Addicted. I am ashamed to even post how many hours I am on my smart phone a day. Just put it this way, at the end of a week of tracking I am on my phone more hours than I sometimes work in a week. Work used to be a time ago where we spent more of our time than we did with family. That has shifted to our devices. How can we even see an adventure if we’re never able to disconnect and pick up our heads to see one?
The average office worker checks their inbox 74 times a day! This isn’t just because we have some crazy deadline we need to meet, it’s because we are addicted to checking it. We’ve been taught to be addicted to our inboxes. I’m including myself in this of course as I write this.
Our addiction comes from a primal impulse similar to what junkies get every time they get a hit. We get a little shot of pleasing adrenaline to our brains every time we open it up to check. When we check that notification. When we check that new Twitter red notification that pops up as a badge on our apps. When we unlock our phones just to check in detail what that new notification has in store for us.
Adventure waits that is much more fulfilling than the above hit or miss. We have to unplug long enough to get there and see it.
We need to reset and identify what’s truly meaningful to us. One way to do this is just to sit down and free write. Free writing is taking a question and mind dumping everything that bounces into our mind around that question.
You’re in charge, remember that. So ask yourself:
Is my current practice improving my career/life, or the lives of others?
Then you write everything that comes to mind, in no order, and just write for 10-15 minutes. Then go back and read it. This is part of the reprogramming. To stop wasting your time and let the adventure truly have a chance to start, you’ve got to find new meaning in other work around you. Because until you do, you won’t be able to even enjoy an adventure. Only then will you be able to stop yourself and take that first step to an adventure of a lifetime.
50 percent of people check their email before eating breakfast.
Don’t be one of those people. Eat your breakfast outside in a chair as the sun rises and plan your next trip into parts and places unknown. Leave the smart devices inside the house out of reach. Solve for you and don’t become trained and controlled anymore. Solve for happy by what you can feel around you in real time. The inbox will still be there when you have to come back to it.
✌🏻 Shawn
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