Hello and welcome to the Cosmic Nomad.
I'm your host, Bailey Rushlow, and this is a space for the
curious and the heart lead where we explore the human experience
through travel, nature, spirituality, and real life
transformation through beautiful conversations.
As I discover my way of living, what I call an inspired life, I
share the practices, stories, and perspectives that have
helped guide me back to myself. Hello everyone, and welcome to
today's episode of The Cosmic Nomad.
So happy you're here. Please make yourself
comfortable. Pull up a chair, do an art
project, go on a walk, get out in nature, sit with your eyes
closed, crochet, I don't know, whatever, whatever is calling.
Do you run a bubble bath? That would be great.
I wish I had a bathtub. Mexico does not have a lot of
bathtubs, surprisingly, but also not surprising because it's very
hot here and most people are not looking to take a bath.
Cold showers is basically where we're at.
And sometimes I literally take like 3 or 4 or five showers a
day. I'm not even kidding.
Funny how things change when you live in new places.
So as you get comfortable, let's just take a deep breath
together. And then we're going to dive
into this topic of digital dementia, which is a new term
that just came into my world yesterday from an Instagram post
by Steve Magnus. And let's just, yeah, take a
deep breath. And we're going to jump into how
do we survive in a world where our minds have become
overstimulated, fragmented, half here, half there, distracted,
and how our connection to the digital world, social media and
our phones has had a huge impact on why and how we feel this way.
Take a deep breath together and then we will jump in.
Inhale with me. Hold it at the top of the
breath, and then exhale slowly like you're blowing out through
a straw. You ready?
Little bit more at the top, little bit more exhale.
Can you feel that kind of ripple run through your cells when you
do that? That's amazing.
That is called oxygenating your body, bringing life to this
incredible vessel. That is our souls opportunity to
be here. Never underestimate the power of
a deep breath. So I don't know about you, but I
grew up in a world without cell phones.
And depending on your age when you're listening to this, you
will either know what that means or or not, you know, and maybe
you had cell phones your whole life.
They came into my world as a late teenager.
And I mean, I remember when my dad would have first gotten a
cell phone. I don't know how old I was,
maybe 1213, but it wasn't something that I personally had
in my life until much later. And it's fascinating because I
used to be an avid reader. I used to be able to focus for
long periods of time. I used to be able to watch
really long movies, you know, like Lord of the Rings extended
edition movies. Totally just gave myself away
there. As a massive Lord of the Rings
fan, no shame. I'm I'm very proud of that.
But anyways, we slowly or I slowly got accustomed to having
my attention span grow shorter and shorter the more that I
became invested in social media and in having a computer in my
pocket at all times, waiting for that buzz, for that
notification, for that dopamine hit.
And it has caused an immense amount of distraction, a lack of
focus. And not just in me, but as
society as a whole, there is a forgetfulness, chronic mental
fatigue happening. And sometimes we wonder, like,
why am I so tired? And there can obviously be so
many reasons for this, but I think a huge one that we often
overlook is, again, this phrase from Steve Magnus called digital
dementia. And this is I guess what
psychologists call it nowadays, which is mental fatigue caused
by tech overuse. And it occurs because we are
training our brain to live in partial attention.
So we are constantly task switching in our phones.
Usually you don't just pick up your phone and respond to a text
and then put it away. You respond to a text, which
makes you think of this thing on social media, which makes you
think of this thing on, you know, Instagram or TikTok or
whatever. They may be a bounce between the
apps. And then there's another text.
You've got to respond to that. And then there's an e-mail
you've got to write and there's a post you want to make.
And then there's a photo you want to edit and then a graphic
you want to make in Canva. It's kind of never ending,
especially if you, I mean, I was going to say, especially if you
are a digitally creative person like myself, where a lot of
your, you know, work revolves around needing technology to
produce and create and record. And I love that.
I will be forever grateful to technology and my devices for
giving me the opportunity to create from the comfort of my
own home and reach millions of people all around the world.
That that is amazing. So grateful for that.
But you know, it's not only the people like me that are on their
devices for work. It's also the everyday average
person that has a device in general.
It's not just the phones that are distracting us, but they are
rewiring how we engage with the world, how we think, even how we
feel. And there is so much research
that confirms this and confirms that, you know, frequent phone
use actually impairs your working memory and your
attention and cognitive flexibility in our nervous
system is wildly intelligent. The the most intelligent system
in the body. I think probably.
