Smartphones - With great power comes great responsibility

Hi everybody my name is Nancy Pitre and I’m your health coach tuning in once again to provide you with some tips and tools that you can use to help facilitate your own journey towards health and wellness. Are you using your smartphone or is your smartphone using you?

Smart Phones! What an amazing little device and yet so powerful and so destructive at the same time if we don’t use it wisely. Like uncle, Ben says to Peter Parker in Spider-Man “With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility!” I just want to raise your consciousness around this topic in hopes to create less stress and less anxiety that’s caused by these devices.

You see, whenever we use our Smart Phones, it gives us a hit of dopamine (the feel-good chemical) from our brain that keeps us wanting more. Hence why we crave it after a period of not using it because it makes us feel good. At the same time, it trains the frontal lobe of our brain to be easily distracted which is one of the reasons why ADD and ADHD has risen 66% in the past 10 years. Dopamine is highly addictive and one of the symptoms of a dopamine addiction to technology is distractibility which makes it harder for us to connect to the present moment and therefore can make us feel more anxious.

On the other hand, Smart Phones can be a great tool when it comes to;

Convenience, from having access to all information at our fingertips to being able to reach our destination no matter where we are in the world just by entering an address in our GPS

It teaches us to be resourceful and find the answers we’re looking for in a matter of minutes.

It allows us to connect to our loved ones who are far away!

It’s a great promoting tool when it comes to starting or growing your business.

I mean it’s definitely a practical tool that allows us to do pretty much everything we want but unfortunately, it comes at a cost with the following negative side effects such as;

Affecting our level of anxiety as I previously mentioned

Affecting our quality of sleep like the blue light from our screens affect the production of melatonin, (the hormone that controls your sleep/wake cycle)

Affecting our memory because we’re relying on our phones to remember even the most basic information like phone numbers,

Affecting our social connections in the real world making us feel isolated.

Affecting our level of empathy and compassion towards others, especially if we’re constantly disconnected from the real world.

It’s so important for our physical and our mental health to not give away all of our power to our smartphones and the best way we can do that is by implementing these best practices where we can use our phones wisely and responsibly.

#1 Avoid checking your phone first thing in the morning unless it’s for putting on music or listening to something that will serve your personal growth and development or skill development. Give yourself at least 60 minutes of no phones first thing in the morning.

#2No phones at least 20 minutes before bedtime, instead, you can read, meditate, stretch, journal, or play board games with your loved ones.

And lastly, schedule your usage time of social media guilt-free for 60 minutes each day.

I hope this blog post serves you well! If you feel like anybody would benefit from this message, feel free to spread the love by sharing it

Until next time my friends, remember, keep progressing on your own journey towards health & wellness.

Cheers

Nancy Pitre, Health Coach