Phone Addiction Its Worse Than You Think Break Free

encourage everybody to do this. During waking hours, turn your phone off for two hours and leave it in the other room. And if after about seven minutes, you start making excuses for why you need to be on the phone. Well, that sounds a lot like addiction. Right? I remember when I was heavily addicted to opiates, I get to the VA, I'd be calling the VA two days in advance. Hey, you're gonna have it ready when I get there. Yeah, we got it. It's in the system. It's in the system. Okay, good. It's in the system. And then what time's the pharmacy? It's nine o'clock. Okay, I'm down there at 850 pulling my little, my little number so I can get it. They would give me that they would give me that Vicodin or oxycodone or morphine or whatever was was the flavor of the month. And I would grab that bottle because I would run out. Literally, at the time I needed a refill, there was no waiting, you know, and some a lot of times, the worse it got, I would be running out a day before. So now I'm geeking, right. And I would get that bottle and it's got that red security tape across the across the lid. And I would challenge myself once I got it from the pharmacist to get to the front door or to get to my car to get home without taking a dose. I never once made it. I never once made it. Well, if you are dealing with your phone in the same way, if you can't just put it away and not go to it. Well, that sounds a lot like addiction. And if you've done with addiction, you know what it looks like in all forms. So I encourage people to acknowledge to themselves that yes, you have an addiction. And you need to set some boundaries. Otherwise, things start going awry. That's just the way it is. Yeah, that Yeah, yeah. Wow. It's this is very helpful. And you know, it's, it's, it's, it's simple, right? It's, it's simple. Sometimes it's not easy. But what you're saying is very simple. Just put the phone away, practice the tech discipline, and also, you know, discipline your mind, protect your mind, somebody mentioned in the chat, that their blood pressure is up that they're not sleeping, right, because of the things that we see happening with our government. And I would, I would reiterate to everybody what Boone said, which is that it is there, there are many, many things that are outside of our control. And so as we go through this, focus on what you can control. And it's, it ends up being a very, very small sphere of things, right? It's just like, I can control when I get up in the morning, I can control what I do from the minute I get up, whether it's, you know, making the bed, fixing food, like, really pretty basic things. And, you know, keeping my house in order, keeping my bills paid, those types of things, returning calls, you know, mailing a letter, whatever it is that's on your list of things you can control. And, you know, for me, going to the gym, making that decision, making that commitment to get there, even if it means I just take a walk while I'm there, you know, walk a mile, walk two miles, just because I know that's where I'm unplugged, right? And so it has to be your thing that you choose, and you take personal responsibility for it. And another thing I would say too, is like, give yourself grace, but don't rely on excuses all of the time, there's a fine line between saying, I made a mistake, and then just repeating the same thing over and over every day. And expecting the different results, right? People are going to have to practice getting off their tech. That's why I just say start with two hours. I mean, really two hours, you don't have a bathroom that needs to be cleaned. You know, you don't have a garage needs to be reorganized. You know, you don't have, you know, to look at to be able to, you know, spend some time with your kid and go throw the ball around from it. Nobody has that. So they have nothing to do with be online. No, you have that stuff. It's being neglected. Because you're giving yourself an excuse with the you're procrastinating. And you're saying it's okay, because you're being productive. You're checking on things. What are you checking on? Is Trump going to call you in 10 minutes and ask you for your opinion based upon an executive order you just wrote? No, you're you're just there to turn yourself up. Turn it off. Turn it off because you're making yourself susceptible to you're making yourself susceptible to really bad things. And yeah, it's, it's just not necessary. And it's crazy. I talked to this people. And if we took out the term social media, and we put in the word alcohol, everybody would go, Oh, yeah, that's what you have to do. You got to set limits and boundaries. And you can't be drinking all day long. And that doesn't, it would be ridiculous. Everybody would understand it. But when you turn that mirror around, you say, Okay, now let's pull that word alcohol and put the word social media in the middle. What now? Can you look at yourself? Can you look at yourself and realize that maybe there's a problem here? And a little better? Well, yeah, yeah. And it's interesting, because, you know, you see these you see, you see people sometimes out with their kids, and they're sitting in a park or whatever, and the kids are playing, and they're on their phones, right? And, and yet, they'll, they'll say, you know, my kids don't get screen time or whatever. But one thing I've learned about kids is that they, they don't, they don't do what you say, they do what you do. And so if you are a parent or a grandparent, you're setting an example for them, like, this is what this is my priority. This is what I'm spending my time on. So it's, I mean, you're, I love having you on the show, because you challenge, you challenge me, you challenge, challenge us. And, and I know it's not easy, because you personally have overcome a lot of these things in your own life. And, and so you're speaking from experience to us. And that's something that is invaluable. And I really appreciate it. I appreciate you taking the time and also sharing with us the things that you've learned. It's, you know, there's nothing nothing better than experience for to help us to help us through this. So I appreciate it. And we help each other. We you know, we help each other through these experiences. And hopefully that's positive, then, then everybody being isolated and siloed into their own mind that's connected to a device. Yeah, it's literally controlling your emotions all day long. I mean, who would willingly do that? Who would willingly walk into a room of people and say, I'm going to let you guys all control my emotions for the next 17 hours. Nobody would do that. But you volunteered to do it every time you step on social media and you're there for 10 hours, 15 hours, what did you really get out of it other than a bunch of, you know, mental stuff you probably didn't need. Could you have learned the same information, the news events that happened in that day in 20 minutes in an hour? Yeah, you could have. You could have you could absolutely could have there would be no change. The only thing that would be different is you'd be more productive in. Yeah. Yeah, that's, it's so true. One, one other question, speaking of controlling your emotions, every every all of us have associates, family members, friends, who are wigging out. But for different reasons, right? They, you know, they're being they're buying into the narrative that this is literally the end of the country, that America is being overtaken by Doge, by Elon Musk, that that there's an, you know, another insurrection going on, whatever it is they think. What are some practical things that people can do when they are encountering those conversations or people who are in club? Well, here's a perfect example. I had somebody tell me last week that a business associate, actually a mentor, a business mentor that they had been working with for over a year very closely, found out who she voted for, and broke up broke broke off the relationship with just unceremoniously with an email, because of politics, right? And it was, it was very hurtful for my friend, because they had worked in the trenches, in business with this mentorship. And it was a very valuable relationship. And because of the perception that this person has about President Trump stance on one particular issue, that really isn't even accurate. That person broke off just completely cut off the relationship. And that's an extreme example. But we see that we see these extremes. How? Oh, we've seen a lot over the years. And this is where I break into song and dance about frame of reference, right? We different frame of reference. And I've seen these things get, you know, turned in not so good ways. And we kind of really need to step back and evaluate the people around us based on their frame of reference, not our own. Like I oftentimes if I'm going to, if I think I'm going to get into a heated argument with somebody, I'll tell them, hey, before we go into this, let me explain something. Before we start, I'm going to try and understand what you're saying and understand your frame of reference more than I tried to convince you of mine. That immediately settles everything down. And I mean what I say.