I mean all of them are pretty amazing, but the nervous system
blows my mind. And it was not wired for this
level of input and information. I mean, the amount of
information 1 receives in a typical several minutes span of
opening Instagram, for example, depending on who you follow, of
course, and and what your algorithm is like.
For me, it is all very healing and health and Wellness focused
and centered and that's amazing. And I love that I've created it
to be that way. So it's definitely a place that
I go to to learn so many things, but also I could never put into
practice what I scroll through in a day's worth of time on a
social media platform. Like the amount of recipes, the
amount of Wellness tips and and tricks and things to do and
grounding and homework and going outside and the scientific
research behind all of it that I'm trying to ingest.
It's too much. I probably am not even doing, I
don't know, 3% of, you know, the the amount of information that I
am absorbing. And The thing is, I'm not
actually absorbing it. It is information, though, that
my brain and my nervous system tries its best to process, which
often subconsciously leaves me feeling irritable and foggy.
Even if I wouldn't necessarily pinpointed back to my time spent
scrolling, right? I wouldn't be like, oh, I
scrolled for a few minutes and then I felt irritable.
Like I might be able to, to draw it back to that, But also I, I
might not be because how, how much are like time are you
spending on social media? Maybe you're spending very
little. So you might not relate to what
I'm saying, but this doesn't just relate to social media.
This relates to devices in general because of what they do
to our brains and our nervous system.
And if you're curious about that, there's a setting on your
phone you can actually go to in your settings and go to screen
time and look and see how many hours you've spent on your
device and or social media. It's pretty shocking.
I'm not going to lie to you, even even me who I I consider
myself to be very aware of my time and how I spend it, my time
on social media, etcetera. And I have been shocked by
screen time that is 8910 hours of my day.
That's been very real with you right now because that's not an
everyday thing, but it absolutely has been in seasons
of my life and I wouldn't be surprised right now if it was.
You know what, We're going to go look at it.
I'm pulling it up. All right, I'm in my settings,
screen time. Let's see what it says.
I'm nervous. OK, 4 hours and 40 minutes,
which is 70 percent, 17% up from last week.
Apparently. It says that I had three hours
on WhatsApp, which is me listening to voice notes and me
talking on the phone. So that's that's a big part of
the day. Two hours is my daily average on
Instagram. Two hours, Like that's insane.
I'm just being so candid with you right now, putting my phone
away. And statistics actually show
that in the US, the average screen time for Americans is 7
1/2 hours per day. And mind you, a day is only, you
know, on average, say you wake up at 7, you go to bed at 10.
That's 15 hours of the day. OK, on on average, everyone's,
you know, a little bit different.
But that is basically half of the day spent on our phones and
spent in a land of technological dysregulation.
And we wonder why we struggle to be alone with our thoughts.
We wonder why our intuition becomes a little bit harder to
hear. We wonder why we don't really
know how we feel about things. We wonder why our communication
and our intimacy feel so distorted.
We wonder why we have lost depth with others.
Why everything may feel like small talk, right?
Or just surface level notification type of
communication. Having our phones out on the
table while we're meeting other people, it's reducing connection
to others and to ourselves. So there are so many reasons why
this is not working for us and why we need a serious reframe
and reset when it comes to our relationship with technology.
And if you already have a great relationship, that's awesome.
I would tell you that I have a good relationship with it.
And I still spent two hours today watching reels and
messaging people and posting things on my story and
scrolling. I didn't spend 2 hours of my day
today journaling, having any kind of spiritual practice,
doing art or or anything else for that matter.
That was like fueling me. I did.
I did spend a few hours with my friend at a cafe and my friends
and I never have our phones out when we're meeting each other.
Like we'll get our phone out to take a photo of, you know, what
we're doing for the memory, maybe for an Instagram story,
but that's it. And I love that about my friends
that we are 100% present with each other.
Like our phones are not even out on the table.
They are away in the bag. And I just want to pause here
and give another disclaimer that I don't believe that phones and
social media are all bad. I have made some of my best
friends in this world through social media.
Believe it or not, people that I've met online that live in
other countries, even that speak other languages, that we have
then later met up in person, gone on adventures together,
gone travelling, stayed in each other's homes.
Like social media has given me the opportunity to have my music
listen to, like I said, in all corners of the world where I
might not get to go physically, but my music and my voice has.
That is incredible. And I think phones have provided
so much flexibility and communication abilities and, you
know, connection. And this is amazing.
