Productivity & Focus: Break free from your phone, the internet, & digital distractions | Jeremy Lipkowitz | Skillshare
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Productivity & Focus: Break free from your phone, the internet, & digital distractions

teacher avatar Jeremy Lipkowitz, Mindfulness Meditation Coaching

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Taught by industry leaders & working professionals
Topics include illustration, design, photography, and more

Watch this class and thousands more

Get unlimited access to every class
Taught by industry leaders & working professionals
Topics include illustration, design, photography, and more

Lessons in This Class

    • 1.

      Welcome to the course!

      4:19

    • 2.

      Helpful tips for breaking old habits

      3:01

    • 3.

      1.1 - Envisioning Intro

      5:25

    • 4.

      1.2 - Seeing the Default Future

      6:45

    • 5.

      1.3 - Creating a Compelling Vision of the Future

      8:52

    • 6.

      1.4 - Values Identifier

      7:15

    • 7.

      1.5 - Getting into Alignment

      2:44

    • 8.

      1.6 - Goal Setting 101

      4:56

    • 9.

      1.7 - Creating a 90-day Goal

      8:08

    • 10.

      1.8 - Taking Ownership

      6:38

    • 11.

      1.9 - Module Wrap-Up

      0:44

    • 12.

      2.1 - Untrained Warriors

      1:44

    • 13.

      2.2 - Neuroplasticity

      4:19

    • 14.

      2.3 - Mindfulness

      4:43

    • 15.

      2.3b - Guided Meditation: Mindfulness

      7:02

    • 16.

      2.4 - Concentration

      4:13

    • 17.

      2.4b - Guided Meditation: Concentration

      6:48

    • 18.

      2.5 - Impulse Control

      5:22

    • 19.

      2.5b - Guided Meditation: Impulse Control

      7:22

    • 20.

      2.6 - Self-Compassion

      5:26

    • 21.

      2.6b - Guided Meditation: Self-Compassion

      7:37

    • 22.

      2.7 - Contentment

      4:29

    • 23.

      2.7b - Guided Meditation: Contentment

      8:38

    • 24.

      2.8 - Module Wrap-Up

      0:35

    • 25.

      3.1 - Physical health habits

      8:38

    • 26.

      3.2 - Morning Routine

      8:22

    • 27.

      3.3 - Behavioral Architecture

      6:10

    • 28.

      3.4 - The 3 Phases of Habit Change

      4:52

    • 29.

      3.5 - Dealing with Urges

      6:02

    • 30.

      3.6 - Dealing with the Saboteur

      4:16

    • 31.

      3.7 - Module Wrap-Up

      0:50

    • 32.

      4.1 - The Ultimate Goal

      2:21

    • 33.

      4.2 - Solitude

      7:11

    • 34.

      4.3 - Ethics

      5:20

    • 35.

      4.4 - Play

      3:48

    • 36.

      4.5 - Generosity

      6:42

    • 37.

      4.6 - Community

      6:03

    • 38.

      4.7 - Module and Course Wrap-Up

      4:21

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About This Class

What are people saying about courses with Jeremy?

"I was able to immediately start using the material to apply to my life and was able to start seeing positive changes in my life within a few days. I would highly recommend this course to anyone!" D.S.

"Strictly the best walk through meditation I have ever experienced. I recommend that those who are taking this excellent course, please attempt to find ten minutes a day to work with this course. It will reinvigorate and change you for the better." – Edgar V

"I’m happier now than I’ve ever been before because I use the mindfulness tools taught to me by Jeremy every day." – Donna Seagle

"Jeremy is an excellent meditation teacher. His patient, open-minded, and enthusiastic teaching style are grounded in everyday life, and really help make the practice accessible and relatable." – Emily Du

This course provides proven framework to help you break free from your devices and compulsive online behaviors, in an easy-to-follow, 30-day training guide.

What would life be like if you no longer had the influence of your phone and compulsive tech use clouding your mind? What could you accomplish if you could stay focused and overcome distractions? What would be possible if you followed through on your best intentions? What if you knew how to get “unhooked”?

