In a world in which we are surrounded by devices that distract us, it is very difficult to know what we want, why we want it and how to achieve our goals.
Being a slave of my smartphone for many years, I only recently figured this out. Now is the time to act on it. Some months ago, I stumbled upon the concept of action vs reaction, and with horror I realised how reactive I am (was?) in my daily life. This doesn’t mean I couldn’t function in society. On the contrary, initiative is seldom required to function in our day to day lives. However, if we do start to take initiative, possibilities are endless.
Our phones, computers, tablets are useful devices to communicate with others, do work, read, write, relax, but they come with a serious issue: they distract us from our own thoughts. If I want to google something on my phone (action), I open it up, and before I get the chance, I see three new WhatsApp messages that require my attention, two new emails, three pup-ups of things I should buy (Uber, App Store, whatever), and within a second of opening my phone, I forgot why I did it in the first place. I open WhatsApp and reply to the message (reaction). Now that I have reacted to something I didn’t intend to, my own thoughts disappeared, I open Twitter to see what others decided is important for me and withing a few moments, 30 minutes disappear.
The above is the most important reason I started this blog, something that I couldn’t have imagined doing two weeks ago.
The goal is to remind myself to be more with my own thoughts and less with those of others and inspire other people to do the same. This might sound counter-intuitive, but when we all listen to ourselves more, we can be more open to the people around us and be more attentive, caring human beings.