A speaker describes being forced to leave his phone behind and noticing the Pavlovian urge to check it constantly. He challenges you to put your phone away during meals, errands, driving, and family time to actually be present with the people around you.
Good morning. Here is your daily moment of yes. Now yesterday on 2 different occasions, I found myself in a rare situation, meaning I had to leave my cell phone behind at 2 different times. Once with the kids and then once later with my wife. And I found during that time how my reflex reaction, almost kind of like Pavlov's dog, to constantly be checking my phone to check for any email updates, texts, tweets, whatever, and how I'm constantly checking that. And I've actually noticed I've noticed that when I find myself in a moment of waiting or reflection, my impulse now is to check my phone and look for any updates. And now I'm not really excited about that. So I found yesterday what a great break it was, a forced break on 2 different situations, to not have that distraction to go to, to take my thoughts away from the present moment. And so I've noticed, and I spend a lot of time in crowded places, especially in the morning. at a coffee shop where if you look at people, if you look at the group, even though there's a lot of people, everyone has their head standing in line buried looking at their phones. It's okay to be connected and get information, but when it's causing us to disconnect and ignore all the present opportunities around us to connect with actual people in front of us, I think that does a disservice to our level of connection. So I'm gonna challenge you today. Try to find a couple opportunities where you can leave your cell phone or whatever connected device that you have, leave it behind. Maybe when you go to lunch, you leave your phone at the office. Maybe on your, your drive around running errands or running work, you turn it off and just leave it there instead of checking it at the stoplight or, God forbid, texting or looking while you're actually driving. And when you get home and you're with your family, you're with the kids, you're with your spouse, see if you can take it and just put it in a different room. Put it somewhere Where you're not going to be constantly distracted to check it every time there's a ding or whistle or a vibrate. All right, that's your challenge for today, to use the actual moments of quiet, of physical connection, or just being alone with your thoughts as an opportunity to be alone with your thoughts, to be present, to be awake, instead of feeling like you need to distract your thoughts elsewhere. That's your challenge for today and your moment of yes. Have a wonderful day. Thank you, Travis.
