4 Ways Your Phone Affects Your Freedom

Our phones are usually next to us and we rarely think about it. It feels normal, so you may not have considered what a difference it can make to have it out of arms reach. I initiated a phone-free bedroom and some incredible insights came to me that I share with you here! I speak to four ways our phones get in the way of freedom, empowerment, and individuality.

Try a phone-free bedroom and see how it impacts your life!

Transcript

Hey,

I'm Laura and this is my podcast,

Eye of the Wheel.

Everything I know to be true,

All the inner strength I've gained over the years has come to me through observing my life through my own inner eye.

We are all riding a wheel of repeating daily experiences,

But have we connected to our still inner eye who simply observes and is free from it all?

When we settle back into being the eyes of the wheel,

We know ourselves as a powerful centre and creator of our own lives.

This is how I see you.

You are full of infinite possibilities.

Allow my insights to guide you towards empowerment,

Clarity and courage.

Thank you for listening.

Our phones.

I am so passionate about talking about this and it's been a big part of my contemplation and a lot of what I played around with to find some harmony within my wellbeing in using my phone.

I've set some boundaries of my phone to make sure that I'm using it intentionally and for service and for connection and not to make unconscious decisions with it.

I do my very best and I decided that I would love to have a phone-free bedroom,

To not have my phone near me when I go to bed and to not use it to time my meditations in the morning.

I'm feeling extra passionate about this because I just initiated this two nights ago and I bought this timer where I can use my meditation that's not connected to the internet or anything and it's totally just basic and simple and amazing.

It really sparked some things within me to talk about and some big realizations I had.

I noticed that initially it was actually hard for me to put my phone in the other room and then go into my bedroom.

There's like a little bit of attachment left within me which I was kind of surprised about.

So I was like,

Oh,

I've done,

You know,

Boundary setting and the things already,

But there's still a little bit within me that didn't want to give up that stimulus.

When I went to my bedroom,

I felt so much more calm and clear and open.

There was like a spaciousness that came out of knowing that I had nothing to respond to and nothing to look at.

And my nervous system was a lot more relaxed and my meditations have been deeper.

I've been clearer in my mind,

More connected and inspired and it's just incredible.

I've noticed this over two days.

So I wanted to talk about this and there was some things that came up for me when I was in my room and I recognized that there's a lot of things that myself and maybe you would want to do,

But you end up not doing it because of your phone.

Maybe there's a lot of conversations you've wanted to have in person,

But you didn't because of your phone.

And then you went through the anxiety of waiting for the text back when really it should have been a face to face conversation for deeper connection and relationship.

That how much time do we really spend away from our devices?

Like far away,

Like far another room for two plus hours and we're not thinking about it at all,

Right?

No thoughts about it.

Not really that often.

It's almost like it's attached to us in some sort of like safety type of way.

And I do believe that our phones act as this device and this stimulus of safety in some ways because I'm not saying that what we're consuming on our phones is safe to consume.

I think there's a lot of stuff there that we don't need to consume and is not for our best interest to consume,

But I mean safety in the way that we can easily use it to distract ourselves,

Numb ourselves,

Or simply take ourselves out of our external reality.

So it's like any time that life gets a little bit too overwhelming or there's a lot of thoughts going on and we just,

You know,

We can't handle it or we don't want to sit with it,

Then we just grab our phone and we can so easily just tap out of the thoughts of the external world,

Everything.

We can just be in this different reality.

And because our phones are so stimulating,

It overloads our minds and our systems,

Our nervous systems so intensely that we simply have no space to process or to focus on what was bothering us,

Whether it was an emotional thing or something overwhelming the external world.

And so it creates this really simple numbing device that within just a pickup and maybe a couple of clicks,

We can easily and effortlessly be in a space where we are completely numbed out and disconnected from our reality.

And so this can act as a space that we can use for ignoring or suppressing emotions,

For ignoring and suppressing feelings or desires or anger or anything,

Right?

Like it's almost too simple to just overstimulate ourselves with our devices to a place that we are now completely disconnected.

