Image by PublicCo

Instead of Your Smart Phone, Get Addicted to These 8 Things

Increasing your potential starts with getting agency over your life

Let’s get started by setting the record straight on one thing: the word “addiction,” in the context of placing your attention on positive things that will change your life, is not at all the right word. However, I’m not really sure there is a better one that can accurately describe the feeling you get when you start implementing the changes I am about to describe in this article. When you begin regulating, what I like to call “negative energy sucks,” such as spending hours on your smart phone, and begin reorienting your attention to “positive energy suppliers” (which will be outlined below), with time, you become so pulled by these habits that things like looking at your smart phone suddenly become significantly less appealing.

Perhaps even more exciting than the idea of freedom from staring at your smart phone for 1/3 of your life, is the potential for the freedom from other addictions like thinking and worrying, shopping and hoarding, alcohol and cigarettes, and other heavy drugs.

I don’t know what your addiction of choice is today but I can almost guarantee that if you haven’t deliberately transitioned your attention to something, then the world will determine where your attention goes for you. When the world determines anything on your behalf, you lose agency. When you lose agency over your own thoughts and actions, you become addicted to negative energy sucks, and that’s when you’re in some real trouble.

Let’s get you out of that cage, shall we?

Take all the time you need to get through this article. I’ve pack a lot into these eight action items and I hope you’ll take the time to really let each of them “settle in,” even if it takes you a few days to read this whole thing. But do yourself a favor, and get through it before you give up and, well, go back to just looking at your smart phone for the rest of your life.

The Benefits

Implementing the eight actions I’m about to outline has completely and fundamentally changed me as a person. These eight actions have given me an exceptional increase in:

• energy
• focus
• joy
• emotional stability/regulation
• health
• decision making
• imagination
• positive relationship building

The beauty of it all is by deliberately implementing any one of these eight actions, this leads to increasing all of those qualities in your life in at least some fashion.

If you want to change your life, you need to start getting deliberately “addicted” to the following:

1. “Right Now”

Hold your eye rolling please. We’ve got to talk about this before we can move forward, lest we fall prey to the same level of attention traps that got us into our mess in the first place.

When was the last time you thought about this concept of what is happening right now? It’s a little strange isn’t it? If you take a few minutes to examine your thoughts, the bulk of them usually rest somewhere in perseverating on the past or worrying about the future, no?

The action of taking notice of what is happening right now, both internally and externally is at the foundation of our eight actions because it is the heartbeat of your life.

Let’s get down to reality here, if your breath right now were to suddenly stop, there would be no future to plan for, correct? There would be no past to perseverate about because there would be no mind to perseverate upon it. You would not be HERE any longer.

So, here, right at the beginning of everything, it is essential for us to figure out how to get “addicted” to paying attention to what’s happening right now.

My dear reader, there is an entire world of philosophy surrounding this idea of the present moment (think Buddha and an entire civilization called “The East”), but to get you started, I highly recommend downloading either the Waking Up or Headspace apps.

You’re already addicted to your smart phone anyway, let’s put something actually useful on that thing!

Both of these apps come with free trial periods and then offer paid subscriptions. Waking Up caters to those of us less monetarily abundant by offering a free subscription upon request. For this reason alone, I want to recommend the Waking Up app but, admittedly, I was late arriving to the Waking Up party. I got started with meditation through Headspace many years ago and it truly has changed my life. Basically, you can’t go wrong with either of these guided meditation apps.

I believe meditation to be one of the most (if not the most) important tools in the proverbial arsenal of human potential. There isn’t a whole lot more I can say to you about this topic from this vantage point. You simply need to give it a try. Most importantly, come to the practice of meditation with a willingness to receive the gift of gratitude for the most simple things in life, right down to the very air you breathe.

2. Feeling your feelings

If you’ve read any of my previous stuff, you’ll probably notice that I’m a big fan of segues. You guessed it, meditation is a big fan of you feeling your feelings. Honestly, you might have heard somewhere along the line that meditation is about getting rid of your feelings but, as it turns out, it’s the complete opposite.

You see, one of the dirtiest tricks of our Western Civilization is this notion that if you aren’t happy all the time, you’re doing it wrong. This subtle, sick ideation creates some real toxicity. As it turns out, the real solution to feeling the opposite of happiness, whatever that may be, is to actually allow that feeling to be felt.

This article is all about agency. Remember that.

If you want to have greater agency over your feelings, and ultimately your life, you have to start getting truthful about how you feel. Pushing away bad feelings is the surest way to create more bad feelings.

Bad feelings are like dust bunnies under the bed. If you don’t look at them every once in a while, you have a whole pile of them before you know it. I’d love to think of a better analogy than that but honestly, that’s all I’ve got. Pull out your bed and clean that shit up.