But what we need is deeper awareness and boundaries.
And when you reclaim your nervous system and your
experience of the digital world becomes your choice and become
and you, you get to, you know, choose how you interact with it.
This is how you stop being used by it.
Because when you are not paying for a product, you are the
product. Social media is free, right?
Ever wondered why? Because your data and your
attention and your behavior are what's being sold and
capitalized on honestly. So let's dive into what do we do
about it? We know the cold, hard facts.
We know that it's not good. We know that our attention span
is greatly suffering our ability to communicate, to know how we
feel, to connect, to share. What do we do about it and how
do we keep, how do we set better boundaries and have better
awareness around this topic? I think that I've told this
before on the podcast, but I'm not entirely sure.
The first time that I ever turned my phone off and not just
off. We like to reset it, but like
off off. I was, I think, 19 or 20 living
in Nashville, and I just had this thought of wondering, I
wonder what would happen if I turned it off and put it away.
And even the idea of that struck a chord of anxiety in my heart
and my body. And I felt nervous.
I felt anxious about that. And that is always a telltale
sign to me of something that I need to then do something I need
to lean into because it's an edge, it's a trigger point.
It's something that I think, oh, that makes me feel some type of
way why that makes me want to do it even more, even though I feel
like that's going to be really uncomfortable for me.
And Oh my God, was it. So I turned off my phone, I put
it in the drawer next to my bed and I tried to go about my day.
And when I tell you that I could not make it 2 hours, I think,
without having nearly a panic attack, and I had to go get my
phone out and check if I had any messages that I'd missed.
I'm not even kidding. And of course, I had nothing
that I had missed. There was no problem.
There was nothing wrong. There were not even hardly any
notifications like, you know, that was it.
Very anticlimactic. No dopamine from that.
And I thought, OK, if I could hardly make it 2 hours without
feeling like I'm going to cry if I don't check my phone, which is
again, crazy. Like I, I realized how insane
that sounds. But at the time, that's where I
was at. And I thought, OK, we need to
start making this a regular habit.
And this was 10 years ago, before the idea of digital detox
was even a thing or a common, you know, phrase that was passed
around social media communities. So yeah, I remember thinking, I
need to train. I didn't know it was my nervous
system at the time. But what I was doing was I need
to train my nervous system to respond differently to this
because I don't like the hold that this has over me, the power
that this has. So I started doing a few more
hours. Once a week I would do a couple
of hours. And then the next week I would
do a few more hours. And it turned into this digital
Sabbath where on Saturday night I would turn my phone off, like
not on airplane mode, like off, off, put it in a drawer
somewhere. And then I wouldn't turn it on
again until Sunday evening or even Monday morning, depending
on what I had going on on Monday.
And this is the first step to me breaking that cycle.
And I realized that I just told you that I spent two hours on
Instagram today. So literally this is something
that you have to, or I have to revisit over and over and over
again because it's not something you could just do once and then
it's done. I mean, maybe for you it is, but
for me it was definitely not. It's something that I have had
to come back to time and time again based on where I'm at in
life. You know, if I'm traveling,
maybe I'm on my phone a bit more, I'm looking at my maps
more, I'm on social media more, I'm, I'm, you know, utilizing my
research abilities more, whatever.
But there was also seasons where I've been in a lot of stillness
and slowness and I'm not on my phone very much and it's on
airplane mode like most of the time.
And I'm grateful that I have the the privilege to do that.
But this was the first step for me of, of breaking the cycle for
the first time. Leaving your phone in your
pocket or on silent or in view of yourself, that's a weird turn
of phrase. But that is not enough.
It's not enough. Studies have shown that even
someone else's phone on the table impairs your focus.
Someone else's phone. Because our brains have been
trained to think that this rectangular black object is the
most important thing in the world.
So I challenge you to try a digital Sabbath.
Pick a day. Pick a few hours in your day,
maybe start start with that like I did, you know, because I think
you might be shocked at the feeling of withdrawal in your
body. Your brain is constantly looking
for your phone. Like even when I've put my phone
away and I know that it's a day off my phone, my subconscious is
like, hey, where's your phone? Where's your what are your
notifications? Does someone need you?
What's going on? You should check this.
And I'm like yo that tells me that my body is literally so
used to this device being within, I was going to say your
shot, but being within my line of sight that I literally feel
withdraw symptoms when I'm not around it.
