Magic from smartphone disconnection

Something magical happened for me at 2am, on that first night of total disconnection from my phone.

For the whole evening, I had to fight the pangs of compulsion. Subtle and insidious as they can be with this particular form of addition, which masks itself so well as "just doing my thing for a minute". It only reveals itself when you actually try to stop. And it's brutal.

While resting on the couch after dinner… I want to check the email. After having helped the kiddos brush their teeth…. I want to check the messages. Halfway into cleaning the kitchen…. I want to check the Slack channels. I'm curious to see if that person has responded. I want to see the news.

Pang after pang after pan. About every 30 seconds. No respite.

That night I was practicing functional fasting. That means still having your phone around for the things that matter while radically abstaining from casual use. It's easier said than done. Sometimes it's a blurry line. It really flexes your discernment. But learning it is key, because smartphones are here to stay (and will soon be interfaced directly with our brain, the technology is currently being developed). Success in my view means learning to dominate this technology, and teach our children to do the same, not pretend it's not there.

Armed with a number of tools, I conquered every single pang. I made it through the evening. At bedtime I did use my phone to set my alarm, as planned, and then simply turned it off and went to bed. Little did I know, something extraordinary was about to happen.

At 2am the little girl wakes up crying, probably some scary dream. I go downstairs, cuddle her for a minute, she's fast back asleep. Not me, though. I always have a hard time falling back asleep after this middle-of-the-night wake ups. Too tired to get up, too rested to get back into deep sleep. I lie down in bed and my mind starts racing. It's always the same blurry mix of half-baked thoughts, plans, worries and ideas, mostly related to work. It goes on for maybe 30 min…and then it happens.

The pattern suddenly breaks. A completely fresh thought enters my mind. I suddenly realize that I can use this time to remember dozens of little random moments from today with my kids and bathe myself in the awe, gratitude, silliness and love imbued in those moments. Awake in the middle of the night, I take this opportunity to weave the fabric of my life, stitching deeper into my memory the things I want to remember and that I cherish the most. An active rehearsal through which I am able to distill the extraordinary from the ordinary. A subtle, teary and blissful experience of both longing and being content.

Now, it's not that I never experienced awe, gratitude and love for my kids. I'm not a psychopath. But this was a new way of experiencing those states. It was active and deliberate memory construction. It was loaded with meaning and emotion. I was using it as a way to fill up an empty gap of time. And it was distinctly replacing a way more established thought pattern of planning and worrying about work. All of this, together, was new.

Longing and contentment. If somebody had thrown me into a brain scanner at that moment, I bet you anything that this is what you'd see: A healthy balance of dopamine and serotonin. The molecule of "I want more" creating a well synchronized choreography with the molecule of "I'm okay with where I am". And I'm willing to bet my favorite pizza recipe on what made this new experience happen: my ability to control my smartphone addiction all the way through the evening, that night for the first time.

Every single time you use your phone casually, you're dealing a blow to your dopamine levels. On the contrary, as your get your phone usage under control, your dopamine levels stabilize and the brain finds a new balance among its many chemicals. It's like your mind opens up to discover - or rediscover - new pathways, new ways of being in your life, new ways of weaving together wanting, experiencing, making meaning and taking action. Where your mind was operating in a 2-dimensional space, a third dimension opens up, and a fourth, and a fifth.

Since that day of discovery, I've travelled that beautiful memory-making path again and again. It's becoming more second nature now. And I know it will make a difference in terms of what I will be able to remember 20 years from now about my children being young and my life with them.

How valuable is that?!

Your turn: What is something wild and beautiful that happened to you when you got your phone usage under control, even temporarily?