International mindfulness trainer, former Duke University scientist, and digital habits expert (and former porn junkie), Jeremy Lipkowitz, reveals a mindfulness-based approach to breaking free from compulsive and destructive online behaviors in his groundbreaking new online course.

In Unhooked, Jeremy reveals the hidden psychology driving us to destructive behaviors. He describes why solving the problem is not as simple as gritting your teeth and using willpower; forcing yourself to quit is at best a temporary solution and often makes us want to act out more.

Jeremy lays bare the secret of finally doing what you’ve been wanting to with a four-step, research-backed model. Unhooked reveals the key to cultivating a healthy relationship to your devices, without falling into shame, isolation, and self-judgement.

Inside Unhooked, Lipkowitz overturns conventional wisdom and reveals:

  • Why compulsive technology use is a symptom of underlying unmet needs - and how to fix it

  • What really drives habit change and why "willpower” alone is not enough

  • Why your relationships and you career depend on you becoming unhooked

  • The 5 surprising practices that will bolster recovery and help build a life free from addiction

Empowering, optimistic, and grounded in real-world examples that work, Unhooked provides practical, novel techniques to rewire your mind and recapture your attention - helping you live the life you really want.

Meet Your Teacher

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Jeremy Lipkowitz

Mindfulness Meditation Coaching

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Transcripts

1. Welcome to the course!: Hello and welcome to the course. I'm Jeremy liquids, fixing your relationship with technology and in particular your devices is one of the most impactful things you can do for your performance, your success, and just your overall well-being in life. So I'm glad that you've signed up and I'm excited to get started. Our devices are such an inherent part of how we function in the world today. I hope you see what a gift it is to yourself to take the time and intentionally decide how to be in relationship with technology. Before we dive into the course content, I want to take a few moments to just talk about who this course is for to make sure you know that you're in the right place. You might be struggling with things like scattered attention or feeling like you're always distracted. You might feel like your relationship to technology has gotten out of control. Maybe you're on autopilot. You're not really choosing how to use your devices, they're choosing how to use you. You might also be feeling like you're wasting a lot of time on meaningless or empty pursuits. Perhaps you're feeling overwhelmed by technology. And this feeling of always being connected are constantly on and engaged. And you don't know how to disconnect and actually rejuvenate and rest yourself. You might also be noticing the ways that things like social media are affecting your well-being. Maybe there's a constant sense of comparing yourself to others, comparing your insides to other people's outsides. You might also be realizing that you are procrastinating on what's really important. Maybe putting off your goals, putting off the projects, because you keep getting sucked into distraction, temptation, and avoidance. Ultimately, my guess is that you're here because you just want to improve the quality of your life. You want to be the best version of yourself so that you can show up for others. You can do meaningful work in the world if any of that resonates with you, you know, you're in the right place. Just a brief overview of what to expect. There are four different modules. The first module is all about envisioning, connecting with an ideal vision of the future. Second module is all about building a strong foundation, particularly of mindset and different mental qualities or inner strength qualities. Module three is all about habits, routines, and discipline. How do we activate our habits in a way that is sustainable and really builds those into our lives so that we nail them. Module for the final module is all about breaking through to a more fulfilling and satisfying life, creating that life that doesn't need addiction or distraction. What it is that all about? So those are the four modules that we're gonna be going through in this course. As a side note on this, if there's anything that you're watching in the course and it feels like it doesn't apply to you. Let's say I'm talking about **** addiction. And you're really here because you're addicted to e-mail. Feel free to skip it. Feel free to ignore it or just throw it out. The key to all of this is, I will be offering you a set of tools and your task is to find the tools that feel relevant that work for you and then apply those to your life. If one thing doesn't make sense or if you just don't resonate with it, that's totally fine. Feel free to feel free to skip it, move over it, throw it out. Whatever works for you, though on that note, I will say that at the core level, at the root level, all of these addictive behaviors and these compulsive behaviors are the same at the root level. What's true for pointing addiction is gonna be true for social media addiction. It's going to be true for Instagram addiction and e-mail and news. All these kind of compulsive tendencies have the same core neurological basis. They're gonna be small differences here and there. But it really does. It really is true that what applies to one, we'll apply it to the other to a large extent. I hope that's helpful on how to go through the course. 