Picture this: You are on your way to work one morning when you start checking your purse to find your cell phone. As your hand frantically rummages through, your phone is nowhere to be found. It’s not in your cup holder. It’s not in your pocket. It’s nowhere to be found. As your heart rate increases, you think to yourself, “What am I going to do without my phone.”
If you read this shaking your head yes and relating BIG time to this feeling and experience, you are not alone. If you read through this saying to yourself, “Who can be that dependent on a dumb piece of technology?”, you are a rarity my friend and maybe it’s possible you have seen the benefits of taking some time to cleanse yourself from all things cell phone-y.
I want to get a little more specific with what we’re actually addicted to on our “self-phones” though, and for me it was social media. Instagram was my home. I was present more on Instagram than I was in my own house. I was checking in on Instagram and Facebook more than I was with my close friends and family. I was building a brand and trying to become someone and something without actually believing everything I was promoting. It lead me to become stressed, anxious, emotionally drained to the point where I decided to take an entire year off from it ALL together.
Yup. No Snapchat, no Instagram, no Facebook, no Twitter… nothing. Except LinkedIn but … does that count? Not sure. But here is what I am sure of. These 9 months have been some of the most clarifying, relationally fruitful, beautiful, selfless, and intentional times of my life so far and from this blog, I hope that you would genuinely consider doing a cleanse too. Maybe it’s not for a year, maybe it’s just a day, but I promise you will not regret it & here’s what might happen when you do. You may:
Discover & Learn Who You Really Are
“Maybe the journey isn’t so much about becoming anything. Maybe it’s about unbecoming everything that really isn’t you, so you can be who you were meant to be in the first place.” – Unknown
If your mind is still trying to process this quote, good. Read it and re-read it. Think and re-think it. This concept it an incredible one that forces us to take a closer look within ourselves, but also outside ourselves. It’s almost inviting us to think about our experiences, regrets, reactions, and responses and prompts us to unveil our true selves. The ones we were before the “stuff” stuck to us or piled on us. The ones we were proud of and happy to be. If you lost that person, it’s okay because you now have a gentle nudge to reintroduce that self again.
Develop & Invest in Offline Relationships
Yes! This part is fun. You are have the opportunity to get real, develop those communication skills, and checkout that tagged coffee shop IRL (In real life) instead of through filtered photos. You can even do it with people that you made connections with via social media (safety advised of course). How cool is that? Online friends, becoming offline friends or current offline friends that you’re just deciding to pour into.
Become Present & Seek Opportunities to Give
You are unbecoming someone, right? Now get out there and share that with the world! You are needed, what YOU ARE is desperately desired by people you walk by on the street everyday. You were created to give, but you can’t do it if your heads in a screen. What does this tangibly look like? Pay for someone’s coffee, play your new musical talent at your holiday party, write a letter to someone you have lost touch with, encourage someone, smile at a stranger, hug your mom a little bit longer, the list goes on!
Guest post by Lex Appignani.