The real cost of being always connected

If you think that the problem with our always-connected lifestyle is about losing focus, wasting time and increasing stress, I have a startling news: it's way worse than that.

The darkest side of our social-media-addicted life is that it drains us of our most fundamental resource: Drive. More fundamental than time, money and health, drive is your sense that you want to go out and do stuff. It's your sense that there is stuff worth doing. It's your ability to mobilize your energy to create or become something that is not here yet.

Your pursuit may be business, health, relationships, spirituality or anything else. Whatever it is, you have to want it enough to overcome the challenges.
🐰 When my partner and I chose to have children, which wasn't easy, we succeeded because we wanted it.
💰 When I decided to start my own business, which also wasn't easy, I did it because I wanted it.
🧘‍♂️ When I got my butts to sit on a cushion meditating for 10 hrs a day for 10 days and practicing just being and surrendering my wanting anything to be different from the present moment, which was one of the hardest and most transformative things I've ever done, I did it… because I wanted it.

I did these things because they mattered. Because they represented where I wanted to go with my life.

It may shock you - in fact, I hope it does - but our seemingly benign surfing news sites, social media and email is depleting the exact pool from where we draw our ability to feel that something matters, that there is something we want and somewhere we want to get with our lives.

How can that be?!
The secret is called dopamine.

🧠 Dopamine is a molecule in the brain that controls your experience of seeking. Here is the problem: You only have so much dopamine available and it's a shared pool across all the domains of your life. Every time the impulse to seek something from your phone takes control over you, some of your dopamine is expended. You've just slightly impaired your ability to seek something else in your life, whether it's building your business, building your biceps or praying God.

Over and over and over again.
One little drop at a time, over weeks, months and years.

It's not just that you have less time for these other things. It's way worse than that. It's that you feel less like you want to do these things. It's that doing these things feels like it matters less.

We've got to stop this madness.
We've got to take back control.
I have done it with myself. It's doable, not always pretty, and very empowering.