Today’s Theme: Disconnect

Today’s theme as part of my 10 day ZenHabits challenge is:

Disconnect

This doesn’t mean disconnecting from people or taking myself into the mountains.  It was about disconnecting from technology, my inbox and all things that I commonly use to distract myself from the important things in my life.

I’m actually writing this the day after because I didn’t want to be online a minute longer than I needed to be.  While this day fell on a day when I had to be working so I was naturally connected to my emails, social media and instant messenger I did my best to disconnect when I could.
My realization after spending a day looking to unhook or disconnect from technology was how automatic, or habituated, that pattern was in me, too!  These 10 days and 10 new practices aren’t rocket science, but they really do point out habits I hadn’t even realized – or better, admitted – were so strong in me!

I have developed a bit of the fanatical Pinterest and Facebook habit in recent months.  Sort of like how bulimia creeps up on you and before you know it you’re binging and purging daily, my Pinterest and Facebooking have reached a daily level much more quickly and habitually than I realized.

As I would be sitting somewhere with a few minutes between things I had to do my brain would instantly signal me to jump on my Pinterest and do some surfing. Wow.  Like a dog I had trained myself to these new patterns.  While I enjoy them and like connecting on FB and looking for beautiful things on Pinterest, I didn’t realize it was so engrained in me.

Today was a great exercise.  By evening I was completely offline and totally disconnected.  I found I had more time for things I also enjoy like reading, talking with friends and just being still and petting my cats.

I’ve got a new appreciation for the speed with which we can develop new habituated patterns.

Please share your feedback in the comments below. If you would like to create a stretch goal and share it with me, please do in the comments and come back and tell me how you did.

To disconnecting and breaking unconscious patterns quickly,

Polly

p.s. tomorrow is “focus on people”.