Undistracted: Capture Your Purpose. Rediscover Your Joy.

by Bob Goff

Stop waiting for someone to say you have permission to pursue your ideas or your beautiful and lasting ambitions. Go live fully.

God has already given us the waypoints to find a life of purpose.

Waypoints are crucial because it’s easy to drift or feel numbed by the vast nothingness of the ocean’s surface. You need something solid and unchanging to steer toward if you want to complete the journey.

Being undistracted means staying the course with things that will outlast you.

It’s a long journey, and the trick is to find some waypoints that matter and are a little closer together than the ones you have been pointing toward.

Have a conversation with yourself and perhaps some trusted friends about what constitutes a good, purposeful, and joy-filled life. Focus on a few of those things and try to make one or two moves in their direction every day. Repeat this practice for fifty years, and I promise you will have “lived a good life.” It won’t be good luck, a lottery ticket, or a sleight of hand, but rather hourly, undistracted focus and several good daily habits that will get you there.

A slow drift in a general direction probably isn’t going to get you where you want to go in your life, nor will it get you anywhere quickly.

Distractions are not riptides. They are slow-moving currents that will lead you away from your ambitions, relationships, and joy every time.

It doesn’t matter what age you are. Now is the perfect time to drill down and get clear on what you are actually aiming for if you want t...

West is a big place, and versions of it include everything but what is to the east. Instead, navigate toward something a little more precise and worthy of the trip if you want to arrive at a meaningful destination. Start by naming the purposeful things in your life that will go the distance—things like faith, hope, and love.

Once you have identified these things in your life, don’t stop there; get busy taking aim at them.

My ultimate hope for us is that we will decide to set sail rather than wait for the right time to untie from the dock.

Keep this one thing in mind: Only dead fish go with the flow.

People who accomplish a great deal in their lives are filled with joy and lasting ambitions; they choose a direction, then take the steps and actions needed to stay the course.

Setting sail isn’t enough though. Don’t get distracted by the false positive of empty productivity.

Activity can punk you into believing you are making progress when you aren’t, and busyness can look purposeful when it’s really just a bunch of nervous, unbridled energy.

Trade it in for a worthy destination, clarity of direction, confidence in the permission you already have, resolve to stay the course, and joy for the journey.

Rest assured, more than a few unanticipated things are going to happen along the way—so knowing why you are doing what you are doing is critical.

I chuckled to myself, realizing I had been in a room with Jesus for almost an hour and didn’t even know it.

How many times have we failed to realize Jesus is in the room with us? We live much of our lives unaware, drifting in our own way toward God, not realizing that He’s already right there beside us and has been there for a long time.

We are so distracted by the things happening around us that we overlook what God could be doing within us.

We need to connect the dots from what we have heard about our faith to what we actually do with our faith.

Somewhere along the way, we probably got distracted by everything that competes for our attention.

We need to realign, refine, and reconnect with the greater purposes for our lives rather than be distracted by the lesser ones.

We need to swivel our heads to look for opportunities right in front of us rather than fixating on the ones behind us. You’ll know this strategy is working when you start noticing the needs of the people around you and...

How we spend our days can have incredible ramifications for good or for ill in the world. Let’s not spend a ridiculous number of them on distractions that steal our joy.

Remember this: We will become in our lives what we do with our love.

We can spend our remaining days focused on the meaningful and beautiful and joyous and purposeful, or we can drift aimlessly and fritter away our one wild and precious life.

One of the astounding gifts of God is that the choice is ours to make. We can get busy right now throwing our energy into things that matter.

Stop pining away your days waiting for God to show up; He’s already in the room. You can stop telling yourself you are waiting on Him because He’s probably waiting on you.

If we learn truth without acting on it, we turn a Savior into a mere teacher.

They are looking at your life through the lens of their needs, not yours.

If such folks have become a distraction for you or are making off with your joy, you have my permission to not call them back.

Don’t answer the email. It may feel weird and a little rude, but it’s not. You’re establishing boundaries for yourself. You are reminding yourself that a long string of distractions can become a lifetime of uncompleted visions.

Boundaries are good; barriers aren’t.

I know your time is important, but try being wonderfully inefficient in the way you love the people around you.

Stalking Jesus looks like a bunch of knowledge without an equal portion of action.

At some point in my life of faith I realized I knew plenty of things about Jesus but hadn’t actually done anything with Jesus.

Don’t get me wrong; we need to be stewards of our resources by pouring into what God cares about. However, money is not the same as serving; each of these can be acts of worship if done well, changing your heart in different ways.

Sometimes I’m asked this question: “Where should I start?” Here’s my answer: It doesn’t matter. Here, there, down the street, under the bridge, in Singapore, on ice skates, or in a hot-air balloon. The people who live wildly purposeful and joy-filled lives act first and ask questions later.

They know that concocting a master plan can really be just a distraction in disguise. They realize that by the time they are finished with the planning and fundraising they could have just started the project instead.

Then if they don’t make time, they feel guilty. God never mentions quiet time in the Bible, and frankly, I don’t think He cares if we have it or not. What I think He wants is for us to spend undistracted time with Him all the time.

I wouldn’t want someone to spend time with me because they would feel guilty if they didn’t. I don’t think God wants us to do that either. I bet He would rather be with us riding a Ferris wheel or a skateboard or playing the cello than sitting with Him like we are in detention.

The reason I read Scripture in the morning is because I’m hoping to have a little more truth to help me combat the distractions in my life.

We’ll never love people perfectly, but we can try to do it exhaustively, persistently, and honorably.

Some people are just distractions to you.

We sometimes confuse random conversations with divine appointments, and divine directives with questionable suggestions.

The more experiences we have and the more we understand what the Scriptures say, the more easily we can distinguish Jesus’ voice from the voice of some guy in a Suburban.

Second, just because we have an opportunity to do something doesn’t mean it’s wha...

Third, anyone who stands at our door and knocks isn’t necessarily Jesus.