so i think it's really important that we don't blame the technology for being overwhelmed it's
an inanimate object it's a piece of glass this piece of plastic it it isn't the cause
hi my name's andy and welcome to heads but no not really actually if you if you use the app you're
probably not used to seeing me because they keep me locked in a very dark studio after seven years
they let me out and the more i thought about how i wanted to spend my time the more i thought about
how nice it would be to maybe go on a bit of a journey together the techniques of meditation are
just one small part of how to live a healthier and happier life i feel i can share it in a in a very
different way out here than i can when i'm sitting in the studio and that's it really so here we go
so i think one of the probably the most common questions we get at headspace is how to how to
deal with technology and i think before even jumping in to that question it's worth just
you know just sort of stripping it back and looking at it what is it that makes us want to
sort of get away from technology what is it that makes us feel overwhelmed by it
is it the technology is it our minds and the first thing that comes to mind is
sort of where meditation has come from and i think that's relevant in so much as
that two and a half thousand years ago meditation was around it was it was a thing back then as well
and it was a thing because people felt anxious people felt frustrated people felt overwhelmed
people felt stressed out doesn't really sound that different from kind of life as we as we all know
and now i think the the difference and the the thing that technology especially in kind of more
recent years has done is to sort of amplify the noise in our mind so that's for me that's a really
important distinction it's not that the the thing itself is new because we've always experienced
those emotions is that they've been amplified thanks to technology and digital but because of
so the next sort of i guess way of looking at this is okay well is it the
it's fine to say that it's amplified it but has it has it been the direct cause
of the distress we experienced so my understanding of it is
let's just take the phone as as one example it doesn't matter what the device is
it's an inanimate object it's a piece of glass this piece of plastic it it isn't the cause
of stress it isn't the thing that makes us feel overwhelmed our relationship with that thing
our reaction to the things that come through that device that's the thing that's the cause of stress
which means that one day we might pick it up and we might experience
a sense of being overwhelmed another day we might not one person does another person might not so
i think it's really important that we don't blame the technology for being overwhelmed
being overwhelmed is a direct result it's our own reaction our response to an external situation
and approaching it in that way everything changes and you know i'd be the first to admit it's take
taken me definitely a little while to to work out what the best way is to to relate to technology
it's not like they're teaching this in the monastery maybe they are now when
when i went away to monastery there was there was no email definitely no cell phones
and the only way of communicating was either to write home on the back of a postcard
or to walk several miles down into the local village
and to pay some money to use a an old school landline you know so was a very kind of different
environment i remember getting my my first phone i was i mean you know there's this expression
sort of early adopters i was so late to this party i mean i don't think i even have my own
phone until i don't know maybe 15 years ago or something long time after everyone else did
and to begin with i have to say i didn't i just wasn't really that interested in it and then
over time as sort of the friendship group sort of built up again and i started i definitely felt a
bigger sort of draw towards it maybe experience that feeling of not wanting to to be without it
and then i think as as i've had to use it a lot more for my work his emails become a part of that
as social has become a part of that definitely it's been uh it's been a journey to work out
sort of what's uh what's a comfortable way of using technology and along that way
testing it both for myself and for for other people as well you know there are definitely some
things i've found that are helpful i think some of them are some of them are very practical and
some of them are more sort of uh psychological how we how we choose to approach it the from a
practical point of view i think from a just a very simple kind of point of view remember that the
the phone is yours to set up and to use as you would like to
don't anyone else kind of tell you or force you or encourage you into a way that feels uncomfortable
so for me whenever i get a new device i return it to i strip it back and make it as blank as it
will possibly go and then i will kind of build it up i'll add the things that i want to add
and the the functionality that i would like to have that's comfortable for me
and i switch off everything else i switch off notifications if it's on my phone i'm
going on holiday i switch off my email switch off social media i think we sometimes forget
that we're in control of that part of it and that's actually a really important part
of creating an environment where we're not overwhelmed so setting the conditions
from a i guess a day-to-day point of view i know a lot of people let me put a different way i sit
in a lot of different meetings and i hear beeps going off and bells going off and train whistles
going off and all these other different kind of sounds that people choose to have on their phones
if i had those going on all day in my life i'm not sure i would go home in a
in a sort of a calm and relaxed manner at the end of the day
i'd really encourage you to switch off notifications to switch off sounds um
i know even at headspace we have a notification system that sort of encourages you just this
little mindful moment to stop and if you can have that and you can have it on silent then great but
as much as possible try to reduce that external noise so by turning off all those different things
then even from a visual visual point of view look we all have different ways of doing things
i look at some people's home pages i feel i feel i don't say sick but i feel uneasy just
looking at it it makes me feel stressed out it's like 200 apps squeezed into all these different
files and folders i mean just strip it back like i'm a big believer that on that front front page
one have a have a wallpaper or something that's gonna make you smile that's gonna make you feel
happy when you look at it and then just have as few apps as you possibly can on that home
page so rather than looking at it and seeing a notification and watching the emails kind of rack
up all the twitter notifications whatever it might be have those on another page so that in order
to view them in order to see them there has to be an intention you have to swipe across to actually
get to that if you can get to that point then all of a sudden picking up your phone and looking it
doesn't become stressful anymore having your phone in your pocket it's not buzzing it's not vibrating
it's not making sounds it's not stressful anymore you might even find that you go out with your
