Let’s unplug and try the ‘Live in the Now’ challenge

By Emmet Rushe • 5 years ago

Apr
2019

Rushe Fitness gym owner Emmet challenges us to take on the healthy habit of 'unplugging' from the online world.

This week’s challenge is going to follow on from last week’s Gratitude Challenge.

Last week we spoke about how social media can make us feel as if we are missing out on things and how it can make us feel as if our lives aren’t ‘enough’.

But it also does something else.

It removes us from what is happening around us.

Most of us know what is happening with the Kardashians lives better than we know what is going on in our own lives.

We get sucked into being online and everything that comes with it, mainly distraction!

How many times have you been in a conversation with someone when your phone pinged and you immediately picked it up to check what the notification was?

Do you even notice that you do it anymore?

Maybe you don’t as these habits have become automated responses, in that we just do it without noticing.

Talking to work colleague – Ping, check phone
At an important event – Ping, check phone.
At work – Ping, check phone.
Your child is talking to you – Ping, check phone.
Your partner is having a heart to heart with you – Ping, check phone.

The worst part is, we do it even when it doesn’t ‘ping’, we check the damn things even when we don’t have to.

Then 30 mins later, we are down a Facebook or YouTube, Or Instagram, Or SnapChat rabbit hole looking at pointless things that we didn’t open the phone to look at.

We are literally ‘wasting’ hours of our lives on things that will NOT benefit us in ANY way shape or form AT ALL!

But, it has become the current normality and people don’t notice it anymore.

We are constantly DISTRACTED!

We look at our phones on average 55 times per day
13% do this more than 100 times per day.
56% of us think we are over-reliant on our phones
We spend on average 2 hours per day on our phones
35% of us think we are constantly distracted by them
33% of us think that it stops us from going to sleep at appropriate times.
50% think our partners use them too much
1 in 5 children think their parents spend too much time on their phones.

Source Deloitte

We are so invested in what is going on in the little device in our hands that we have no idea what is going on in our own lives and the lives of those around us.

So, here is your challenge for this week.

Whenever you are;

At home
With your partner
With your kids
Eating
Listening to music
Walking
Exercising
Out for coffee

Put away your phone and just sit and listen.

Take in what is going on around you.
Listen to your partner.
Talk to your kids.
People watch
Taste your food (you don’t do this when you are eating while distracted)
Watch a movie without looking at your phone.

This will be VERY uncomfortable for you to do, but that only proves that we are too reliant on our online worlds and the habits we have for checking our phones.

For our mental health, we all need to make time to ‘Unplug’ and shut off from the online world and actually live in the real world.