2. Helpful tips for breaking old habits: Before we dive into the course content, the course modules, I want to do one final lecture on just some helpful pointers, some helpful tips and advice as we go through the course. One thing to keep in mind is just to know that there is no right or wrong approach. There is no one size fits all approach to recovery. Some people need a little more of this or a little more of that. The task for you is just to figure out which of these things that I'm offering applies to you, which is helpful and which do you want to implement into your life? The next helpful piece of advice is to be patient with yourself. The habits and behaviors that we're gonna be working with in this course would likely built up over years or even decades or maybe even your whole lifetime. So as long as it took for those habits to be built-in, you know, it takes time for them to be unbuilt or two that for them to be removed, to be patient with the process, to realize this is a messy process. We live messy lives as human beings. And it's not gonna be a perfect linear path from point a to point B. It's going to be more of this kind of up and down. You might have some progress and then you slide back a little bit in some progress and you slide back. What we want to focus on is the general trend of improvement. One thing that I like to say is to prepare for a long journey and learn how to love the journey itself, rather than focusing on the outcome or the destination. If you can love the journey, then it doesn't matter how long it takes for you to get there. It's going to be a better life. One of the most important qualities you can cultivate when it comes to habits and behaviors is consistency. Just keep showing up for yourself. There's gonna be times where you feel like giving up, times where you feel like you've had enough or you've done all you can, but just keep showing up day after day. That's the most important thing you do, and it's just a great gift that you're giving to yourself to continually come back, look at yourself in the mirror, see what you need to improve and move forward. And finally, my last little bit of advice is to be gentle with yourself, to be kind to yourself in this process. You are going to mess up. You are going to slip up sometimes. And to just know that it's okay to be gentle and not beat yourself up so much. But just do your best. Treat yourself like you would your best friend, and keep showing up. So those are my helpful pointers. Before we move on. Now that we've covered all the basics in the introduction, you can head on over to the first module where we're going to talk about envisioning a greater future. I'll see you in the next module. 3. 1.1 - Envisioning Intro: So where do we begin? Well, I love this quote from Stephen Covey, who says Begin with the end in mind. One of the most powerful things that you can do for changing habits, for creating a rich, beautiful, and powerful life is to shift your attention towards the future. There's some interesting research that shows that the most successful people are the ones who think about where they're headed. They have that long-term vision. They think about where they're going to end up in the next five years, in the next ten years or the next 20 years, they have that connection to their future self. So rather than just focusing on the short-term gains or short term pleasure, they focus on those longer-term goals, their visions and aspirations. So the very first thing we need to do when it comes to breaking out of some of our old conditioned habits is to start connecting with that vision of the future is to start shifting our orientation, shifting our attention to start viewing. Where are we headed in my own life, many of you know that I struggled with **** addiction from an early age, starting somewhere around eight or nine years old. I don't remember the exact age I was, but I remember getting into it very early. And it was something that I lived with for most of my life. And slowly over time, they built up a stronger and stronger dependency on it. By the time I got to the end of my college years, I was watching two to three hours of **** every single night and I tried to quit. I couldn't really stick with it. I would try deleting my files or deleting my bookmarks are hiding my computer. I tried a bunch of different things but none of it worked. I kept slipping back into the same old habits, the same old routines again and again. But there was a single moment where everything's shifted for me. I remember I was walking down the street in Davis, California and there were these two beautiful women walking in front of me. I remember being filled with just **** and desire and craving and my old compulsive self started to kick in. And it was this big black sinking pit in my chest of feeling like I didn't have enough, like I wanted more. And I remember this moment where I had this vision of myself 50 years down the road. I saw myself as some 70 or 80 year-old man who was still doing the same things. You know, like some creepy pervert hanging out at college bar is trying to pick up on women. I had that vision of myself. Something about that vision woke me up. It helped me realize that if I didn't make a change, if I didn't do something drastic, That's where I was headed. That really shook me. And at that same time, I also started to reflect on what did I want, what did I want to get to? I started seeing what was actually important to me and connecting with what was important to me. I realized that what I wanted was to be living a deep life, a life of deep contentment, deep relationships, deep connection with other people. I want it to be traveling the world and pursuing my dreams and my goals and aspirations. What I did in that moment