You aren’t going to get happy by chasing happiness. You’re going to get something much richer than “getting happy” by getting honest with how you’re feeling and doing the hard work of sifting through that stuff.

Surely, you’ve felt the satisfaction that comes after completely finishing some hard job? It’s like that. Go get that feeling but recognize that there is some hard work you have to put in before you can feel that satisfaction.

Feeling the shitty feelings might be a whole lot of hard work for you. It might seem honestly terrifying. But as my mother so wisely says, “they’re only feelings and they will not kill you.”

Be brave. Go get that agency.

If you’ve got some cushion in the bank and want to get serious about sifting through challenging feelings, please do yourself a favor and hire my friend Mandy Bishop as your coach. She changed my life. Forever. True story.

3. Evaluating (and re-evaluating) your life

Guys listen, you’ve got to get honest about where you are at in life. How are are you going to improve any trajectory of your life if you don’t even know where you are and where you want to end up?

This is important.

This is the difference between reacting to whatever happens to you and designing your life to happen for you.

Agency.

Let’s talk about how to do this in the best way possible. After all, I’m not playing small when it comes to my life. Coming to planet earth took a lot of energy and I don’t intend to waste a drop of that energy anymore. I hope you don’t either.

To begin, we need to talk about someone brilliant named Benjamin Hardy. I can talk about his accolades, like having a PhD in Organizational Psychology, or being in mastermind groups with people like Tony Robbins but that probably doesn’t matter to you.

How can this guy help you is the right question to be asking.

It’s precisely the right question because this whole world of “designing your life,” especially in the beginning, can be an incredibly daunting thing. It can honestly spark an existential crisis, like the one I had in 2018 if you don’t bring along the right guides on your journey.

Hire him. Seriously.

There are a few ways you can do this. I started by reading some of his content on Medium and fleshing out some introductory intellectual camaraderie. Next, I bought his Journal Mastery Course. If you’re not able to make a monetary investment in yourself (yet), right now you can sign up for his free 30-Day Future Self training program, which is equally transformational.

At the end of the day, the most fundamental lesson here is if you’re really interested in evaluating your life, you’ve got to have a journal. Simply thinking your way through evaluating your life and designing your future is not enough. If you want to make a real difference in your life, if you want to have true agency over your life, you’ve got to write this stuff down, DAILY.

On that note(book), please consider investing in this journal, by Karst. It’s sustainably made from stone (not trees), it’s beautiful, your pen will feel like literal butter on the paper, and I’m OBSESSED with this company. Overstatement not stated. Read their story and try not to fall in love. Can’t be done.

Go through Ben Hardy’s entire Journal Mastery Course. I’m telling you, whatever amount he’s charging for it (which is mind-blowingly low), it’s worth it. Do this and then design your life in such a way that writing in your journal is not negotiable. Writing in my journal is the second thing I do every morning and now I don’t even want to imagine what it would be like to not have my journal. I’d be lost. It’s the roadmap to my goals, dreams, and visions.

I need my roadmap. Don’t mess with my roadmap. It’s where my agency comes from.

4. Having a routine

Hopefully by now you’re picking up (at least some of) these pieces and realizing that you’ve got a fair amount of work to do if you are to really design your life with agency and true freedom. “How am I to keep it all together?!” you might be crying about by now.

Calm down, take a breath, and think for a second.

If you’re actually getting even one of these things implemented into your daily life, by now you’ve got some serious time dedicated to yourself rather than your smart phone or whatever your “time-out of choice” might be.

I used to wake up almost everyday for nearly a decade and smoke a cigarette and drink black coffee. How hipster of me. Wake up and “think deeply” about the filthy state of the world while puffing on something that could eventually lead to a gaping hole in my windpipe.

Lol.

Smoking is stupidest thing I’ve ever done with my life and I’m sad it took me such a long time to do something about it.

Here’s the thing I’ve learned though: you cannot do anything about your “time-out of choice” without setting yourself up with a new routine and, let me tell you, the most powerful starting place is as soon as you wake up in the morning.

I’m waking up at 5:00am these days for a few reasons:

• alone time — the world is INCREDIBLY quiet at this time of day and I get to “own” it in a way.
• enough time — in order to accomplish everything I want to fit into my routine, I need to design enough time in my morning so that I can still live my life during the day.
• creative time — the most creative time of day is very shortly after you wake up. Remember the point of this article? We’re designing agency into our lives by getting a hold of the present moment, and feeling our feelings, but most importantly, we are designing (CREATING) the life we want. You don’t have to be a writer or painter to be creative. I believe the most creative thing you can do is use your imagination to design your goals and develop a vision for your life.

