Freud talked about 2 motivations for humans to change: pleasure and pain.
Well, what if it is always our human desire to escape discomfort?
How are you going with your ‘pain management’? And I don’t talk about physical pain only but emotional pain.
You have to feel into your body, into your emotional pain to understand your daily behaviours.
Whatever habit you might name.
Whatever ‘attention trap’ you can identify.
… like some addiction, procrastination, indecisiveness etc.
It is born by your desire to escape some kind of discomfort.
Pain.
If you don’t have the tools to deal with that pain, you won’t move on and will stay in that loop of habits.
An attempt to change won’t last long.
Here is your place to start!
What are your most common habits, distractions or addictions that stop you from being your best version of yourself?
Write down your observations….
If you don’t figure out why you keep doing what you are doing, you will always give your attention away.
Your attention is precious. It is your superpower. Don’t “feed it to your demons’.
The next question to ask yourself is: What underlying pain are you trying to avoid?
Social media companies know and they are after yours! Yes, your attention. Can that cause problems? Of course. And does social media have some benefits? Yes, it does and I use it myself to share and connect.
But social media is a great example for sucking your attention away.
How to figure it out… directing yours wisely?
Ask yourself: what is your contribution? Where is your attention going, directed to when you enter social media?
Social media is a tool to connect. Be in your power without letting social media get yours.
It is your power and attention.
The basic rule: do more of what you love and less of what sucks you into some black hole and courses you pain.
You are powerful.
Technology is not taking over your brain unless you allow it to happen.
Stay away from the condition of “learned helplessness”.
Meaning that when people tell you that you are addicted it makes it worse.
You can stay away from addiction. You choose. It is your will power.
These tools are not controlling you.
And it is your responsibility to ask for help.
So why is it that we might feel like technology is such a trap?
Is it maybe because it is already accepted on a societal level that it is a trap?
Social media is designed in a clever way. The best psychologists worldwide were hired to make it work in that way to get your attention.
Every human needs three things. I call them core human needs.
It’s simple, if they don’t come from a healthy source, people will look for them somewhere else.
As a physical being we need air, water and food.
As a soul being that includes all that we are we can define 3 core human needs:
Safety – having physical and psychological autonomy. You have a choice over your own actions. Feeling safe is essential. For many reasons this feeling of safety is disturbed in our society. Creating individual autonomy might be created through drinking or other addictions. The 21st century provides us with the online world where people feel in control.
Domination – we need a sense of accomplishment and success where we are capable. Feeling competent in the real world is satisfactory. The 21st century provides a virtual world. You can go online where you can master the next level of some sort but is it helping when you come out of that world?
Stimulation – through relating with the environment mostly other humans. Humans want to have a connection to life, to nature. One thing is that we had limited access to learning healthy ways to relate with other humans in the governed framework of education. Secondly, the CoronaCrisis has impacted human relations dramatically. You can get a sense of relating on social media but we have to be aware of the consequences of that virtuell relating. Being in the same natural space, physical connection, eye contact etc. are basic nutrition for our human soul.
There is the old story about teaching the man how to fish instead of giving him one fish.
Learn how to swim instead of saying a swimming pool is dangerous.
Look after your health and learn about your immune system instead of trusting a manufactured pill etc.
Use technology responsibly – stay in touch with your body and have a break after 90mins max.
Would you like to learn more about how to focus your attention to thrive in life?
Simply contact me through my website.
Here are further steps to get started:
Most importantly you must understand what you are escaping from! What is underneath the discomfort?
Secondly, know what you want. If you don’t, your attention can escape without notice.
And thirdly, commit to this path with great discipline.
Be playful and stay aware: where your attention goes, your energy flows.
What techniques do you have in place already?
It is on you…
Take action!
Measure your efforts.
And your successes. Write it down.
Live up to and make decisions based on who you want to be.
With gratitude,
Lars