I get home from work and am I daydreaming about a feature I need to add to my software as my son tells me about Minecraft.

I finally have a few moments of free time and spend them reading about movie stars and wars on the internet.

At work, I have something really important to work on, but I read the latest tech news instead, and I get involved in a long conversation with a colleague about office politics.

What is going on here?

I think it’s simple: real life is lived right here and right now with the choices you make. It’s not at work when you’re at home. It’s not with movie stars. It’s not in office politics. It’s not even on Facebook. It’s in your own choices right now.

Our problem is that many of us don’t like or are scared of the choices we have in front of us. If we were really honest with ourselves we’d have to admit that we just don’t want to deal with our true lives. We really want an escape.

So I run away from my present choices and go somewhere else.

At home, I go to work or to the lives of famous people.

At work, I move away from important decisions to politics or the unimportant.

When relating to others I am preoccupied with my Facebook or Twitter status.

Or I keep thinking about how everything will be better in the future once my plans come to fruition.

This is insanity.

Do you want a beautiful life of meaning and purpose?

Stop running away from it.

To do this you’ll need to set up a lifestyle that blocks out those distractions that keep you from what truly matters. You’ll need to figure out how to ignore the news. You’ll need to figure out how to stop checking your phone like a crack addict every five minutes. You’ll have to learn how to live a life that is present in what is happening right now in your life.

This is the journey I’m on, and I’m by no means perfect at it. We’re in this together.

What are you running from? And what are you using to distract yourself from what really matters?