without realizing the name of it back then was what I now know as envisioning this ability to connect with a vision of something that hasn't happened yet, a vision of the future of what's to come. And it was connecting with that long-term vision, both the good and the bad, that finally gave me that internal drive that I needed in order to break free. It's what gave me that internal motivation, the thing that drove me to finally change my habits. Now this work of envisioning is really important because without connecting to that compelling vision of the future, without getting clear on where you're headed. If you don't make a change, you're going to be more subject to the vagaries of your day to day life. Just how you're feeling on a given day. Whether you're feeling motivated or unmotivated, whether you're feeling lazy, you're feeling stressed or like procrastinating. And the thing is, that's the last thing we want. We don't want to be subject to those day to day things like hunger or stress or just being tired. We want to be in control, unflappable, unmovable, where we're really driving forward, we're steering the ship forward. With that in mind in the next two sections, we're gonna be covering the first two aspects of this envisioning process. First, we're gonna be looking at the default future. And then we'll start creating a more compelling vision of where we want to get to. So when you're ready to dive into those practices, go ahead and join me in the next video. I'll see you there. 4. 1.2 - Seeing the Default Future: Welcome. This first part of the envisioning exercise is called Seeing the default future. It's about getting really clear on where you are or could be headed. If you don't make a change, if you continue living as you are now, where are you headed? Where are you going to end up? This is the practice of seeing the default future. In order to do this practice, I'm going to ask you to do some journaling as we go through this video. And I really want you to actually do the journaling. If you just sit there and think, Oh, I know the answers to this already, or I'm just going to think about it. That's not going to cut it. If you actually have to take the time and dive into each question. So really grab a pen and paper, grab something to write on or write width, and actually do these exercises. If not, you're just wasting your own time. Now as a side note to this, you might want to do some of these as a free flow journaling exercise. What that means is once I tell you the prompt, what you can do is set a short timer, maybe three minutes or five minutes. And just keep depend moving. Let your thoughts flow onto the paper and don't stop. If you run out of things to right? You can just write. I'm not sure what to write, I'm not sure what to write until something else comes. The alternative to that is just to answer it in depth as best you can, but no need to set anytime. All right, so here's your first journaling exercise. What habits or behaviors are holding you back in life? Now for this, I want you to really think about everything. Really just do a brain dump, get it all on paper, write down everything you can think of. That feels like it's holding you back in some way. So it might be it might be checking email too much. It might be eating junk food late at night. Just get everything out on the paper. So now pause this video and start writing. Alright, Did you do it? Again? If you didn't do it, go back, pause the video, and start writing down all these habits and behaviors that are holding you back. Alright, the next journaling prompt is this. What beliefs, behaviors, or pursuits are no longer serving you? What beliefs, behaviors or pursuits no longer serving you? This is similar to the last one, but it's really thinking about things that may be did serve you in the past, that were compelling for you in the past, but no longer serve you. Go ahead and pause this video. Take the time to answer this question. Alright, I hope you've taken the time to be really thoughtful about these first two questions. You can spend hours and hours on personal development, on improving your life. But if you're focused on the wrong areas, you're not gonna get very far. So we really want to take the time to figure out first what's not working in our life. What are the real specific things that are holding us back? I hope you've taken the time to dive into these questions. Now take a moment and look through everything that you wrote. And I want you to pick one single specific behavior to work with going forward. Don't worry about picking the right one. We're getting this perfect. Just pick one that feels like it's the most pressing, it's the most, it's holding you back the most. In some way. We're going to go forward with that one. But just know you can always go back and do these exercises again with any of the other habits and behaviors. You might choose something like dating apps, or it might just be social media in general. Whatever it is, pick one specific thing that's really causing you a lot of trouble and we're going to move forward with that one. All right, Now we're going to dive deeper into how this habit or behavior is affecting our present. The next journaling prompt is this. In what ways is this habit holding me back in my professional life or my career pursuits? In what ways is this habit holding me back in my professional life or my career pursuits? Pause the video and answer this one. All right, the next question, in what ways is this habit negatively affecting my romantic life or my relationships? What ways is this habit negatively affecting my romantic life or my relationships? Take the time and answer this one. Alright, now the final