And those feelings and that emotion and that overwhelm from our daily life,

It doesn't just disappear when we pick up our phones,

It actually just gets shoved down deeper and deeper within ourselves.

And you may notice that when you spend more and more and more time on your phone,

You start to feel heavier,

More cloudy,

And your perception gets all like convoluted and you're just like,

You're not feeling clear and centered within your body and your mind anymore.

You're just like spinning,

Right?

Because it's complete sensory overload.

And the mind simply cannot take in that much information well and process it effectively.

So it's completely overloaded all the time,

Which completely drains our energy,

Which clouds our perception,

Which makes it hard to think for ourselves,

Which disempowers us from actually tuning into the emotional and energetic and physical states that we are feeling within our bodies and within the world,

Because it's so easy to pick it up and to tap out.

Okay.

So it actually has a huge effect within our lives and it can cause us to not grow as individuals into our inner strength,

Into our inner power as much because we're instead of using the opportunities of discomfort or like overwhelm within our life to use that as a means of growth and clarity and evolution within our lives.

We're just kind of missing that by picking it up and going forward with numbing ourselves with the stimulus,

Right?

So it's affecting our wellbeing in a lot of ways.

And even with all the steps I've taken,

I notice even another layer of that when I put it in the other room a couple nights ago and went to my room,

I was like,

There's even another layer of attachment I need to let go of here.

Okay.

So it's so deeply ingrained and even thoughts about what could be on my phone,

What could be waiting for me,

What notifications,

What likes,

What messages,

What emails could be waiting for me,

Even that thought is a thought pattern of addiction towards a stimulus,

Right?

You like demand the phone to stimulate you and to take you to a place where you are no longer engaged with the world for whatever reason.

Sometimes you don't want to be,

And sometimes you're just bored.

And so you just go on there to fill up because you can't be in the space of nothingness.

It's too confronting.

Okay.

But that confrontation is yourself and is our place for growth and empowerment within our lives.

So it's a really,

It's really not something that we can ignore.

It's really big and I'm still navigating it within my own world.

Okay.

So there is four things I want to share with you.

So I feel that that space of,

You know,

Picking up the phone and overstimulating ourselves takes away our ability to contemplate.

That's the first one.

So contemplation is incredibly powerful.

Contemplation really just means basically sitting down and thinking about something and allowing insights to come in and seeing if it resonates and then just thinking about it and just being with it.

Right?

So that contemplation can be about relationships in your life,

Your work,

Your passions,

What you're doing,

Like anything.

It can be about absolutely anything.

It can be about which experiences you've been through,

Like just within the day or within the past.

And it gives basically space for us to process our world,

To process who we are and to process our realities.

And that contemplation is so key for properly understanding ourselves and what's happening and to also create our own kind of perception about it and what we think about it and allow ourselves to bring in creativity towards circumstances that we feel stuck in.

And that contemplation,

It just,

It's just so powerful.

It really helps connect you to what you're thinking inside,

What you're feeling,

How you're perceiving the world.

And it allows you to get really,

Really right and clear on your experience within your world,

Within your body,

Within your reality.

And if we don't have time to contemplate and to process our lives,

Then we're pretty much just go,

Go,

Go,

Go,

Go and filling it all up.

And then we're not really doing anything out of a conscious place anymore.

We're just doing everything on autopilot and our ability to change or to evolve comes from that firstly,

That place of contemplation or feeling or,

You know,

Insight.

And that whole space gets blocked and filled up by the stimulation of our phones because contemplation could look like just 10 minutes on the couch staring out at the window.

It could look like just laying on your bed,

Staring at the ceiling for half an hour,

You know,

Just like being in silence and thinking and being in your body and,

You know,

Processing life.

It is so important.

So it takes,

It takes that away,

Our phones.

It has for my own life.

And that's,

That's why I know it to be true.

And I'm taking the measures to try and unwind that now.

Okay.

The second one is creativity,

Which is kind of linked with that contemplation space,

But it's more of a space of like giving yourself silence so you can think and do things differently.