phone and you forget to look at it and i think for for most people that's quite uh that'd be quite a
liberating thing not to feel sort of stuck to the to the phone or owned by by the phone in any way
i guess the next kind of part to look at is what is it that's even going on internally
that makes us kind of want to pick up the phone the whole time so sometimes it's not the phone
that's calling us literally and metaphorically it's more perhaps a sense of how we're feeling
knowing that the phone is there is a distraction so again if i think of the
the monastery and the training there one of the one of the best things about being it's one of
the hardest things but one of the best things is that there's no distraction when you're feeling
bored you have to sit with boredom you can't go and there's no like i don't know newspaper to
pick up there's no emails to go and look through you just have to sit with that
and through sitting with that you start to have a better understanding of it and having
a better understanding of it there's a greater sense of comfort with it so i think very often
our phone we use it as a distraction to get away from uncomfortable feelings
perhaps we're experiencing a sense of frustration go to our phone and look for
something to cheer us up or to get us away from whatever it is that's frustrating us
frustration doesn't go away we just temporarily put our focus in a different direction
maybe we're i know standing in a queue or waiting for a plane or a train or a bus and
perhaps you experience some boredom and immediately instinctively we reach for
our phone we pull it out and we start sort of scrolling through it and in in doing that
i think we actually miss a really important opportunity we are constantly trying to get
away from ourselves constantly trying to get away from how we feel in a particular moment
so we're not really living in the moment we are intentionally distracting ourselves
and if you think about what that does over time in terms of training the mind we train ourselves
to be more distracted so as much as possible i'd encourage you to when you feel that impulse
to reach into your pocket or bag to pull out your phone not because you need to answer it or because
you need to send something or check something simply because there's nothing else to do
maybe just catch yourself in that moment give it the space let it go
and maybe do something else instead just a thought just try it experiment see see how that feels
so all that said i do think there's there's maybe another another layer
of this feeling of being compelled to pick up the phone which is it's maybe newer and
it's definitely definitely worth exploring and that's this idea of either
wanting to feel more connected with the world around us or perhaps more validated somehow by
the world around us i think there's a there's some kind of irony intention there in the sense that
in some in many ways we are because of that technology that much more connected and yet
people consistently report feeling more disconnected so although in our minds
we think we're reaching out through a digital universe to connect with those around us actually
that's a very different kind of connection than actually connecting with with someone in person
but of course circumstances environment situation may mean that that is our one
our only window to connect with the world around us and it's natural to want to kind
of connect in in that way but in the same way i always think of digital not as a separate
kind of uh path in life it's sort of like an extension in the same way that i wouldn't
sort of you know sit at home and then think i need to see so and so jump up and run down the
road and go and see them then come home sit down and then think oh i need to see so-and-so jump up
run it like we don't experience that in everyday life so we don't have to do that on a digital
level as well so it's quite possible to have really deep meaningful connections with people
but not in a a very sort of reactive way through technology in terms of
you know what social has social media has done for our connection our relationship with technology
then there is definitely a tendency i think more and more for every generation to to seek
some kind of validation and it's the validation that drives
that compulsive urge to check the phone so we go and we check have people people like the post
how many people have liked the post the people commenting on it and can we sort of get into that
almost way of life where we only feel good about ourselves if other people are showing us
how they feel about us and that's really dangerous kind of territory i would say is probably the
thing that worries me most about technology at one level you can say it's quite kind of harmless
but i think for some people that has become the way of measuring their own
sort of self-esteem if you like and there's a there's this i don't i i can't quite think how to
to capture the the essence of the of the word but in in the tradition in which i trained which
was sort of later um they were on which was tibetan tradition there was this this phrase
sort of they call it like vajra pride but it basically means sort of
a quiet inner confidence and that quiet inner confidence doesn't really
it's not changed by what's going on in our in the world around us it's not influenced by how
many likes we have it's not influenced by whether someone says something nice about us or something
not so nice about us it's a it's a contentment an inner confidence a quiet inner confidence
it's almost unshakable and it's unshakable because it's innate to the mind and i feel
that that would be a really valuable quality for any of us to cultivate in our mind so that
we're not really driven by this urge to have others like what we do or like what we say
to validate us in any way we're simply content to live life in a way that we feel best reflects our
approach the way that we our intention the way that we want to live in the world the way we
want to be in the world so as much as possible in the same way that you're going to try and
notice when you feel that kind of urge to check the phone in the same way when you feel that urge
to check a post to see if people have liked it how many people have liked it commented on it
i'm not suggesting that you don't do it but just notice the urge begin to become aware of the the
tendencies the patterns the habits at play and notice how you feel before is there a sense of
anticipation expectation and then after is there a sense of excitement is there a sense of sadness
disappointment once we start to become more aware of those patterns then i think usually we start to
to change our behavior in some way it's a little bit like i'm not sure if it's the right analogy
but it's a bit like sort of eating ice cream so to begin with you eat some ice cream and it
tastes really good and then one day you eat too much ice cream and you realize it doesn't make
me feel so good now you might still continue eating too much ice cream every now and again
but you're not going to do on a regular basis because you know it doesn't make you feel good
so in just the same way if we become aware of how those behaviors those tendencies make us feel
then over time i think it that's that's the way to to long long-lasting sort of sustainable
change