question. In what ways is this habit negatively affecting my general health and well-being? In what ways is this habit negatively affecting my general health and well-being? Go ahead and take the time and write down everything you can think of. Now here's where we dive into the default future. The next question I'm going to ask you to write about dives into what might happen as a result. The prompt for this one is this. If things continue this way or if things get worse, what could I lose as a result? If this behavior continues? What might I lose in my life? What might happen in my life as a result? Really get playful with this one. Exaggerated a little bit. All right, Take the time for this question. All right, The final reflection question for this exercise, thinking five years down the road or ten years down the road, what is your greatest fear around what might happen if you don't fix this issue? What is your greatest fear around this issue? If you aren't able to make a change and if things really get worse, here, really think about what is the worst-case scenario, what something really bad that could actually happen? What do your version of becoming up perverted old man? So pause the video and answer this final question. All right, congratulations. You might not feel like celebrating after doing this exercise, but it is a necessary first step on the path to freedom. I hope that you feel it least positive that you're making progress in the right direction. We now have a helpful reference point to compare to the next exercise we're gonna do, which is diving into creating a compelling vision of the future. Where do we want to go? When you're ready for that, I'll see you in the next video. 5. 1.3 - Creating a Compelling Vision of the Future: So the second part of this envisioning exercise is to get really clear on what's called the dream future. Where do you want to go in your life? You could have it your own way. How would you be living in what would be present in your life? If there's one thing that I can help you accomplish in this course, it would be really connecting on an emotional level with that vision of the future. Something that excites you and inspires you and gets you motivated to get out of the bed each morning. That's what we're going to be diving into in this next exercise. In particular, we're going to be looking at the inner world of art dream future, not just the material things that we want, like a big house or lots of money. But how do we want to feel in this future? Are we feeling fulfilled and like we're living a life of purpose? Do we feel connected to others? How are our relationships and the quality of the time we spend with other people? And really, what are we feeling in this future? Are we feeling content are happy and joyful. Keep that in mind as we go through these exercise, focus on the feelings of this future. Before we begin, a quote from Michelangelo, he says, The danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high and falling short, but in setting our aim too low and achieving our mark. What we can see here is that many of us fail because we don't aim high enough. And in fact, what we do is that we set our aim too low and we achieve that mark. We settle for a life of just met, you know, kind of going through the motions in life, being happy but not really satisfied. I want to encourage you to think big in this exercise, to let go of any limiting belief that go of any questioning about whether this life that you're dreaming up is possible. But just have fun. If you could make anything come true. If it were really up to you, how would you be living your life? The point of this exercise is to connect with a compelling vision of the future. You'll know that you've hit the mark when you feel that kind of inner fire come alive, when you feel that inner spark of all, yes, this is what I want. This is inspiring to me, this is activating. That's how you'll know that you're touching on something important for you. The first practice we'll do in this envisioning exercise of the dream future is something called the airport exercise. What I want you to imagine and feel free to close your eyes for this if you like. Imagine that five years from now, you're at an airport waiting to board a flight and you hear on the overhead announcements system that the flight has been delayed by two hours. Just as you hear this announcement, you see an old friend of yours from high-school who you haven't seen in a long time. It was someone that you used to be really close with. And he's waiting for the same flight as you. And you decide to go get a cup of coffee as you guys wait to board this flight. As you go and get your coffee, you sit down and he turns to you and he says, How have you been, how has life been treating you? And you say to him, You say, life is beyond my wildest dreams. I could not have imagined it any better than it is right now. I'm deeply fulfill them inspired, I'm living my best life possible. Now the question for you is, what is going on in your life where you can say this to this old friend. What are the things that are happening in your life five years from now, where you can truly, genuinely say this is the best I could ever imagine it being. Now what I want you to do is write down what do you see in this future life. Imagine yourself five years from now, beyond your wildest dreams. And take the time to write this out, write down everything you can think of. What are you doing for work, where you living? How are your relationships? Are you in a relationship or not in relationship? Do you have a family and do you have kids? Also get really clear on things like your daily routines. What do you do in the