be present

A few days ago, I decided to heed the age old adage of “practice what you preach” where it pertains to mindfulness and facebook.  Mobile phones are a topic I often discuss when facilitating programmes on Mindfulness, as they are often an unconscious culprit of mindlessness.  Don’t believe me?  Just think about how many folks you’ve noticed recently walking and tripping while trying to read their phone at the same time. I recently read an article on how quitting facebook can make a person happier, published by the happiness research institute.  You can find a link to it here by the way: Happiness Institute Study And while not ready to go completely full hog by deleting it off every device I own, I decided to start small and just delete it from my phone.  (I do have a business after all and social media is part of my marketing strategy.) I Deleted Facebook Off My Phone. Here is What Happened: 1) The number of times I check my phone per day drastically reduced.  I mean drastically — by 66% to be precise!  How do I know this?  The savvy mindfulness practitioner that I am I downloaded for free a few weeks back an app called “checky” that calculates the number of times I check my phone per day. I was absolutely gob smacked at the difference. The number of times I check my phone on an average day pre-deletion was 60.  Post deletion it was 20.  No longer am I pulling my phone out at stoplights to check the latest facebook news…my happy Austin, Texas motorists should feel much, much safer now. 2) My efficiency has gone up.  Which is a direct result of #1 because I’m checking facebook less often during the day which was often a time suck.  Just think about it, how many times have you pulled out your phone when you’re looking for a little distraction during a work day?  Now I’m actually challenged to find something to do if I feel bored, rather than hop on facebook. 3) And this is probably the most important point:  I feel much, much calmer.  More grounded, similar to the feeling I have after I’ve done 10-15 minutes of meditation in the morning.  I had no idea the amount of anxiety that facebook was actually causing me by looking at it frequent times during the day.  Facebook, our modern day equivalent of keeping up with the Jones, is taxing.  It’s a constant reminder that we need to be doing more, being more, posting more.  Otherwise, your business will fail, no one will know what you’re up to, your friends will all forget you, your life will end…yadda yadda yadda. The Facebook Phone Challenge: Be More Productive I challenge you to try it for just one week and let me know what you think.  Seriously, what do you have to lose? You could be more productive, more mindful, and more calm. What would you lose? Seeing the most popular memes of […]