Earn Your Life Back

It's 4:30 p.m., and you’re just now getting home from school. You throw your school bag in a corner in your room, right next to your dirty clothes basket that you swore you were gonna wash last week. You don’t bother doing any outside tasks around the house, let alone your homework for the day. You hop right in the bed and start scrolling. After 6 hours of getting up to go use the bathroom and getting a few snacks, you look at the time – 10:30 p.m. You realize you’ve done absolutely nothing from the moment you walked in the door up until now. 

On Friday, I decided to sit in the courtyard while I took notes for one of my classes. I really sat there and took in everything around me: fellow students playing catch with a frisbee in front of me, a real live band playing to my right, and people all around just having real-life conversations. I noticed the beauty in life when you look up every once in a while. After leaving for my next class, the hour I spent outside really made me think – Why would anyone prefer a screen over enjoying the little things around us in real time?   

Doom-Scrolling

For years, we’ve been subconsciously scrolling for an endless number of hours, like a never-ending stream. We can thank the pandemic for that. We get a kick out of videos that are only about 15 seconds, but the process ends up lasting for hours. What we may believe to be an innocent scroll is something that is internally damaging us slowly but efficiently. You ever wondered why it's killing you to fight the urge of wanting to pick up your phone during a time of study? What about the 3-month reading slump you’ve been in due to the lack of interest towards your books? Now tell me the number of hours of screen time you average a day. We are so attached to a piece of metal that we don’t even seem to care about the things that make us who we are anymore. We’ve given up our daily routines because we’ve been so hooked to our phones, and we don’t even realize it.

Take The Initiative

Congratulations, you’ve accomplished a crucial step of the complex journey on how to get your life back – acceptance. You’ve acknowledged that you do have a problem, but fear no more, there is a solution to get out of this endless loop of terror. First, grab any sheet of paper and get ready to make a list. Don’t go on to your Notes app – grab a physical sheet of paper; it’s better to actually write things down. Give yourself a list of things to do that do not require your phone. List things that you actually enjoy. It can be anything from taking a walk, baking, reading, or my personal favorite, crocheting. After you’ve gotten about 3-4 activities, give yourself at least 30 minutes to an hour out of the day to spend time on them. Challenge yourself to engage in these activities daily to substitute the usage of your phone. I’m not asking you to remove social media out of your life completely; we all start somewhere. The more you engage in outside activities, you will soon face the reality that you can, in fact, live without your phone.

Romanticize

Take control of your life. Take control of how you perceive things. Romanticize everything. Don’t know how? Here is a list to make your everyday things more special:

• Wake up 15 - 30 minutes early! (Slower mornings will help you take everything in and not put such a huge burden on you to rush out the door)

• Journal! 

• Create Playlists for Everything!

• Clean Space! (Stay organized for a less cluttered mind)

• Find Your Style! (Look good, feel good)

• Self-Care!

• Invest in Candles! 

• Watch Classics!

• Comfort Meals! (Make meals that make you feel good)

• Take Pictures!

• Keep A Steady Routine!

(Photo From Pinterest)