Unplugging From The Inside

Welcome to Insights and Implications!

Hello Everyone,

If this is your first time receiving our newseltter, welcome! Sent just once per month, each contains a short, practical story that illustrates insight principles. We hope these newsletters help to keep your learning fresh and insights flowing.

All the best,

All of us at Insight Principles

Unplugging From The Inside

Recently, the Seattle Times ran an article about a magazine writer and blogger who decided to take a year off to “unplug”. Turns out he was spending 10-12 hours a day in front of a screen. “I’d start twitching if I was away from my phone for more than 30 seconds,” he said. “I couldn’t even pee without getting bored.”

This gentleman is definitely an extreme case. But during our Insight Principles programs, participants often find it difficult to stop checking for texts and emails, even for an hour at a time. We see them holding their smartphones on their laps with their thumbs a-blazing. Do they think we can’t see what they’re doing?

Even participants who try their best to honor to our request to remain offline during the program appear uneasy during breaks for the first day or two. It’s as if they don’t know what to do with themselves. However, by day three or four, we usually see their comfort being offline increase, and the smartphones disappear. What happens?

Remember, you live in the feeling of your thinking. This is the way your mind works. The urge to check emails and texts is not coming from your smartphone (or your laptop or your boss). It’s coming from your thinking. While you may not be in control of your thinking, understanding how it works wakes you up to what is really going on. Armed with this understanding, you stop assigning blame to external factors. You remember that the brilliant design of your mind put the power inside, not outside. Once you start looking in the direction of where your feelings are really coming from – your thinking – that thinking fades and your mind quiets. You never know what might occur to you when your head clears, but we promise it will be wiser, not dumber.

You won’t miss anything, except perhaps the pressure and stress.

An epilogue to the story of the Seattle writer – he returns to work in two months but he fears he will go back to his old ways. He asked, “Do you have to be enlightened just to get by these days?”

No, you just have to understand how your mind works.

-Sandy Krot

©Insight Principles, Inc.