I don’t really care what time you wake up in the morning but if you want to make a big splash in your life, you need to DECIDE when you are going to wake up and then do it. You’ll fail at first and find yourself rolling out of bed the same way you always do. That’s okay. Keep deciding your wakeup time anyway. Eventually you’ll get your ass out of bed and it will feel amazing.

The rest of your routine is up to you but if you really want to get serious about this morning thing, you’ll need to get just as serious about your evening routine because there is nothing worse than accidentally watching cat videos on YouTube until 3am.

What a waste, huh? People actually do that. I’ve actually done that, I’m pretty sure.

Just to add a few extra nuggets of gold to your life, I highly recommend doing these two things right after you wake up (well, technically, after you go to the bathroom…if you don’t have to pee right after you wake up, you’re definitely not drinking enough water):

A. meditate — see action #1 of this article.

B. write in your journal — see action #3 of this article.

Do what sets you free, every. single. day. Make it so your your day is made up of the things that will create more agency in your life, not less.

5. Moving your body

Now, careful here because you can actually get addicted to this, like not in the cute way I’m talking about in this article. Exercise can become a highly addictive substance because it can produce intense levels of epinephrine and dopamine. You can actually feel the same feelings you get from cocaine when running or lifting weights.

I don’t say all that to make you afraid to work out. If anything, I’m giving you a reason to exercise! Feeling good feelings from exercise is one of the greatest gifts the human body produces, save perhaps, well, other oxytocin producing activities which are not appropriate for audience members of all ages.

The trick with exercise is you need to understand that moving your body, in order to produce those feel good chemicals, is important because you value yourself. I don’t mean your ego is psyched on your rock-tight ass. I mean you care about giving yourself the gift of extended life because you value the fact that you are here. In return, your body thanks you with a little jolt of dopamine.

This virtuous cycle is here for you and it’s one of the greatest things you can do for yourself.

Give it a try with this amazingly approachable 21 day workout from my favorite YouTubers/Van Lifers, Eamon & Bec (no equipment needed). I’ve been following these precious humans on all their adventures for years and they truly don’t disappoint on their content. They’re passionate, funny, and smart and their workout challenge is all of those things as well (in spite of the fact that they created it just after the Covid pandemic stranded them in Morocco).

Happy trails on this one. The workout world is your damn oyster thanks to the internet. You have no excuse. Just start moving. I don’t care if that means taking a walk everyday. Just begin.

6. Eating delicious, wholesome food

Back in high school, I used to suffer from this HILARIOUS diagnosis called “Irritable Bowel Syndrome.” According to Tony Robbins, when translated, this means “angry shitting disease.” Listen, it’s not funny that I was in literal agony at regular intervals to the point that my dad thought I might have colon cancer at 16.

What’s funny is the actual asinine mindset of the traditional medical field which didn’t even think twice about investigating my diet. Instead they gave me a prescription, scheduled a procedure to try and shove a probe up my ass, and told me to keep coming back to the doctor office at regular intervals.

What an incredibly powerful racket they run.

It’s sad, really, but it’s also hilarious.

I can especially laugh now because I got really lucky and learned a thing or two about nutrition, which lead to the literal cure-all to my angry bowels.

Here’s the cure-all folks, you ready?

Eat vegetables.

Oh damn, you didn’t want to hear that one did you? It’s too easy. Or is it too hard? I can’t remember; it’s been so long since I didn’t care about eating vegetables.

Here’s the deal, plain and simple. Eating shit food, whether it’s highly processed, or comes from mostly animal fat (think dead animal and cheese products), or both if you’re into fast food, is going to taste amazing and feel good at the entry level but it will always kick your ass on the way out. You may not suffer from the immediate impact through IBS like I did but, one way or another, this shit will catch up with you and, I promise, will shorten your life if you don’t learn how to regulate it.

Folks, I don’t know how many times I have to say it but we’ve got to get you wrapping your head around this idea of agency. If you’re eating the Standard American Diet, you do NOT have agency over your bowels. Your bowels are a warehouse of toxin factories because what you’re putting into them is toxic. This is not rocket science and the racket is not hard to wrap your head around.

I digress but seriously, get yourself some vegetables. I understand you might not like the taste but you also don’t like a lot of other things that are good for you, like going to the dentist. Here’s the thing about the dentist though, the worse you eat and the less you take care of your teeth, the worse it feels to go to the dentist. I actually love the dentist. I freaking love getting my teeth cleaned. I’m slightly addicted to the feeling of hearing my dentist compliment the health of my teeth.

