An Ongoing Process
Week 4
Welcome to the final week of this July series where we’ve been investigating our relationship with screens. Last week, we focused on taking small, capacity-aware action. After a week of experimenting, what did you learn?
Last week, in an effort to connect to myself before scrolling on my phone, I decided to try charging my phone away from my bedside table at night and doing stretches in bed in the morning instead of scrolling. Here are some things I noticed as I experimented with these steps:
It felt good to be more attentive to my body right away in the morning. It helped me get in tune with how I was feeling and what I might need throughout the day.
Putting my phone away from my bedside table meant changes to my evening routine as well as my morning. I usually scroll for a bit or play a game on my phone before bed, and I listen to podcasts to fall asleep. This made the habit a little harder to change because there wasn’t just one thing I was impacting. In my last post I said all I had to do was put my phone charger somewhere else and charge my phone there, and it’s true that was the action I took. But simple actions often have complex impacts on routines and habits, and this was one I didn’t account for when I created the step.
Some mornings, despite my intentions, I still scrolled on my phone. However, this was less automatic or by default, and more of a decision I made.
On the mornings when I didn’t scroll and did at least one other thing first, I felt less attached to my phone throughout the day.
So overall, I had some successes and some challenges with the actions I set out to try. And that’s to be expected! Experimentation is what helps us know what will work and what won’t. Each attempt adds new data to inform our next steps.
With that in mind, the final part of the process and the focus of this week is to, always without judgement, review and revise.
REVIEW
The first thing to review is- after experimenting with a step or two, does the overall goal still feel aligned?
For me, the answer is yes. I got enough information from these experiments to know it is worth while for me to spend time without my phone in the morning.
Your gut answer might be no. If that’s the case, I always encourage you to approach this with curiosity instead of judgement. Maybe the thing you thought you wanted doesn’t feel as important after the last week. Maybe it still feels important, but making a change now isn’t realistic due to other things you have going on. Maybe, in the midst of experimenting with one thing, something else came up that feels more pressing. So if you no longer feel pulled toward change regarding your relationship with screens, that’s ok!
In my case, having a herniated disc in my back is a current barrier for me with screen use. Although my vision feels aligned, I’m not sure I am ready to move too far beyond the changes I’ve tried this past week. I know my phone use is up as a coping mechanism and because I’m resting more. To a degree, I’m accepting this temporarily. I know that as I’m feeling better, I’ll want to make more changes, and I’ll also have capacity to address this further. But for now, changing my morning routine is enough to help me feel more balanced.
As you decide how to move forward, something else to consider is that change is very often uncomfortable. Our brains like sameness because it’s predictable and predictable means safe. So, when we try to change something, even for our good, it doesn’t always feel wonderful right away. All that to say, if you’re feeling hesitant about change because it’s uncomfortable, that’s super understandable. Only you can decide if it’s worth moving through that discomfort.
So, if your vision and steps are something you still have the capacity and desire to work toward, then the next thing to do is revise as needed.
REVISE
Making updates to our steps, even our vision, is incredibly helpful. If we instead beat ourselves up because something didn’t go as planned, or we dig our heels in and stubbornly keep trying to do things exactly as we think we should, then we risk delaying our progress. Potentially indefinitely because those paths will make us more likely to quit. Instead, we have the freedom to make updates that will keep us on track. So, based on our experience over the past week, what new information will help us take the most useful actions we can?
I shared my takeaways from my experimentation above, and based on what I learned, here’s what I plan to keep and adjust:
Keep: I will continue to set my phone out of reach overnight.
Adjust: To make this adjustment easier, I will journal, read, or do puzzles in pen and paper form at night so I’m less tempted to have my phone close by.
Keep: I will continue to stretch in the morning in place of scrolling.
Adjust: I will stretch either in bed, or after getting up.
I learned that both of the steps I set are helpful, and I suspect that some small tweaks and additions will make them more impactful. You might find you’re in a similar spot, you might make bigger shifts, or you might be happy with things as they are. Wherever you land, the experimenting continues from here!
SERIES WRAP
As we wrap up this series, the first thing I want to say is congratulations! If you stuck with this all month, you’ve practiced noticing and mindfulness with a habit, you’ve created an ideal vision of that habit for yourself, you’ve experimented with some manageable actions and learned from them, and you’re onto the review and revise phase.
Going forward, this is the ongoing process- review and revise as needed. If we do this at regular intervals, we set ourselves up to continue moving toward our vision in an aligned and manageable way.
Now that you’ve done this with screen time, you can apply the process to other changes you want to make. When you want to create a vision and steps for something else, or update your vision for screen use, you can follow the whole process again from noticing to visioning to action and then review.
Speaking of review, here are a few questions to ponder regarding the month as a whole:
Through this process, what did you learn?
What will you be taking with you from this month?
Were there any unexpected ripple effects from the things you tried?
What strengths can you draw on as you move forward?
I hope you learned a thing or two about yourself, and that you find these steps useful! And, if you’re ever in need of behavior change support, reach out! I’m a trauma-informed, board-certified health and wellness coach, a former RN, and a yoga teacher, and I love supporting people with feeling more confident and comfortable in their own lives.
Thanks for taking this journey with me, and I hope to hear about your experience!
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