Media Cleanse.
It starts today. My 40 day media cleanse.
Goodbye social media, Netflix, and television. Hello board games, puzzles, and the many many books I have been wanting to read but just couldn’t seem to find the time for.
The average American watches more than 5 hours of television a day, that’s about 150 hours a month and 1,825 hours a year! According to the New York Daily News, we spend 32 minutes watching time-shifted television, one hour using the internet on the computer, one hour and seven minutes on our smart phones, and two hours and 46 minutes listening to the radio.
Take a moment to look around you and you will see everyone is on their phones. In the break room at work, intermission at a play, or even during the concert, or the big game you are it. No one takes the time to just be in the moment and just enjoy what they are doing. Everyone is taking pictures and posting them on Instagram, or Tweeting or Facebooking what they are doing; but in fact what they are really doing is playing on their phones.
This is why I am going on this cleanse. I want to strip the urge to gab my phone, or turn on the television to curb my boredom or add noise to my quite house. Technology is a blessing and a curse. I just know, for me, that this life is too short to be spending it with fictional characters on the television or texting and posting things on social media. I want to spend my limited time with the actual people that I love and care about while I still can, and create memories with them.
Why 40 days you may be wondering? Well we all know that it take 21 days to break a habit and to create a new one. I have recently started Gabrielle Bernstein’s May Cause Miracles course, where she explains why her workshop is a forty day program. She says, “Metaphysicians and yogis place much emphasis on the repetition of a forty-day practice. Mythical examples range from Moses’s forty days and forty nights spent on Mount Sinai to the story of the Buddha reaching enlightenment on the full moon in May after meditating and fasting under the bodhi tree for forty days.” So, I figured why not!
So to all my dear friends on Facebook, and followers on Instagram and my blog (the whole lot of you… Hi Mom!) I will be M.I.A. for the next 40 days. I hope this post encourages you all to realize how dependent we have become on our technology. I am not saying you need to give it up, but just by being aware of it can help you make the conscience decision to whether or not you want to put the phone down, turn the television off, and get up off the couch and chase those dreams!!!