That is insane. And studies have also shown that
even when we have short breaks from technology, especially if
we could be in nature, added bonus, it will help to restore
cognitive function and attention span.
And the great news about this is that it's not a permanent
diagnosis for us. That's not at all what I'm
saying, that, you know, we've gone too far and technology's
the enemy. No, no, it's incredible.
I am. You're hearing me speak these
words because of technology. I have a microphone and cords
and cables and electricity and my devices in front of me right
now. That's amazing.
And again, I'm so grateful for that.
And we have to find better boundaries.
So having a digital Sabbath would be an amazing option if
you are able to do that. And I don't see why you wouldn't
be able to do that, at least for a few hours per per day, per
week. Figure out something that will
work for you. What I realized when I started
doing my digital detoxes, weekly Sabbath's, whatever you want to
call it, was that I was more tapped in and tuned in to my
creative flow and my creative essence.
Because I wasn't inputting anything else into my mind.
There was no information coming in except my senses, what I
could see, feel, hear, touch, read, you know, and, and do.
I got really into baking. I got really into reading longer
books, having longer conversations with people, going
on walks and not having my phone on me.
Another great boundary that I practice is that my phone stays
in another room when I'm asleep because I spent years with my
phone next to me while I slept. Also charging, which not only
destroys the battery life of your phone but also radiates a
crazy amount of Emfs, electromagnetic frequencies.
That has been tested and tried and proven.
You can literally go look this up.
I am not just spouting random conspiracies into your life.
This is not to scare you, but actually I would love to empower
you because our devices are doing some crazy things to us on
a physical level. And it's not just a distraction
mentally and in our emotional world, but our biology is
literally being shaped by the environment that we're living
in. So we all know that our phones
emit Emfs, which are electromagnetic frequencies and
for most of human history, our bodies, we're not swimming in a
world of Bluetooth and Wi-Fi and five GGPS signals and and the
electrical fields of a device that sits close to our brains,
our reproductive organs, our hearts, skills in our pockets,
right? The human nervous system
communicates in electrical signals.
The brain, the brain waves, your heart rhythm, even the way your
cells talk to each other. It is all electricity.
So when you bring an external electric field close to your
biological one, our body responds, you know, and a huge
thing that that looks like for a lot of people is sleep
disruption. I hear so many people talking
about how they don't sleep well and there's so many reasons for
this obviously obviously, but a huge 1 is that having your phone
close to you, especially when you're sleeping, especially if
it is charging next to you. It is proven to reduce melatonin
production. It makes you stay in lighter
sleep stages, which is basically delaying or disrupting
completely your R.E.M. cycles of deeper sleep and you have a
increase of awakenings through the night.
You might not remember waking up necessarily but your nervous
system does and this is often why you might exhausted after 8
hours of sleep because your body you never had the chance to go
deeper. There are again so many reasons
why this can happen, but if you are sleeping next to your device
and or while it is charging, which so many people do, this
can be an invisible factor playing into your exhaustion.
And another interesting thing is that studies have shown that
close range EMF exposure increases cortisol which is your
stress hormone. It also adds low grade
inflammation to the body. Another thing, and this blows my
mind every time, when you keep your phone in your pocket or
your bra, the Emfs sit right next to organs and tissues that
are extremely sensitive to electrical disruption like your
reproductive organs, your thyroid tissue, your follicles
and sperm that are developing. And there is research that shows
that decreases in sperm motility, egg quality and
hormone regulation when the devices are kept close to the
body long term is has been proven so.
And again, this is not to cause fear, this is just to bring
awareness. And if you can move it away from
your body, please do so. What do we do then?
We just can never be on our phone at night.
Use your phone when you need to, of course.
That's what it's there for. It is a tool, right?
But what would happen if you charged your phone in another
room at night? Turn your phone on airplane mode
when you sleep. Don't keep it directly against
your body like pockets and bras and putting it in your waistband
are like the worst. I use corded headphones when
when possible. Every once in a while, I'll put
in my Bluetooth ones, but I really try to use my corded ones
as much as possible because they allow me to not have to have my
phone in my hand or against my body or up to my head.
And I wanted to share these tips because when we clean up our
digital environment, I feel like my internal environment changes
too. Like I start sleeping deeper,
thinking clearer, my creativity comes back online.
And I don't know, I feel like it brings my nervous system home in
a way. And we might not even realize
that we're not experiencing those things because we're just
so used to having our phone around.
