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Trap #10: You choose distraction over discomfort
We see it in restaurants: families sitting together staring at their individual phones, glancing up to slurp some soup, and then looking down at their phones again. Or the automatic reaching for our phone when we get into an elevator or have to wait in a line. And while we don’t want to judge on just a handful of snapshots (bye-bye, all-or-none thinking!) it is hard to dispute that there is a widespread practice of diving into technology to take the place of talking or just being. So, what’s so hard about just being?
Smartphone saturation aside, it is true that many of us are growing particularly intolerant of sitting with uncomfortable feelings like boredom, irritation, or restlessness (on the milder side), and sadness, guilt, anger, and fear (on the more intense side). We often want to escape our idle mind’s thoughts, or distract ourselves from feelings that aren’t particularly pleasant. And so we reach for something — often a smartphone, but for some of us, a Netflix binge or a beer — in order to scratch that itch right away.
But what if that itch is important in its own right? What if it’s trying to tell us something?
If we constantly seek to distract ourselves from feelings that we don’t like, we deny ourselves the opportunity to learn more about who we are and what we really need and want. It’s not that technology is bad; it’s that we use it so often to dull or tune out our thoughts and feelings, rather than enhance or understand them. We reach for our smartphones automatically to escape our immediate discomfort, and yet we don’t actually get true resolution. We mindlessly scroll through feeds that often, at best, make us feel no more connected, and at worse, actually bring envy or a sense of not measuring up. And many of us do this dozens or even hundreds of times per day. Are we at all better off in those moments, conditioning ourselves to avoid just being? The answer is a decisive no.
Take Action:
- When you get a chance, take five minutes to just sit — no scrolling, no distraction. Ready? Okay. Set a timer. Really. It may feel agonizingly long, but you can do it. Come back when you’re done.
- Where did your mind go? Did you find the urge to escape it or distract yourself? What feelings or thoughts were most uncomfortable? Can you pinpoint the reason why?
- Think about how often you let yourself just be, and whether you have a pattern of trying to avoid uncomfortable thoughts and feelings. What does boredom feel like to you? What about it feels bad, and what about it not so bad? Where does your mind tend to go when it’s idle, and is there anything valuable in that? What might some of those feelings be trying to tell you?
- Next time you find yourself with a few more minutes of idleness, instead of distraction, go back to our mindfulness exercise from Trap #1, taking the thoughts or feelings that are most uncomfortable and inserting them into the visualization.
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