This Tiny Change Made Me Feel Human Again

Hi Reader -

I quit Instagram a few weeks ago after noticing how triggered I was getting each time I opened the app.

My life has significantly improved ever since 🙂

But here is what is really interesting…

I was already ultra monitored with my social media usage. I’ve used the Opal app for two years now to set a daily limit of 15 minutes before I get hard locked out of IG until the following day. (I learned a long time ago how to override the screen time limits on the iPhone ;)

All that to say, I went from 15 minutes a day to zero minutes a day.

That is NOT that big of a difference.

And yet the difference in my life is massive.

Two directions to see this from…

No time on the app has brought me significantly higher levels of peace and presence.
Something as little as 15 minutes a day was enough to stir me up.

I am not a person who was addicted.
I’m not a person who was spending hours a day there.
I am curated in my feed and only follow peaceful humans–but that means nothing when Instagram fills my feed with suggested content I didn’t consent to. Much of which isn’t even real.

Something as little as 15 minutes (or less!) was enough to get me off kilter. And I wasn’t aware of just how much until I experienced the contrast of having zero minutes, especially for several days in a row.

I realize that my algorithm is most assuredly different than yours. It’s likely we’re not seeing the same content. What is more universal, however, is the amount of content we all receive in a day.

And…

It’s likely MORE content than is useful or beneficial to your life.

For the past two decades, I’ve been on an information binge.
I’ve had an insatiable hunger to learn everything.
So much so that I fill my day with books and podcasts.

And what could be better than learning?

How about learning at 2x the speed?!!!

Oh my goodness! I could get through twice as many books or podcasts in half the time! Just speed everything up!

I will never forget a Buddhist Sangha gathering I attended last year where the teacher spent an entire HOUR having us meditate on ONE SENTENCE.
But even more dramatically, he broke the sentence down into single words. We’d spend five minutes meditating on ONE WORD of the sentence at a time and then gracefully move to the next word.

Can you imagine the contrast of a person like me who listened to all my content at 2X the speed, suddenly entering a moment where it was literally -3,000X slower?

Ironically, that meditation was profoundly impactful for me.
And truth be told, there was far more wisdom packed in that single sentence than someone cruising through life at 2X would ever be able to receive. Ask me how I know ;)

I often forget that...
Learning is not about gathering as much information into my mind as I can get.
Learning can start in the mind…but it doesn’t complete in the mind.

Completion happens only when we fully integrate on the level of the heart and the body… Which requires us to pause and let things land.

We have to slow down.

Pausing can have many varieties. Everything from unplugging to literally taking a beat to breathe and invite the wisdom to come deeper. You already know this, but the internet is designed to capture your attention so you don’t pause.

The best part of giving myself a break to pause this past week, has been hearing my own voice more than the voices of everyone else echoing in my mind. I feel human again.

In all the inner work I’ve done for myself or working with clients, this tends to be one of those pivotal levers. If we want to find more inner peace, we will need to reclaim the sacredness of our attention.

What are you giving your sacred attention to?

If you had 15 minutes of sacred attention back in your day — where would you give it instead?

If you were to create a nourishing pause, what would that look like for you?

I’d love to hear your thoughts. Let me know in the comments, HERE.

You are loved.
All parts of you.

Namaste,

Brooke

P.S. Speaking of speed…I made the decision to release The Creator Field Notes episodes three times a week instead of one. While it’s a faster release, here’s my invitation to enjoy at 1X :)

This Week on Creator Field Notes...