“A wealth of information creates a poverty of attention.” –Herbert Simon
These past months I started to feel more and more drained, I was constantly scrolling on social media, I guess the coronavirus and other personal problems made me feel a constant need to escape my reality, so I was bombarding myself in a titanic way with sounds and images but I kept feeling more and more angry, sad, unsatisfied, scattered, disconnected from myself.
My attention was in all the wrong places, I was reading too many books at the same time, I was entertaining the wrong thoughts in my mind, so I decided to give a break…
A break from reading, from scrolling, hearing, chatting, and overthinking. It’s like I needed a vipassana yoga class to cure my mind and soul.
There is too much information I realized, and the mind becomes overwhelmed, I had to choose stillness rather than needless urgency or exhaustion, I had to give what deserves full consideration.
I started questioning myself, who would I be without listening, reading, talking, thinking all the time….
A moment to reset was called, I realized I might have a fear of stopping overthinking and scrolling on social media there was a quality of addiction on my behavior I required some urgent healing.
Using distraction to not think about me was a form of self-betrayal, I had to look myself in the mirror and forget what everyone else was doing and think of myself, making myself better.
I decided to fast, a mental Fasting which gives us a break from those vices and allows our brain to reset and find pleasure in things besides our screens and other unhealthy habits.
I forgot that I could do better, to choose, to create and recreate better thoughts and other activities to step out of the mind; things painting, drawing, listening to music and pottery, the sensation of building something from scratch it’s so therapeutic, I felt so present because When you are building something your attention has to be there, or else you are going to build a weak foundation, and no construction stands the test of time and impermanence when its weak guess it’s a metaphor for life…
~Time and expectations~
By allowing myself to fully disconnect I started to reflect on my relationship with time.
I realized I was focusing on the future, I was feeling future anxiety I was perceiving time as my enemy that’s why was so difficult to embrace the wisdom of the present moment.
I was betraying myself by thinking of others and not myself, on seeing other peoples life’s on wishing to be anywhere else and not in my body, I didn’t feel safe in myself and the world.
I had to say to myself look at yourself in the mirror and make that person a bit better today, wake up Emilia, stand straight with your shoulders back, and regain focus.
I decided to put boundaries in my social media consumption and started to focus on my love languages, I decided to give myself love the way I feel most connected without expecting it from nobody else.
My love languages are: Words of affirmation, quality time, and physical touch (self-massages) and this activity helped me to reconnect to myself and feeling joy which enabled me to spice up my life.
“I need to take an emotional breath, step back, and remind myself who’s actually in charge of my life.” – Judith M. Knowlton
To be active and aware of what matters in our lives, we have to be selective about who and what kind of information gets access to our brain.
Filter inconsequential from the essential, sober analysis that’s the ultimate goal, that’s healing.
~Boundaries/Taking back your power~
“Nobody can give you wiser advice than yourself.” –Cicero
It’s important to find different ways to feel pleasure instead of what could be maladaptive behavior on social media and real life, it’s important to create internal boundaries, learning to discipline ourselves for our mental health.
“Eliminate soothing superfluous from your life. Brake a habit to do something that makes you feel insecure.” –Piero Ferrucci
We blur our uniqueness with sugar, alcohol, drugs, overwork, underplay, bad relations, toxic sex, under exercise, over-TV, over-social media, under sleep many, and varied forms of junk food for the soul.
“We are always doing something, talking, reading, listening to the radio, planning what’s next. The mind is kept naggingly busy on some easy, unimportant, external things all day.” -Brenda Ueland
Words, TV, social media, are like tiny tranquilizers, like greasy toxic food they block or clog our system. Too much of it and we feel fried, dull, and stagnant.
By emptying our lives of distractions we are filling the well, we are renewing ourselves and our brain for more constructive and positive things.
Without distractions, we are once again thrust into the sensory world. We often cannot hear our inner voice, a reset, casts us into our inner silence space some of us begin to immediately fill with distractions.
We cannot hear the voice of ourselves, of our true feelings if we continue to use escapism to run away from our inner self.
Sometimes I think we are afraid of the silence because we will be able to listen to that voice inside of us that tells us clearly what to do to help ourselves, to remove unthoughtful people from our lives, to rest, to heal, to build something meaningful and not expedient, we need to learn to cultivate silence and stillness and not be afraid of change.
Has Thich Nhat Hanh said: ‘Before we can make changes in our lives, we have to look into our diet, our way of consuming. We have to live in such a way that we stop consuming the things that poison us and intoxicate us. Then we will have the strength to allow the best to arise, and we will no longer be victims of anger or frustration’.
Let’s take his wise advice and start to be more centered/focused and selective of what we consume (social media, food, thoughts, books, etc.) because our life is too precious to be wasted by being mindless.