The same is true for eating vegetables. The more you do it, the better you’ll feel. The magic is when you get so into that “good feeling” that you start eliminating shit food, so much that when you go back to try it some time later, it actually tastes like shit. Literally.

I’m not kidding. Usually when I go back and indulge on some dead animal after a long period of not eating it, I taste shit in my mouth. Not like, you know, A LOT, but I get just a slight hint of an animal who was forced to eat, sleep, and breathe in its own shit all day.

Yum!

If you’re trying to get into this kind of wholesome, delicious living, a nice place to start is here, here, or here. Again, Eamon & Bec with the whole precious human thing and introducing Pick Up Limes with the beautiful Sadia, a Canadian dietician living in the Netherlands with her adorable partner.

Give vegetables a chance. I’m excited for you, and your bowels.

7. Learning and reading

Prior to getting agency over my life through all the aforementioned actions in this article, the last time I was truly full of joy was in college. The feeling of walking into the classroom as one person on the first day and out as a totally new person the last day of the semester because of all your brain growth is second to none.

The cool thing now in 2020 is that virtually all the information you can learn in a college degree is available on the internet, or if you wanna be old fashioned like me, your local library. You’ve got the world at your actual fingertips and yet again with the cat videos. Guilty…trust me, I understand.

The troubling question is, if you’re not designing your future, how do you even begin figuring out what to learn about and if you don’t know what you want to learn about how are you supposed to design your future? Gaahhhh!

Want the answer?

Get curious.

I don’t care what you get curious about. Surely, you’ve got something that sparks your interest.

Read about that.

If nothing that you’re reading about makes you more curious, pick something else.

The point is, you’ve got to start learning something. If you’re not learning, you’re not growing. If you’re not growing, you’re dying.

You have the potential for incredible greatness in you but you will not become great if you don’t stand on the shoulders of some giants and learn from what they have to teach you. I’m writing this article because I’m learning from of a bunch of giants, some of whom I’ve mentioned in this article, some I haven’t.

Learning produces incredible joy. Joy is not to be confused with happiness. You can get happy from a cat video. Joy is something deeper than that. Joy comes from having agency. And agency comes out of a curious mind.

8. Having fun and laughing

Do you have someone in your life who laughs incessantly and, no matter what they’re doing, always seems to be having fun? Stick with that person. Do everything you can to keep them around because chances are they have at least something in their life, probably at least one of the eight criteria mentioned in this article, that truly drives them.

People who are driven know how to have fun and laugh because they have a reason for being alive. They have agency over their life by being aware of why they’re here.

Do you have someone in your life who is a real adrenaline junkie? I used to be an adrenaline junkie. I lacked drive in my life so I used to chase the highs. I got really into rock climbing which, to be clear, inherently is not a bad activity. It’s an amazing workout and can take you to some cool places in the world. The problem is I actually shaped my life around it. The feelings rock climbing produce are the same feelings I warned about in action #5 and can become highly addictive, again, not it a cute way. I moved across the country (many times) and destroyed relationships with people I loved all because I wanted to chase down the adrenaline of rock climbing.

Today, I can honestly say that sitting here writing this article while I listen to jazz on spotify is the most fun I’ve ever had in my life, and I have this kind of fun all the time.

Having actual, real “fun” in life is a skill that comes in direct proportion to your ability to have joy.

I’ll say it again, joy is not to be confused with happiness (or adrenaline). You can get happy from a cat video or adrenaline from a rollercoaster. Joy is something deeper than all this.

Joy comes from having agency. Agency, as it turns out, is all about setting yourself free from the garbage in your life and deciding to start building some new foundations.

To recap, I implore you to take action in any one of these eight places in order to start building your new foundation:

• Get focused on “right now.” Meditation helps.
• Feel your feelings. Therapy and meditation help.
• Evaluate and reevaluate your life. Journaling helps.
• Set a routine, especially a morning and evening one.
• Exercise. Begin by simply moving your body.
• Eat delicious, wholesome food. Did I mention that it needs to be delicious? I think I forgot to really emphasize that part. This is important.
• Learn something. Books help.
• Have fun and laugh. Figuring out what drives you helps.

I’ll betcha my bottom dollar that mastering any one of these leads to mastering all of them.

Thank you so much for reading this whole article. Thank you for choosing to pursue feeling good inside of your own skin today and everyday. If you’d like help in this work, please reach out to my dear friend and amazing coach, Mandy Bishop. She is a nature-integrated trauma coach and has truly helped change my life.

Please also consider trying meditation. I believe the most powerful action you can take for yourself is to wake up and meditate before you do anything else in your day. I currently use the Headspace app but another amazing choice is the Waking Up app by Sam Harris.

Love yourself first.

In love, light, and gratitude,

Lydia Catherine