The Biggest Life Stealer On The Planet

Presence has been taught by the Masters for thousands of years and it's eluded most of us. It's the one place you can find true peace and joy. Yet if you're never in the present moment, you'll not experience much peace or joy.

...and if we're not experiencing much peace or joy then what exactly are we experiencing?!

Today, we live in the most un-present (not sure if that's a word?) time in history. We live in the greatest age of distraction because of digital devices. Cell phones, iPads, and the oh-so not glorious social media has been designed to steal from you.

It's stealing the most precious resource you have, LIFE!

Two Scenes I Can't Forget

We were in Paris a few weeks ago, there metro system is incredibly impressive. Faster to take the metro than to drive to most places and very efficient and well set up. Needless to say, we took the metro to most places. Back home I don't ride the bus or take the train, we drive anywhere we're going so I don't get to see this scene at home, but I'm sure it's the same.

Every single day when we would get onto the metro, a good 70% of the people on the train were sitting like zombines glued to their phones. Some playing phone games, but most were watching reels and swiping some kind of social media.

As I was driving home from Cafe Nero here in Cyprus this morning, I watched a late 20s-ish woman out walking her dog in the beautiful sunshine, except rather than being on the walk she was holding her phone out watching some kind of reel/social media.

This is not meant to be a judgement of her but an observation of how horribly, horribly far these devices have gone to stealing our lives. Now we can't even go for a walk and enjoy it without checking out texts, checking our social or emails etc.

Our kids once in a while get to use an iPad and I can see first hand in our youngest how much these devices destroy our brains and turn us into people we are not. My youngest is the greatest example I know of kindness, love and joy... UNLESS she spends time on one of these devices. She melts down after we end the time and sometimes cries endlessly. Nothing like who she is normally.

CELL PHONES ARE THE BIGGEST LIFE-STEALERS ON THE PLANET RIGHT NOW!

My Own Battle With It

This has become something I'm pretty passionate about and have built a growing dis-trust and dis-like of social media and overall the addictiveness of these destructive digital devices.

I've been off it the last 3 months. I deleted FB and IG off my phone so I couldn't access them there. I hadn't touched it for 2 months and then the Facebook monster began to creep in, well I should at least see what people are up to, it's not going to hurt to check it today.

Before I knew it I was checking on my laptop almost daily again. So I changed my password to a random mash-up of keys furiously typed making the only way for me to login to be resetting my password.

I have a coaching client who shared honestly with me that he spends an hour, two maybe even three check social media and wasting time on it. I challenged him to get off social media for a month and just see what happens. He took the challenge and is off of it for the month of Feb. Already he's got more time in his mornings, he says he hasn't missed it.

So, this is your reminder for the day - get off your phone, get off social media. Go live the day. Go enjoy it.

If you want more joy, more peace and more happiness in your life - spend less time on your digital devices. Consider getting off social media for awhile or maybe even permanently.

Maybe you'll join us in the getting off social movement, maybe not. Either way, just remember your phone is stealing your life and life is meant to be lived, not watched through a screen.

As always, with love, Ben Spangl