And I can tell you these things all day long.
You can watch your own videos, do your own research, whatever.
But the thing that is going to make the biggest difference for
you is your own experimentation. Try it yourself.
Try sleeping with your phone in the other room.
Try cutting down in your screen time.
Try putting a schedule on your apps that you can only use it
for a certain amount of time. Try putting the the time limit.
There's tons of productivity hacks that you can do for trying
to maximize the time you have on your phone while minimizing the
time spent just jumping from app to app to app, which lately for
me has been a real issue. And I am very conscious of that,
which is why I'm sharing so candidly about it.
I'm not saying like, hey, I do this perfectly and you need to
too. Like I'm, I'm clearly sharing
that this is a become more of an issue for me.
And you know what? What is one reason why is I have
not been doing my digital Sabbaths for a while and I'm
about to start doing that again and I'm excited about it
because, and here's the thing, what I was saying about
experimentation, I felt the difference in my body, in my
mind, in my creativity, in my presence, in my communication,
in my ability to think clearly because I started experimenting
with distance from my phone, distance from certain apps,
deleting an app entirely off of my phone.
Did you know that you can just delete Instagram off your phone?
It doesn't delete your account. You can just delete the app.
It's a crazy feeling to feel your body just swipe over.
I don't know, wherever you keep Instagram, for me, it's on the
second page of my phone. Just swipe over to the second
page and you just immediately go to the click where the app
usually is and for the app to just not be there and you're
like, whoa. And you think, how many times a
day do I do that? Do I just in autopilot go to the
app to open it to get this dopamine hit?
Also, turn off your notifications on apps that you
don't need them on. Like I keep my apps, sorry.
I keep my notifications on WhatsApp because that's where I
do most of my communication with my friends, business projects,
etcetera. But I don't have notifications
on Instagram, Facebook or any other app until I open the app.
And then it shows me that I have a few messages or whatever, but
I don't keep them on lighting up my phone all the time.
I actually hate that. So I don't have apps that give
me notifications unless it is someone directly trying to
contact me through WhatsApp, which I know is going to be my
friends or family or something, you know, I'm having delivered
or whatever. You know, I didn't even have it
planned to go into that whole last section about the physical
ramifications of having our phone nearby.
But I think it's important. So I hope it landed for you
moving on and back into our regularly scheduled program of
what this is doing to our creativity.
Let's talk about that because creativity requires stillness,
slowness, and dare I say, boredom.
Intuition also requires boredom. Spirituality, our spiritual
connection to our soul, to our self.
To live a inspired life requires internal spaciousness.
Dreaming. I'm a big dreamer in real life
and in the dream world. Dreaming requires you to have a
present and unfried brain, and I think it is really hard to hear
the universe or God or your intuition or your whatever when
our attention span is totally fragmented and our nervous
system is in survival mode because we are digitally
overstimulated. And I think that when we are in
survival mode, we can't, we don't, we don't have room to be
inspired. We're just trying to like stay
afloat and time on our devices, especially the seven 8-9 hours a
day, it is keeping us in a state of fight or flight.
Whether you realize it or not, this is how your nervous system,
which controls everything in your body, this is what your
nervous system is feeling, even if it's subconscious, even if
it's on a, you know, somewhat invisible level.
You know, they say that concentration is a muscle and
you either use it or you lose it.
I think that in the future, people who are able to
concentrate, to focus, to remember, we're going to be a
rare breed. And that is so sad.
People who have remembered how to read, like, read like, read
books. People who have remembered how
to write, how to draw, how to paint, how to play instruments.
Because all of these things require effort and focus and
determination and practice. And I think that these types of
conversations that we have with these tools, these this, this
art, this nature, these people, this whatever it is, non
digitally related things, real life stuff, physical stuff,
tangible stuff, writing poetry, for example, painting with
watercolors, playing the cello, right?
This builds connection and it rebuilds our attention span and
our comprehension. Do you ever notice how you might
go for a walk or be driving in your car or whatever and you're
listening to a podcast, you are checking your phone real quick,
you're standing in line at the grocery store and you're
scrolling through Instagram? We fill all of these little
moments by looking at our black rectangle.
Why? Is it really that important?
Is it? Is it so bad to feel bored?
