Parents can often find themselves more distracted by their devices than their teens. This is very true in the course of the slow moments throughout the day. Slow moments are those moments where you may be along with your thoughts and feelings. During these times, chances are you’ll be tempted to drag out your phone to examine email, read the news, or scroll through your Facebook feed.
By habitually reaching for devices during these moments of solitude, you miss out on useful opportunities to know yourself higher. You are also a model on your teen’s relationship with technology.
So what are you able to do?
Small changes towards being more mindful of your relationship with technology can improve the satisfaction and quality of your life in addition to the lifetime of your teen.
Being mindful will be so simple as specializing in your breath, noticing the sounds, smells, or what is occurring in your body. Being mindful permits you to more clearly see the world around you, reduce stress levels, and develop resilience to life’s difficult moments. By practicing mindfulness, you change into higher Digital Mentors, modeling for youths the way to give space to your inner experience. That ultimately results in healthier relationships with others.
The satisfactions of solitude
First, it’s vital to keep in mind that we’re all on this together. We live in a culture where a veil of productivity and successful “multitasking” is well known, and the draw of social connection through texting and online is tough to disregard.
As Markham Heid explains in his article for TIME, “Combine the sudden beep with the implicit promise of new social info, and you have a near-perfect, ignorable stimulus that will pull your focus away from whatever task your brain is working on.”
But on this attention economy, it is vital to take time to decelerate and be present with our own thoughts, without reaching for the distraction of technology. MIT researcher Sherry Turkle says that these moments of solitude allow us to know ourselves higher, which is a very important part of getting fulfilling relationships with others. In “Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age” she says, “If we don’t have experience with solitude – and this is often the case today – we start to equate loneliness and solitude. This reflects the impoverishment of our experience. If we don’t know the satisfactions of solitude, we only know the panic of loneliness.”
In today’s hyperconnected world, Turkle says if we don’t teach our kids the way to be comfortable being alone, they may learn to be lonely and depend on the distraction of technology. Part of your role as an Emotion Coach and Digital Mentor is to model the importance of slow moments and to create space for difficult or uncomfortable emotions.
Experiencing your emotions
Sometimes uncomfortable emotions will rise to the surface in these moments of solitude. Reaching for devices when these emotions come up prevents you from experiencing the richness of the total human experience.
Brene Brown says the degree to which one is willing to feel difficult emotions is the degree to which one will experience happiness. If you prevent yourself from feeling down, you can too block yourself from feeling the delight of joy.
The act of noticing and embracing these small moments of emotions fairly than giving in to the distraction lets you know yourself higher. Experiencing the range of emotions teaches you which you could self-soothe and that you just are truly resilient.
By embracing your personal resilience, you may be role models on your teens to do the identical. You can start by being mindful.
What is mindfulness?
Simply put, mindfulness is the act of noticing your body, your thoughts, and your surroundings. Mindfulness is usually explained using the 4 foundations.
- Mindfulness of your body
- Mindfulness of your feelings
- Mindfulness of your consciousness
- Mindfulness of how your mind operates
Mindfulness is about watching with curiosity about what’s occurring inside you. Below are three exercises to change into more mindful.
Counting and noting
Find a cushty spot and take 10 slow, deep breaths. Count each inhale and exhale. When you’ve reached 10, start again. Start by doing this for 2 minutes.
Mental Noting is an exercise where you give a one-word label to the thought or emotion you experience. This can assist you in recognizing habitual thought patterns. For example, in the event you are anxious about work, the easy label of “worry” might help bring awareness to your thoughts and release among the tension in your body. In moments when your kids are stressed or upset, do this strategy with them.
Focus on the dishes
Challenge yourself, even in small ways to focus on doing one task at a time. Buddhist teacher Gil Fronsdal said, “If you are walking to the bus, just walk to the bus. If you are doing the dishes, just do the dishes.” Practice being present within the moment and encourage your teen to do the identical.
Take a 5-minute break
When you come home at the top of the day, take five minutes to simply sit and unwind. Don’t check your email or your Instagram. Check in with yourself.
Parents are more able to navigating difficult conversations after they are in contact with themselves. If you don’t take time to decompress, chances are you’ll reach for a tool as an alternative of engaging along with your teen in a healthy way.
At the core of being a Digital Mentor is acknowledging and validating your teen’s emotions, letting them know their feelings are useful indicators of what is occurring inside them. If your teen involves you with difficult emotions, practice having a stress-reducing conversation with them. It is significant to empathize along with your teen and support them to search out their very own answers.
With your recent mindfulness practice, invite your teen to hitch you in recent experiences. Try taking a unique route to highschool along with your teen, pause and see the world around you, and ask your teen questions on what they’re experiencing as they witness it. Take time to note the leaves or look up on the clouds together.
Mindfulness results in noticing the world through a brand new lens – a lens that results in meaningful relationships with others, yourself, and most significantly, your teen.
