68% people of the people check their phones within 15 minutes of waking up, a recent study says. It immediately puts us into a REACT mode when our brains are actually rebooting. Your mind is working to REACT to things, it doesn’t mean you are texting. It means your mind is REACTING to several information snippets, entirely lacking the real picture. In that way, our minds are constantly stimulated and biased by things we have no control of, shortly after you wake up, and it continues till you go to deep sleep.
This is like making our mind always full, while what we really need is to achieve mindfulness. A constantly stimulated mind is like pressing the panic button always. It is like honking always while we are driving. It is maddening. There is a space between the stimuli and response, and we have to exercise that, it is called choice. The FOMO (the Fear of Missing Out) is grappling us. Instead of REACT, the choice helps us to RESPOND to things, at our own pace, not at the pace in which the world is throwing things at us.
Next time, we are forced to react to something, on phone or in real, take deep breaths to create a space between the stimuli and response – choose not to react, but respond after a thought.