Is it so difficult for us to spend a little time alone in our
head without being distracted or without having our phone act
like a pacifier? I think we need to be alone in
our heads. I think we need to be alone and
bored with art supplies sprawled out all over the table and no
access to looking up how to paint something from TikTok or
Instagram or Pinterest. Although I'm a huge fan of those
things and I do get inspiration from those things too, I think
it's also very important to remember that we can cultivate
our own in a world of technology where it's so easy to go to
ChatGPT and say, hey, draw me a picture of this thing or what,
what should I do here or how should I do this?
What happened before that? What happened three years ago
when we didn't have ChatGPT and we had to actually come up with
our own stuff. And I do use ChatGPT for things,
for brainstorming things. And I have seen the effect that
it's had on my own creativity where I'm like, what song should
I do for this month or what podcast episode should I record
or what, whatever. And I'm using Chachi BT to help
me brainstorm and that's also fine.
And I sometimes struggle to come up with my own thoughts and
ideas because I'm so used to outsourcing to either other
people polls on Instagram, asking my followers what they
want, asking Chachi BT to help me decide between different
topics. I don't want to do that.
And I'm not so deep in the habit
that you know, I can't break it or I've lost my creativity.
Like this is fully me being here, present with you, sharing
from my heart. And this is a very human
experience. And as cosmic nomads, you know,
we have to talk about this stuff because this is real life.
And this is, I think where we make the greatest changes and
where we see the greatest results.
It's on the in the small steps that we are willing to take in
ourselves for the real life shit, for the real life things
connected to our creativity, connected to the real life
world, connected to the natural world, the world out there, not
the world in here on my screen. You know what I mean?
Let's learn how to use. Let's learn how to better use
these tools and not just be used by them.
So here's some things that I want to leave you with one as a
soft, actionable step to improve your digital relationship.
Choose a boundary. Maybe it's a few hours a day off
your phone. Maybe it's putting it on
airplane mode, putting it in the other room and sitting down with
something that you've wanted to do that's a real life, physical,
tangible thing like that book you've been putting off.
I'm not saying go sit there for three hours and read the book.
That's a lot, especially if you don't read very often.
Sit down and read for 15 minutes and then for the next 15 minutes
do something else cool that you've wanted to do.
Like, I don't know, paint something, Draw Something,
create something off of your phone, off your devices.
Sit down and play guitar for 15 minutes.
Create a ritual around putting your phone away.
For me, I put my phone on an airplane.
I put it in a in a drawer or somewhere out of sight.
It cannot be within my line of vision or I will pick it up.
This is also something very helpful for me about waking up
in the morning. I I because my phone is not next
to me when I wake up, I don't roll over and pick up my phone
and directly get on. Although I did that for many
years. I'm in a new season of not doing
that, have been for many, many months.
And I've seen an incredible uptick in my mood when I wake up
in the morning because I'm not opening my phone directly,
answering messages and hopping into Instagram or hopping into
these other other worlds, other portals, listening to voice
notes from my friend, responding to things when I haven't even
started my own day yet and I'm already involved in other
people's lives. What am I doing?
No, no, wake up hand on your heart.
Good morning. Take a deep breath, get up oil,
pull tongue screen, brush your teeth, pee, take a shower, go in
the kitchen, get yourself a nice big glass of water.
Open your windows, get some sunlight in your eyes.
Do not touch your phone. Good morning.
Good morning, world. Good morning, body.
Good morning, voice. Thank you for having me today in
this in this world, right. Take a second.
Acknowledge your existence. Sit down and journal.
Make yourself a cup of tea, a cup of coffee, whatever your
thing is. Do a little stretch, do a little
movement. Hop on your on your trampoline.
Do some jumping. I have a trampoline.
That's why I said that. Do some, do some jumping.
Get your lymphatic system flowing.
If you don't have a trampoline, do some jumping jacks.
Get your lymphs flowing, right. Your body has been processing
all night. It's been going through an
emotional clearing process in your rim cycle.
It has been cleansing and clearing everything you've been
going through, and we're going through a lot of stuff right
now. I don't know how you've been
doing, but most people in my world have been struggling a
little bit right now, emotionally, energetically.
There's a lot shifting in our planet.
I'm sure that you're probably feeling it if you're listening
to this, right? Maybe maybe you feel more
emotional, maybe a little more reactive, a little more like
some things are coming up from the past and you got to deal
with that shit again. You and a new layer of trauma, a
new layer of self actualization, a new level of understanding who
you are, why you are, why you're here, what you're doing.