morning? What do you do in the afternoon? What do you eat on a regular basis? How does your body feel? Then finally, also get really clear on how are you feeling in this future. As you do this exercise, I want you to write from the present tense, five years from now. So instead of writing in five years, I will be doing this or living here. Write it from that present tense. I live here. I do this for work. I spend my mornings doing delta time. Really take the time for this one. Have fun with it. Map out that dream vision of your life. You're going to want to spend at least five minutes on this, maybe even ten or 15 minutes or longer. When you're ready, pause this video, map it out five years from now, your best life possible. Write down everything you can think of. All right, Congratulations. I hope that was an invigorating and activating experience for you. It might have also been difficult for some people tapping into this sense of what I really want is hard. And the truth is, that's a muscle that we have to cultivate connecting with that vision of what's possible, whether it was easy for you or difficult. Don't worry, just know that the more you do this practice of connecting with what you truly want, the easier it will get. All right, I have a couple more journaling prompts that I want you to spend some time with. So here's the next prompt. What does success look like for me? How do I define success in my life? So take some time for this, pause this video and go ahead and answer the question. All right, then the final journaling prompt for this, at the end of the day, what is really important to me? At the end of the day? What is really important to me? Pause this video, take some time for that, and we'll see you back here in a second. All right, congratulations on moving through this exercise of envisioning your ideal future, a compelling vision of the future. Know that it won't be perfect on the first try, you can come back to these exercises as often as you need to. But it's about cultivating this muscle of connecting with where do I want to go? What's important to me? How do I want to be living? Also understand that these visions and aspirations will change over time. They're not going to be set in stone. So what you just wrote down, It's not the final answer. It's just how you're currently feeling today. Having that flexibility of knowing these things will morph and change and evolve over time is fine. Just a quick note before we move forward on staying motivated. Often people find it's helpful to create something called a vision board for their dream future. If you've never done a vision board, it's very simple. In any way, creating a visual representation of this dream future. What you can do is find different pictures or images on the Internet and bring them together into either a gallery or a collage. Something to remind yourself of what this dream future looks like for you. You can print that out and put it on your wall. You can have it as a bookmark to check in with every morning. It's really up to you some way of connecting to that vision that you've just created. In the next video, we're gonna start looking at, at our value systems, our core values. We're going to learn how to get unclear on our guiding principles. This is another important aspect of creating that compelling vision of the future. How do we want to show up in the world? When you're ready, I'll see you in the next video. 6. 1.4 - Values Identifier: Chances are you are hearing this course because you realize that a lot of your time and energy going into unfulfilling or meaningless activities and pursuits that you are not living in a deeply meaningful way. Maybe it's indulging too much in procrastination, wasting your time or escaping your responsibilities. Or maybe it's just being on autopilot, not really in control of what you're doing, whatever it is that brought you here. If you want to live in deeply meaningful and fulfilling life, you've got to take the time to figure out what are the qualities of a good life? What are the values that are important to you? Many people go through life never taking the time to discover what their values are. This is a big problem because if you're not being intentional about what your values are, there's a good likelihood that you are living someone else's value system, that you are unconsciously adopting other people's values or beliefs. For example, some people, and you probably know a few of them, are entirely motivated by fame and success and fortune. Wanting more external validation, more approval from other people, or maybe wanting just more money. And this is not because any of us have sat down and intentionally thought, Oh, I really value other people's opinions of me. Or I really value having as much mouth pleasure as I can in my life. It's because we've subconsciously adopted these values. It's because the way society is built and the way our cultures evolve. It has been steering us in these directions, often on a subconscious level. It's not only what we see in the movies and through our society and culture, It's also tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of years of biological evolution that drive us in particular directions. This drive towards sense pleasure often comes from that physiological need for things that tastes good, things that feel good in the body. The problem is that many of these biological systems get hijacked by our society. They get taken over and are in an unhealthy level, their out-of-control. If you want to live a life of deep fulfillment and living with more integrity, you have to do the work to first uncover what are your values, not what our society's values. What are other