Do you feel like your life is constantly overwhelming and you never have enough time for anything? I have one word for you: distractions.
Actually, there’s a lot that goes in to why you’re constantly overwhelmed and you feel like you never have enough time, but in this post, we will be focusing just on distractions, specifically distractions on a screen: TV, smart phones, news, complaining, social media.
Your distraction could be anything: scrolling, social media, working too much, TV, etc., for me my big distraction is TV: shows I can watch on a device. I love, love, love, love watching TV! It is what I do to relax. It is what I do to escape reality. When I am at my lowest low, I watch TV. I lie in my bed, curled up in my wonderful, luxurious comforter, and watch shows on my iPad. I feel that watching TV allows my brain time to escape whatever difficulty it’s going through in reality. It gives my brain and body time to relax. How it become a distraction is when it started controlling my life and presenting itself as a bad habit.
TV become a bad habit and a distraction when I was using it to numb out from life's issues. I would need a break in the middle of the day to relax, but instead of doing healthy relaxation practices I would numb out. I would distract myself with TV for hours and hours until, suddenly, "oh no! Where has my day gone?" It took time away from my day and since I was just numbing out I didn't get any actual rest or rejuvenation, which is what I actually needed.Here are some examples:
- Being unable to get going for the day until I watch at least two episodes of my favorite TV show .
- Unable to fall asleep at night unless I watch at least two episodes of my favorite TV show.
- When I am bored, watching TV instead of doing a mindfulness practice (seeing if there’s anything that my mind and body is telling me to do, more on that later), reading a helpful book, or taking a nap!
How I changed my life and freed myself from this particular time consuming vice was to realize what I was doing and why.
What? Distraction: TV (enter in whatever your vice is)
Why? Life is stressful and I just wanted a break. TV is socially acceptable and encouraged, napping is not. Babies nap, mom's get stuff done during nap time. The CEO works during lunch time, and sleeps an average of 5 hours per night because "work never sleeps." Good mom's don't sit down and read a book, she cleans. Only weird yogi's that smell like B.O. and live in their van meditate, not stressed out single mom's living paycheck to paycheck!
After years of therapy, I realized that real relaxation, not numbing out with TV, is vitally important to health. Being a workaholic busybody, is actually counterproductive to productivity. Who would have thought that being too anxious to sit down, stop working and relax would actually improve my productivity instead of take away from it? Not this girl! Obviously I was wrong.
Needing to lie down and close my eyes for a bit, or sit down and read an entertaining book, or going into the yard to garden, or sitting down with my kids to do a craft, wasn't actually laziness! It was rejuvenating my productivity cup! Resting and relaxing in the middle of the day was actually promoting productivity instead of taking away from it because it allowed my brain and body to recharge. Let me repeat and emphasize: resting recharged me instead of depleting me. It was like stopping at a gas station and refilling the gas tank when the car was half full instead of driving it till empty and wondering why the car stopped working.
Some of the greatest minds in history would take afternoon naps, so many societies in the world have afternoon naps as part of their culture. Now, maybe napping isn’t for you, maybe some other form of relaxation is for you. Maybe meditation, maybe gardening, maybe reading or writing a book, whatever it may be allow yourself time during the day to get into rest and digest.
Where am I going with this? If your distraction has turned into a bad habit and is taking away from your life, it needs to have boundaries. I'm not saying to ban it completely, but set boundaries, like you would a toddler, or an annoying ex.
If you, like me, are distracted by something on a screen here are are few things to consider:
Your brain is stimulated by the blue light and activity on the screen, therefore, your brain does not actually relax and allow your body to go into rest and digest.
Turn the screen off and allow yourself to just be bored!!!!!!!
Some people need to train themselves in this, like a mindfulness or self-love habit, set a timer for 10 minutes and just sit and do nothing for 10 minutes. If you are a busybody who is always used to being distracted, this will be so incredibly painful. You will think you are going crazy. But keep on with it! Keep trying it.
You can turn this into meditation if you want to, but to be completely honest, at first my mind was going 1,000,000 mph and was definitely not in meditation mode. It's okay! Right now we are not trying to perfect any kind of meditation practice. We are training our brains and nervous systems to get out of fight/flight/fawn/freeze mode and into rest and digest. It takes steps, baby steps right now we are trying to be OK with not being distracted by TV , scrolling, screens, whatever.
No headphones, listening to podcast or music, nothing! Just a whole lot of nothing this to chill out and do absolutely nothing for 10 minutes.
Give this a try! You don’t have to do it at certain times of the day, you just have to try! Send me a comment below on how this worked out for you! Did you give it a try? If you did drive you crazy? Did you lie down in the middle of nowhere and just relax for 10 minutes? Were you in your house? Were you in your car? What did your brain go towards when you were doing nothing? Tell me all about it!