Un-Plug out of your life for 3 minutes and feel the benefits immediately.
Is anybody else tired, beat, worn-out, shattered, burnt-out, knackered, wiped-out, drained – getting the picture? No, wait a minute, I don’t mean tired because you didn’t get enough sleep last night or have had a few sociable days. I mean bone weary, brain drained, body battered, soul sucked empty tired. It’s a place where no matter how many hours of sleep you get a night you wake up weary, blurry-eyed with no get up and go, because it got up and left sometime back in July, or was it March? If so you need to log out of your life for just 3 minutes – keep reading for the best tips to get you started.
Many are feeling this way and perhaps it has nothing to do with sleep at all. in the 21st-century, lives are filled to the brim with meetings, deadlines, responsibilities, obligations, pressures, and an endless to do list! We are constantly plugged in – to devices, news, information, schedules, and other people’s business. Instead of just planning what we are doing with our families over the festive season we know now what someone in the outskirts of Alaska is busy doing and we are trying to measure up to them too.
It is no wonder that we are a sleep-less society on the brink of burn-out all the time! Now don’t get me wrong, modern living is convenient and extraordinary on most days. But are we really wired to keep up? Can we stop for a moment and remember that our flesh and bone bodies are made in a completely different wondrous way with ancient evolutionary settings: needing balance and harmony.
The overload of information is becoming a sickness all of its own. Do you even remember what you were googling in the morning by the time you are going to sleep at night? With a thousand tabs open in our minds no wonder we are forgetting birthdays, appointments, and the importance of real friends.
The past year has dampened our social lives to a large extent, we have not been able to gather and greet as in the past. If anything, our need for social connection was highlighted, but what questions or glaring gaps did it bring up about our spiritual connections?
How do we live in a world where we are constantly plugged in but don’t actually know the source of where or what we are plugging into? What is the source of everything for us? Very few, when we turn on our screens stop to think of the wall socket and how the electrical cords and conduits conduct the signals that enable us to enjoy our favourite pastime. That is until we lose signal or something isn’t working.
Do we not conduct our lives like this too? Only when we get ill, lose our money and jobs or partners do we start looking for the source of our problems and ailments. Then we find the time, then we start looking into self -care; we are forced to stop our lives and see what is not working.
What I am really getting to is that we do not have to wait for these big dramatic moments to be stopped in our tracks and only then take the time we need. If anything, we should be able to log out and tune out from all the daily noise and enjoy a few moments plugging back into ourselves, our needs, and our dreams. We cannot rest when we are playing video games, watching series, or scrolling Facebook and Instagram – those may in a certain way be relaxing, but it is not allowing our mind and brain to rest, be, and most importantly heal.
It is only by learning to unplug and rest our brains and minds that we can bring ourselves to a place of RESTORATION.
Restoration simply means to return to an improved condition. Before all the daily responsibilities start weighing you down. Before all the worries keep you up at night. While it would be optimal to do this for an extended period of time, most of us do not have the luxury of taking a break from our lives. Even if we go on vacation, our chargers are the first thing we probably pack – what about our own chargers? What recharges our minds and bodies? It is not just sleep that restores us, but a whole way of being and doing things differently that will bring us back into balance and health.
If we are being honest, even on vacation we are constantly on our phones, or tablet, or distracting ourselves with things to do or see, restaurants to try, touristy things to do, shopping till we drop – holidays are anything but restful! There are exceptions, but it takes a conscious effort to plan and execute these.
If you are feeling tired even after reading this far, join the club. The insanity with which we are living our fast-paced lives has to stop. We need to heed the voice of reason and our soul if we do not want to stumble down the slippery slope of heading into a self-created danger zone where a caffeinated, sugar-addicted zombie is the default setting. There is another way! We have to UNPLUG!
Eastern philosophies have for centuries taught the importance of quieting the mind. Meditation and mindfulness are no longer foreign words, but daily trends and lifestyle choices. There is so much merit and benefit in practicing meditation, that we will explore in more depth in another post.
At first, the silence and noiselessness will be deafening, and probably very uncomfortable for your ego to handle. You may even just be so overwhelmed with exhaustion that you fall asleep right away – but the quality of your sleep will prove better than if you are staying up gaming or scrolling. Did you know the brain retains the information it is fed as it falls asleep and causes the whole nervous system to either be stimulated or sedated by what it has seen, heard, or read?
THE BEST TIP TO HELP YOU UNPLUG THAT ONLY TAKES A FEW MINUTES IS BELOW –
For now, just start by switching off your devices- 5 minutes is all you need to start the habit of regaining control of your well-being. Can’t do 5 minutes, start with 3 – challenge yourself to any small amount of time. I love to put everything down when I boil the kettle – a few minutes of consciously sitting and allowing time to pass. Now my body and mind are slowly finding excuses to boil the kettle more often!
Once we have a handle on giving ourselves a few minutes of alone time, with no outside distraction, we can finally decide what we want to PLUG back into, and we may be very surprised to find we may not want to plug back into much at all. This is where growth, healing, rest, peace, harmony, and restoration can happen.
We have an innate intelligence within ourselves if we would only give it a chance to shine through and be heard more often. This is the place the sages knew would heal your tiredness, charge your battery, and bring you back to life so that you can actually live it – instead of getting through it.
Thank you for Reading.
*Should you be feeling exhaustion due to any physical illness or disease, please see a health-care professional immediately.
For professional help and support visit, https://idontmind.com/
Anybody else has other really great practical tips to help you log out and plugin? Leave some in the comments below.
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