What Do I Actually Want?

What Do I Actually Want?

I’m going to approach this as I do with clients.

First, clarify the goal.

I know what I don’t want: ridiculous amounts of screen time.

But at least it got our attention.

The replacement matters

When we are changing a habit, it is rarely enough to simply remove the behaviour.

The behaviour has usually been doing something for us.

Scrolling might be helping us feel informed. It might be helping us feel distracted. It might give us a little hit of novelty when we are tired, bored, lonely, worried or mentally overloaded.

So if we want to change the pattern, we need to give the mind and nervous system another pathway.

Not just, “stop doing that.”

Something more like:

“When I notice myself reaching for the screen, this is what I will do instead.”

That is where the change starts to become practical.

My real goal here reaches beyond reducing screen time.

My real goal is to remind myself that life is still good.

That when I lift my head out of the screen, there is a beautiful world around me. There are people I love dearly. There is work I care deeply about. There is a roof over my head. There is my dog, JonJon, who is always enthusiastically available for a pat and has yet to show any concern about global affairs.

But that is only part of the picture.

When a goal is mostly framed around what we don’t want, it keeps the problem at the centre. It tells the mind what to move away from, but it does not give it a clear direction to move toward.

“I don’t want to doomscroll.”

“I don’t want to waste time.”

“I don’t want to feel so overwhelmed.”

All valid. All understandable. But none of them tell me what I am choosing instead.

So I have to dig a little deeper.

What do I actually want?

What brings me real benefit?

What would I do with that extra time I always seem to find for a doomscroll, but somehow cannot seem to find for a dream?

That question stings a bit, doesn’t it?

I know I am fortunate.

I also know that when I overextend my attention to every difficult, frightening or frustrating thing happening in the world, I rob myself of joy.

And when I keep feeding my focus into platforms designed to profit from my attention, I usually end up feeling like a fish on a line getting slowly reeled in. Some sort of impending doom from above.

Certainly not wiser. Definitely not calmer. Not one bit more effective.

Just worse.

So before I try to force myself away from the screen, I need to be honest about what I am choosing instead.

Because the mind does much better with direction than deprivation.

Thanks for spending your focus with me today. See you next week.