Wellness
is something we are all slowly moving towards.
This emphasis on mental health in our increasingly busy and complicated world
is a great thing. If you focus too much on pushing yourself, you will find that
you break. Chronic stress is a killer, and it can permeate throughout your life
if you are not careful, and this is especially true if you take your work home
with you. We are living beyond our retirement savings already, meaning we will
all collectively work longer and retire later. There is no need to race to the
top, and there is no need to take on work and stress you cannot handle. If your
employer insists on pushing you to your brink, the problem is with him, not you.
At home, you should relax. You should do the
things that you enjoy, and not continue to work beyond your contract. You
should also stay away from stressful habits that do nothing to help you relax,
like scrolling your social media or checking your email. Your phone can do so
much. It can help you achieve your goals on the go, it can help you learn, and
it can help you relax, but you need first to
redefine your relationship with it using these tips:
Be Free of Expensive Contracts
Your phone
is your tool for the 21st century. It has absolutely everything that
you need on it, from maps, to messaging,
to the internet. It is not an option for many people not to have a phone in
this day and age, but that also doesn’t mean that you need to get caught up in
the race to have the newest, shiniest phone. Opting to keep your old, but still
perfectly functional phone over starting a new contract has many benefits and
can help you take back your life.
To start, you won’t be saddled with an expensive phone plan. You can instead get the best SIM-only deal for yourself from this list by HandsetExpert. Do this, and you can decide how much data is right for you. If you want to force yourself to spend less time online, opting for a cheap SIM-card plan is an excellent choice. Not only will you be spending a fraction of the cost of what you were paying before, but you can also actively choose only to have, 1 or 2 GB of data a month. This small amount will mean you’ll have to save your data for messaging and for directions, and social media for when you have Wi-Fi again. Alternatively, you can get a lot of data if you want to stream music on the go. With a SIM-only deal, you will pay for the service, not for the phone because you already own it outright.
Beat Social Media Addiction
We have an
increasingly short attention span and have a harder time focusing.
We scroll through news feeds so fast we barely have time to process what we
see. Take Instagram, for instance, and how little you truly spend looking at
one photo. Then compare it to how long you would look at it in, say, a gallery
or when you are in someone’s home. The more you see, the more you analyze, the
more you take in and appreciate the work at hand.
The world
is moving at a hyper-fast pace, and
social media keeps up with that. The only issue is that you can easily spend
hours upon hours scrolling through content that holds no value to you when that time could be better spent. You don’t need to get off your
phone to do this.
We need to beat our social media addiction not because it is ruining our lives, but because it is holding us back from our potential. We need to disengage and re-train our brains to sit still and focus on singular tasks at hand. We need to become more productive, and we need to diversify our media intake to become better-rounded individuals. You need to break up with your unhealthy relationship with social media by:
1.
Deleting Apps
If you do not like how much time you spend on an app, and more importantly
you don’t even like the experience and how you feel while you are scrolling,
delete it. You can even take it one step further and change the password to
something new and difficult to remember off-hand so that you cannot re-install
it. It will mean you can get it out of your system quickly. In time you can download the app again and create a healthier
relationship with it, or you might find that you don’t need that app in
your life at all.
2.
Schedule Productivity
For those who want to quit social media, but find it very hard to do,
there are apps and companies out there that will block your access to the app
and its website. It can be the perfect solution for those who want to get more
work done during the day, as you can schedule when your access to social media is blocked. That way you can schedule productivity blocks and still enjoy the beautiful
pictures, stories, and videos found online.
3.
Create Your Own Platform
Content creators have it hard
because they want to create but their ability to share their creations with an
audience is dwindling. That is why when social media is failing you, turn to
your own platform. Instead of investing a
lot of time into social media, you can turn instead to the more fulfilling
method of creating your own website. Use social media to market your blog, but rather
than try to post every single thing about your day through public social media,
write it instead in a more thoughtful, creative outlet.
Using Your Phone to Retrain Your
Brain
To practice
wellness, we need to retrain our brains to think slower, so that they can focus
more easily on given tasks at hand. It doesn’t mean you need to chuck your
phone away, either. Once you have used the previous tactics to help limit your
social media usage, you can start using your phone for tasks that will help you
be a better person.
1.
Read eBooks
Reading is the best activity that will help you not only break away
from the stress of the day, but also engage your creativity and help you
retrain your ability to focus. By choosing an eBook, you also help the world at
large. Each year over 30 million trees are cut down specifically to print books in the
United States, and many of these trees are cut down without any thought to
where they are sourced or the impact this
will have on the environment. Though the industry as a whole is moving towards
more sustainable practices, you can help a lot by simply reading on your
handiest tool, your phone.
2.
Listen to Audio
For those who drive, or simply don’t enjoy reading, other alternatives will similarly help you
learn to focus and help you learn. Audio files come in many forms. You can
listen to audio books or podcasts for a strictly audio-only experience, perfect
for any commute as they can be downloaded and listened to offline. Then, of
course, there are also documentaries and videos to help round out the
experience. If you want to gain the most, opt for content that teaches you
something every day. That way not only are you learning to focus on one thing
again, you are also learning and bettering your mind.
3.
Music Changes Your Brain
Music therapy is a widely regarded practice that can help everyone. For
those with attention deficit disorders or other learning disorders, music
therapy can be a godsend when implemented
by a trained professional. For most, however, we don’t need to see a music
therapist to gain the benefits of music, you simply need to know how music
affects your brain.
Slow music calms us, its beats slow our brain waves, and this can help us slow down and focus. The same can be said for white noise sounds that are repetitive. Examples include the white noise of a radio or the sound of falling rain. Sleeping with this sound can help you sleep infinitely better, as can turning it on to help you work. For brains that need a bit of a boost in the morning, energetic music with a sharp staccato beat can help improve brain activity.
Your phone
can do so much for you, but unless you use it right and you use it to better
support your life, it can easily take over. That is because social media is the
empty calories of the digital world, and there is so much you can do to better
your life that doesn’t involve scrolling past the same shared content. Once you
have reconfigured your relationship with social media, and more importantly, once you have rounded out how you
use your phone so that it better supports your life, the happier you will
be.
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