We’re all addicted to our phones. Duh.
Tell me something I don’t know?
It’s something that we all know well but often choose to ignore. For me personally, it kind of falls under the same category as going to bed at an unreasonable time every night, not reading as much as I would like, procrastinating on doing my homework assignments at Zoom University when I know that my mental health would be at a much better state if I had just gotten my priorities right that day, etc.
Although a lot of those things take trial and error to get better at, I’ve recently been trying something out to try and limit my screen consumption, and the tip that I am about to digress to you (if you can’t already tell from the title) has tremendously helped with that.
Showering in silence. I know. What a concept.
It sounds simple, and who knows, maybe you already do it, but for a lot of my friends and me, showering with music on has been the norm. But Alyssa, singing in the shower is ah-ma-zing!
And yes, the acoustics are out of this world and make my raspy ass voice sound like it has been graced with autotune, but that’s beside the point. The point is that our brains have been so fed with information, especially during these Black Mirror times, that you know, we just need to let it r-e-s-t.
I’ve only ever been addicted to so many things in my life. Ice cream, bubble tea, music, and my phone. Ice cream and bubble tea ended up being bad for my wallet, but somehow music and my phone have been easily accessible for me so it has been harder to go to rehab from those two things. So that’s why I’m starting small with my route to digital minimalism and I hope that you’ll try it out with me!
Honestly, as soon as I switched that off button on my phone and paused any podcast, music, or even YouTube video that I was gonna have played in the background (yeah I’m way more addicted than I thought), it was a breath of fresh air. I think with addiction, or with any sort of routine, we become used to the noise and accept it as the norm without really taking a literal second and trying to change that. I had to force myself to put the phone down, but the second I did, or even five seconds in, it became easier and easier the more I did it.
I was able to be with my own thoughts again with anyone else disrupting it. I always wondered why I felt like my creativity has taken a backseat this past couple of years, and I should have taken into my account when one of my college professors once told me that creativity lies in silence. She wasn’t kidding!
Anyways, now that we’re all at home, instead of being inside with more time on our hands to swipe through Tik Tok videos (I haven’t downloaded it because I’m an old grandma but I assume that you’re way hipper than I am – does anyone still say that?), Instagram, YouTube, the news, you name it, let’s all start by showering in silence. Or do anything else in silence for at least 10 minutes every day. Who knows, maybe we’ll even pick up actual meditation and come out of this quarantine as professional yogis.