Maybe it's with your job, your money, your finances, your
relationships, people you love. We've had like 6 planets in
retrograde the last couple of weeks.
We're in Scorpio season. I mean, there's so many things
that that justify what I'm saying.
But regardless, we're feeling it.
Outside of all the, all the statistics we're we're feeling,
we're feeling it. There is no time like that
morning time to be with yourself.
If you have kids, wake up earlier than them if you can.
If you don't have kids, fine. You don't have any excuses.
Wake up before you go to your job, go to sleep a little bit
earlier so you can wake up a little bit earlier and have a
moment with yourself and your nervous system. close your eyes,
take a few deep breaths, breathe.
Do a meditation. If you're also looking for
meditations, I on my Patreon Ioffer guided monthly
meditations. We sit down, we recenter our
nervous system, we ground our body, we do a body scan like
this is all offered on my Cosmic Normic collective portal that is
on Patreon. Check it out.
The link is in the description. Would love to have you there.
It's amazing what even 10 minutes of a mindfulness and
gentle movement or gentle awareness in your body can do
for your day and for your mental health.
If you're not doing any of the things that I just said and you
don't have to do all of them. But if you're not doing any of
them and you're waking up, getting directly on your phone,
rushing to make coffee, making breakfast, drinking coffee on an
empty stomach, doing all those things that we kind of know
we're maybe not supposed to do. Or maybe you don't know, maybe
it's the first time you've, you're hearing of this.
There are other ways to do these things.
There's other ways to live and there are ways that can make you
feel a lot more connected to yourself and to your life.
If you don't believe me, I dare you to try it.
What do you have to lose? Try it for a week.
Try it for two weeks. Try it for the month.
Do it for the month of, of December.
We're almost there. Or start the new year out with
it. Start January with it, you know,
and notice what changes, Notice what shifts.
Maybe you have a ritual of, you know, at a certain time, 9:10
AM, whatever. Maybe you check your phone,
maybe turn it off airplane, check your messages, any work
emails, everything's good. Great.
Make that 15 minutes, thirty minutes, even an hour.
Fine, great, but get it done. Put your phone back on airplane.
Keep going about your day or keep it on and just leave it off
of your body and maybe put it, you know, in the kitchen if
you're in the living room or if you're in your office, put it,
you know, somewhere that it's not just directly in your line
of vision. And listen, I love to have some
time where I can just sit and watch reels.
I think it's fun. I wouldn't do it for, you know,
hour upon hour, although I have absolutely done that.
Set a timer on your phone. I'm going to watch reels for 15
minutes. I'm going to watch some reels
for 30 minutes. Go on your Explorer page, see
what there is to see. That's enough time.
It's enough time. We don't need so much more than
that of just input and information into our minds.
So can we create intentional consumption instead of just
passive scrolling? Another thing, if it is safe and
possible for you have a phone free nature walk.
Maybe you just walk around your neighborhood in the morning.
Maybe if you're able to go to a beach or a forest or something
and just have some time phone free, that'd be amazing.
And again, if you want to go deeper with these conversations
beyond the noise of the online world, I would love to have you
inside the Cosmic Nomad Collective.
It's my private space for the monthly meditations that I
mentioned. Also gratitude practices behind
the scenes, voice notes. And you can join through the
link in the show notes. And it's just, it's a corner of
the Internet where we can further explore this journey
together. And you know, thank you for
listening. Thank you for caring about the
world that you are creating. Thank you for choosing presence
in such a distracting world. We are so far removed from our
intuition because we are so used to looking for that validation
externally and for looking for guidance, when really you just
need to be a little bit bored to hear your intuition, to be
reconnected to your creativity. There's nothing wrong with you.
You're not in a drought. You don't have writer's block.
You just need to get off your phone.
You need to get in nature, spend some time in real conversations
with some incredible books, with some beautiful people, not being
distracted by a podcast. Although I'm really glad you're
listening to this, thank you for continuing to support it.
When you're done listening to this today, get outside, go
breathe some fresh air, go swim in the fucking ocean.
Go walk barefoot, go hug a tree, go sit in your living room and
sit in silence and just listen to your thoughts and listen for
the inspiration that is waiting on the other side of your
distraction. Thank you for being here with
me, and if today's episode spoke to something in you, please feel
free to share it with a friend who you think would also
resonate and or leave a review. It helps more than you know.
And as always, until next time, open heart, open mind.
Stay curious.