Okay.

So if you're sitting in a space for a long period of time and you don't have any distractions or any stimulus is around you,

You're going to come up with different things to do,

You know,

To entertain yourself or to explore the world around you,

Or you're going to think of creative ideas of what you can create or what you can make or what you want to do for your life.

And those creativity and those spaces come in through the silence,

Right?

And we are not able to be creative within our own world,

Within what we're creating,

Within what we want,

Within different activities or different ways of doing things that create creativity simply cannot come in.

If we're blocking it and blocking that space with stimulus,

Stimulus,

Stimulus,

Stimulus,

And then we're not stimulated.

We're just on autopilot doing our everyday activities.

No change happens.

No change can happen there.

Evolution is very hard to happen within that space.

You really need to have your creativity.

We are such creative beings,

Right?

Like nothing that's ever happened within our world has happened without somebody first thinking about it or first imagining it.

That imagination and the thought about it is the first step before anything actually happens in the physical world,

Right?

You've never done anything in your life that you haven't thought about first.

You always think about it first,

Okay?

So that creativity is so,

So crucial.

And it's not just the arts.

It can be,

But it's just,

It's the creativity of wanting to imagine and dream and think about the life that you want and then to use that within your life and with other people.

And you know,

It's a very fundamental human right and experience to be and to act out our creativity that gets blocked with our phones.

I've noticed it within my own life and working to unwire that one too.

Individuality.

So when we are looking at other people's lives so much or looking at the news or YouTube or whatever it is,

I mean,

It's great to do those things.

And you're learning so much and it's so good to do this stuff consciously,

But when you're doing it unconsciously or using it as a space to just tap out or to numb yourself and that's all you're doing,

Then you're absorbing so many different perspectives and thoughts from so many different people and they're all contradicting and you're getting so overwhelmed and so confused and you have no space to contemplate and to be creative and to tune into yourself and ask what aligns with me and what doesn't,

Which is absolutely fundamental.

I mean,

We can't just take what anybody says and just imply it in our own life without checking in if it resonates with us first.

That's the number one decider and the number one leader is our own inner feeling and our own inner knowing of what's best for us and what we take in the external world is just all suggestions,

All ideas,

And then we take what resonates and we go forward and that's how we live from a place of individuality and authenticity within our own lives.

If we don't have that space to come in to connect with what is landing with us,

Then we're just taking information and just acting on it right away or just talking about it right away without actually coming in and seeing does that resonate with me and what does that mean for me as an individual,

Right?

And how do I want to express myself and how do I want to be in the world?

Just me,

Not what anybody else thinks or wants from me.

That space cannot be cultivated if we're constantly filling up that space with our phones or with the stimulus and that sense of authenticity,

Individuality,

And knowingness within yourself,

What you know is right for you is your inner compass,

Your inner guide.

It's what makes you feel clear,

Directional,

Strong,

And empowered within your life,

Okay?

As a leader and as a person that makes decisions for themselves by themselves,

Which is so crucial to feeling strong and empowered and be able to give and to serve at your highest potential and beginning to evolve within your life,

Right?

And lastly,

Peace of mind.

It is so hard to have peace of mind when your phone is close to you and I got this even amplified for me in these past two nights because I thought,

Okay,

If my phone's like a couple feet away from me but it's face down and it's on silent,

Then I'm actually fine.

I'm actually having peace of mind.

I'm actually okay.

I'm actually not influenced by it.

What I realized is that is actually wrong.

Even having it within arm's reach or within like,

Honestly,

I feel like five meters of you,

You're still thinking about it and its energy is still drawing you and your nervous system is still kind of agitated just with it in your presence.

And if you don't believe me or you're not sure about that,

Give it a go.

Put your phone in another room somewhere super far away from you or even like do what I do and have a phone-free bedroom and see how that affects your sense of calm and your nervous system.

It's absolutely substantial just having the phone away from you,

What it does.

