of the mechanisms of my personality and my inner Self?