Hello friend,
For the past month, I’ve been following along with the 30 day plan from the
book How to Break Up With Your Phone by Catherine Price. I highly
recommend it! It is a wonderful book that pairs mindfulness practices with
information about the addictive power that is built into our smart phones.
At about the half-way mark in the 30 day plan is an invitation to do a
phone “phast” in which you turn off your phone (completely off) for 24
hours. This was incredibly enlightening and humbling.
For the first 12 hours, I felt pretty lost and was painfully aware of how often I
turn to my phone to distract me from any negative feelings. Emotions that
ranged from the low level feeling of boredom to strong feelings of anxiety
or worry.
In the last half, I experienced more feelings of freedom and noticed a
change in how grounded I felt. There was slightly more space in between
my awareness of my feelings and the choice to dip into them with a
mindful breath.
And you know what I thought?
“Great, from now on I’m going to have a profoundly mindful relationship
with my phone.”
🙂
However, what really happened once I turned my phone back on was a
return to my old ways with a surprising vengence.
Except now. I also had a heightened and painful awareness of how much I
was avoiding my emotions through my phone use.
A situation ripe for my inner critic to jump in and criticize me relentlessly.
What she likes to go on (and on) about is how I really should know better!
My inner critic likes to highlight the fact that I am a life coach and a long-
time practitioner of meditation and self-compassion, and really I should
be above this kind of behavior.
Truly, I teach this stuff for a living…I shouldn’t be experiencing it still!
But the honest to goodness truth is that I am, do, and likely always will.
We all will.
So here I am again, reckoning with the fact that I am indeed human 🙂
I have a mind just like all of humanity, that is prone to avoidance and
negativity.
And again returning to the understanding that it isn’t so much about
stopping the cycle of getting lost in distraction, in avoidance, in long-time
stories, as it is in gently returning when you recognize you are lost.
Listening to a talk by Sharon Salzberg today, I am grounded by her wise
words, “the healing is in the return”.
Today that is what I am doing, returning.
Returning to myself with gentleness, lightly holding my stories and my very
human experience with care and taking a moment to revel in the
connection that we all experience this.
We all get distracted, we all fail, we all have moments of awareness, and
we all have opportunities to return gently to the present moment and
begin again.
Our relationship with the beginning again process is what I’m continuing
to explore and find ways to engage with kindness and gentleness.
Whether this is in continuing to strike a balance with phone use, or starting
an exercise practice, or learning how to be kind with ourselves.
My wish and hope for all of us is that we can recognize the very humanity
in our distracted and avoidant minds and continue to love ourselves
anyway, especially in the moments of returning.
Whatever you are grappling with this month, may you find solace in
knowing that we are all struggling with something and that there is always
the possibility of beginning again with grace and compassion!
❤ Jennifer