Results of My Phone “Fast”
The results of my phone “fast” are in and they’re positive. For Lent, I gave up my phone following from around 6:30pm until the next morning. I didn’t feel like I could give up the phone completely at the time, but the result of giving it up for that window was extremely positive.
Heading into Lent, I was looking for something to give up or to improve. I decided on giving up my phone after work since I kept picking it up for no reason and just pressing some buttons. I wasn’t present and it was not fun.
For the 40 days of Lent, after getting home, I would check a few items, and then take the phone to my room. I would set the alarm, hook it up to a charger and leave it until the next morning. Other than one night in early April when I needed to use the phone for work, I was phone free.
Going in to Lent, I knew it would be a good challenge. However, I thought I might miss out on some funny jokes are conversations via text. Texting with my buddies is fun and I get a lot of laughs. The only problem is that I would constantly check to see if anyone was conversing.
The same with social media. At times, I have a habit of just hitting the Instagram icon every 10 minutes. Then clicking on the Facebook icon to see if anything has happened. For a few years, Twitter kept my attention with all of the quick updates you would get.
I needed to put the phone away. Lent was just a push to put it away. During the 40 days of Lent, I was more present with my family and more focused during conversations. I enjoyed whatever I was doing in the evening more because I was able to just do one thing. Life went on and I didn’t miss out on anything with my friends or my “news feed”.
Getting Off the Phone Leash
The phone keeps us multi-tasking. It keeps us from focusing our attention on one spot because it’s always calling out to us. Now that I’m off my “fast”, it’s already calling out to me. While I know and felt the benefits of not having the phone with me, I’m still going back to it.
Lent was just a start for me. Knowing how good it was to not have the leash of the phone tugging on me will allow me to continue moving away from it. Who knows, maybe one day I’ll kick the cell phone habit completely. I’ve got a feeling there will be more to this story.
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