Okay,

So now I've recognized that even the energetics and the knowing and the thoughts of having the phone within arm's reach,

Even if it's face down and off,

It's still affecting you and it's still affecting you substantially.

Okay.

And I am just pooh about that right now.

And so I'm really,

Really going to focus on only being close to it when I need to,

Right.

Or when I,

When I know that I'm using it for some sort of service or intentional connection.

Okay.

So that peace of mind and your inner sense of calm and wellbeing and health is very hard to access if you have such a powerful stimulus close to you,

Even if you're not using it.

Okay.

You'll notice how quickly you start to unwind and feel spacious and connected to yourself and calm when the phone is completely away from you and completely off.

It's like a whole different experience.

Okay.

And that peace of mind is always there and can be accessed so much easier,

Right.

And if we want peace within the world,

It starts with us.

Are we peaceful within our own lives?

That's the real question to ask.

And I know that deep down,

That's what we all want.

I feel is a more peaceful world.

So how can we start that within ourselves and how can we put boundaries and limitations around the phone consciously so we can access that state?

Okay.

So if we can do that,

Then we open up spaciousness within our lives,

Which allows contemplation to come back,

Creativity to come back,

Individuality and authenticity to come back and peace of mind,

Health,

Wellbeing,

A slow,

Calm,

Parasympathetic nervous system that's great for ourselves,

Our relationships,

Everything.

Right.

So this is big.

It's not something to ignore.

And that is my own experience with it and what I wanted to share.

So please take with you what resonates and oh,

I'd love to hear your insights on this.

It's such a powerful topic.

Thank you so much for listening.

Thank you for your presence and your courage on this journey in words.

I'm Laura.

Take care until next time.

Reviews

Love this reminder and new realisations from your share… thank you 💜🙏💜

This is very relevant for me. If I turn the phone off completely I sleep longer and deeper. If I leave the phone off at home my creativity begins to expand , brain wakes up!
I agree with you also that having it next to you but off isn't enough. Leaving it in another room or I've even started practising leaving it purposefully in my car, has a massively positive impact. Once my brain stops repeatedly looking for the phone, my whole body begins to decompress
I've logged out of social media, will visit very very occasionally, if at all. I currently do not miss it.
I've been meditating for years and listening to girls and teachers and searching for freedom. A simple and fast way to freedom is detaching from social media, and the phone. We become wired to check for a message, even when all notifications are on, we are still waiting and anticipating some kind of response from the phone. Existing day to day in a anticipatory, flight or fight response, isn't living, it is existing in a trap, a habit, a very unhealthy cycle in our nervous system.
Smart phones are smart but humans are out smarted, addicts to a never satisfying piece of technology.
The fear of missing out. That keeps the addiction chained too.
Life is beautiful on the other side.
Free yourself of the chains of brain washing and conditioning.
I still continue to listen to podcasts and of course I still use insight timer. But I am not controlled by my phone. I still need reminding so will bookmark this.
Thank you for your talk.
Namaste.

Very wise and thoughtful - I had a very hard time realizing that I was totally engaged in the scenario you described. ON my phone scrolling around seeking to connect to peace and meditation but just ending l up using Insight Timer to “tap out” as you say (numb out). I really have to get a handle on this. Weeks ago I had banished the phone from my bedroom where I meditate in the morning and evening, and have been using the timer within the version of Insight Timer on my Apple Watch to keep track of time, but I literally just snuck downstairs and got my phone!! Talk about an addiction!! The phone is such a powerful way of changing how I feel. I love your four values of contemplation, creativity, individuality, and peace of mind! What we gain from creating space from the compulsiveness around the phone!! So important, so true. Good luck with this essential work! Wish me luck to o! Thank you!! Xo

Thank you so much Laura! I deeply resonated with this, and I do think that our phones are like ‘addictions’ and it’s so important to set boundaries with them! I also agree with the fact that we need to consciously be aware of what we consume. I’m trying to use my phone less too, and sometimes (since I’m not working right now it’s easier) I can make myself use my phone only one or two hours a day and try to consciously connect with myself for the rest of the day.