DIGITAL DETOX

71% of people say they check their phones within the first 10 minutes of waking up.

53% say that they have never gone longer than 24 hours without their cell phone.

70% of people check their phones within five minutes of receiving a notification.

On average, Americans check their phones 344 times per day.(That’s once every 4 minutes!)

Hi everyone and welcome to the Digital detox. I just want to say before we get started how much I appreciate all of you for being here. I'm going to be talking about a digital detox that I've gone on and a program I've created for anybody that wants to go on that journey as well. But before I get to that, I want to address the elephant in the room, which is most of us have met through social media. Now, I am not here to demonize social media in any way. In fact, I think it's an amazing tool for connection, growth and contribution as well. There's so many great relationships that I've created through social media and through all my decades being on it. It's been two decades. Can you believe it? It's been 20 years. That I've been online and interacting with so many people out there, and there's a lot of people who have been with me for several years now. And this song going back to Myspace phase, if you go back that far, we've definitely been on quite a journey together and you probably know way more about me than is comfortable for both of us. So for anybody out there who might be feeling like they are spending way too much time on social media, you know who you are. I am not here to shame you because I am definitely I'm you. I've been there too. And taking ten days off social media and really staying away from. Posts and likes and shares and just all the things that come in through our cell phones. It was really a wonderful experience and it really blew my mind. The amount of insights, the wisdom, the amount of time I had for other things that were more important and how I was able to consciously select what I was bringing into my life each day. I found that to be a very healthy thing for me to do, and it may be healthy for you as well. Now, I'm not here to push this on anybody, but if you find yourself scrolling too much, if you find yourself comparing yourself to the lives of others who seem to be living lives that maybe you want to have, or they have the kind of body you want to have, or they're just posting all this stuff that. Isn't really adding any value to your life and kind of makes you feel not so great. If you see that happening in your life then you might want to make a change and I've created a workbook to help you go through this process. It is a four week process but you can cut it down to two or just one, but I find that. It's very, very effective because we're not asking you to cut everything out if you don't want to. You can just cut out a few things and make a few healthy habits for yourself around social media that can improve the experience both for your regular life and for your social media life. So I want to explain this as concisely as I possibly can. So you have the four weeks, you have different things that you can select. Within those four weeks, so week one, you have several options for how to go on this journey. You know those books where you used to be able to pick a path for yourself? I think they were called Make Your Own Adventure Books. I thought those were really cool when I was a kid. And this process is a little bit like that as well because each week. You're going to select what you want to take out and what you want to add in during this process. Now, for the 10 days that I did this, while I was working on creating this workbook for everybody out there, I cut social media out cold Turkey. I also slept with my phone outside of my room and I didn't look at my phone. And text messages, Anything in the morning. I gave myself the morning, and then I would peek into my phone throughout the day to make sure that I didn't have any business that I needed to attend to. But I stayed away from all forms of social media, so no threads, no Instagram, no Facebook, no TikTok. All of those things were off limits for me for those ten days. And I gotta tell you, I was blown away by, first of all, how much of A grip social media had on me because I was looking to go check those apps. But because I deleted them from my phone, I was able to remember. Oh, I'm on a detox. Like I can't look at that right now. So that worked well for me. Deleting the apps from my phone made it so that I couldn't check into those. And even if I was tempted to re add those apps on, I would have had to log in. So there would have been several steps I would have had to taken and I would have broken my commitment to myself. And that commitment was important to me. I really wanted to be in this process to really understand the effects of social media. Like I said, it has been 20 years that I've been on social media, and I didn't even realize how much of an effect it actually had on me. I was definitely the type of person who would go to my phone pretty early in the morning to check to see if I. Any emails or messages, then I go on to Instagram, I'd be on there for a little bit and I would lose track of how much time I was actually spending on these apps. Now I'm not saying that I was completely addicted, but I was doing too much and if you check your screen time, I'm telling you it'll be a big wake up call for a lot of people out there if you have an iPhone. You can check how long you're spending on your phone each day, and that number freaked me out the first time I did it. Even though I looked at it the first time, I didn't make a change at that time. It took me a while to finally make these changes, but I'm really proud that I did now after gaining awareness around the fact that I was overusing social media. I now am going to move forward with my life and take breaks so that I can get away from it. I can be really present with myself and I can create work that is of the highest value. You know, putting my phone on airplane mode or having it outside of the room while I create content and I write and I make podcast. Episodes and videos like this, I really find that it works so much better for me when I'm just completely tuned in and I'm focused on what I'm doing now. You might find that that's the same for you. Some of the other things I gained from this was I was able to really be deliberate in what I brought into my life. So it wasn't just taking in everyone's energy and just looking at people's posts and having my own judgments, my own reactions, my own feelings, my own thoughts coming in. I was able to select what I wanted to watch, what I wanted to consume. I wasn't caught in the news cycles and all the petty drama going on in the world. And because of that. I was able to learn a lot more about Stoicism. I've become a student of Stoicism through this process. I've been learning a lot about Marcus Aurelius from the ancient Greeks and Romans and philosophers who were very wise, even though they didn't have phones and they didn't have a lot of our technology and everything that's going on, they were so deep. And so wise, I've also been watching some really great films, and I've had incredible meditation experiences where I have dove deep into meditation without any distractions because I don't have to think about my phone, I don't have to think about, you know, checking it throughout a meditation, I could actually cleanse my mind a lot. Easier and really be in the moment. I could go outside and ground and really be present with it and not be thinking about my phone in any way. Because after a few days of no phone, you actually just release it and you're really in the moment and. I've felt a deep sense of calm and I've had incredible downloads that I have written down and things that I've been really wanting to share with with everybody out there. And I will be in podcasts and and different things that I have coming up, but it's been an amazing experience to just disconnect from. Technology, but reconnect with myself and with spirit. It's been beautiful. So for anybody that's longing for that deeper connection, I really believe that you will get it through this process. The other thing that I did was I connected a lot deeper with my friends. So when I did use my phone, it was very deliberate. It was a phone call, it was a longer text message it. Is more meaningful conversations now. A lot of times with social media, we see our friends a lot, but we're not really engaging with them. We might send an emoji back when they post something or awesome job or you know, when they're posting a career achievement, but we're not really taking the time a lot of times because we're just seeing them all the time, so. They almost take it for granted. By cutting out social media, I was having to actively engage with the friends I really wanted to talk to, and the level of depth in those conversations was much more enriching for all of us. Thank you so much for listening to this presentation. I really hope you found it valuable and whether you decide to go on a detox now. Maybe later. I'm glad that you at least explore these ideas and maybe you can be a little more conscious of your habits online and do the things that feel right for you. I'm so happy to have you as a friend, as a follower, as somebody that is a part of my life, and I hope you will continue to be on this journey. It's a journey that's shared and I'm so glad you're here.