people's values, but what are the values that really drive you? What makes a good life for you? Now we're going to dive into a few journaling practices to help you uncover and crystallize what are the value systems that you hold in high regard? So go ahead and grab that pen and paper, grab a journal and get ready for it. The journaling exercises. All right, this first journaling prompt is to pick out five people who you admire. These can be people you know, personally, family or friends or relatives. Or they can be historical figures or public figures, politicians, religious leaders. They can also be fictional characters. If you have a favorite TV show or a favorite movie, there's a fictional character who you really admire and that's alright too. I want you to pick out five people who you really admire. And then for each person to write out what are the traits that you admire in this person. For each person, see if you can get to at least five different traits that you admire. All right, go ahead and pause this video. Take the time to do this one. All right, so now you should have a nice solid list of a few different traits. We're gonna keep doing a few other exercises to uncover some more values that you might hold in high regard. This next exercise is this. I want you to journal about how would you like to be remembered when you're gone? How do you want people to remember you after you've passed away? It takes some time, maybe do a free flow journaling, maybe three minutes or five minutes on this one. How would I like to be remembered when I'm gone? Take some time and work on this one. All right, This next exercise is a two-part exercise. I'm gonna explain the first part. Then you're gonna do that and then I'll explain what comes next. So first what I want you to do is I want you to create a list of five different things that really annoy you. You know, what really gets under your skin, what irritates the crap out of you? So go ahead and pause this video, write down five things that really irritate you or annoy you. Alright? So now that you have those five things that irritate you, what I want you to do is take each of those things and find the opposite. What is the value that, that is in opposition to? For example, one of the things that really irritates me is when people are making lot of noise or disturbances in public spaces. And the value for me in that, the thing that's an opposition is respecting other people's space, respecting other people's desire to be peaceful. It's being considerate of others is the value that I hold in opposition to that. Go ahead and take some time. Pause this video. What are the opposites of these things that annoy you? Alright, so now we've done a bit of work on digging deeper and uncovering some of the things that we hold in high regard from all of these journaling practices. What I'd like you to do is to read through what you wrote and then see if you can come up with a list of five of your core values. What are the five most important things? It's totally fine to come up with values, strings. So these are things that are similar. You might lump them together as a single value. So for example, if I value respect and nonviolence and creating safety for others, that might be a single string of values that I can put into one. Go ahead and take the time saving, come up with a list of your five core values or core values strings. Pause this video and do this work. All right, Great job. Now you should have a list of some of your core values. Just a little note on this. Don't worry too much about whether or not you've picked the right ones. Whether these are the best values or even whether or not these are your five most important ones. To know that this is an iterative process. You're going to be doing this over your life, re-evaluating what's important to you. It's fine that you just have a kind of a rough draft right now, something to get you started to look back on what's important. 7. 1.5 - Getting into Alignment: Now it's one thing to know your values, and it's another thing to actually be aligned with your values or embodying your values. For example, I might really value deep work or focused life. What I might spend most of my time mindlessly scrolling on Instagram or habitually compulsively checking news sites or e-mail. Maybe I value treating my body well, living a healthy lifestyle, but I keep eating junk food and treating my body like crap. Or maybe my values are around nonviolence and safety and respect for other people. But I'm watching **** that is denigrating or maybe even harmful towards women. This is about checking in with yourself and seeing where are you out of alignment with your values. So go ahead and grab your journal. The next journaling prompt to dive into this Is this, where am I out of alignment with my values? Where do I feel out of integrity with the values I listed before? Take a few minutes to reflect on this. Finally, one of the ways we can get more in alignment with our values is figuring out how do we get back on track? Where do we want to shift our attention towards? For this next journaling prompt, I'd like you to reflect on this. What is one value that I would like to bring more into my life? And what are some opportunities to bring this value into my life? So pause the video, reflect on this one. Alright, great work. We've just done a lot of work of uncovering what are the values that we hold in high regard where we out of alignment with those values. And where do we want to be bringing more energy to which values do we want to bring more into our life? The way I see it? Values are like lampposts on a journey through darkness. We might be fumbling around, not really sure which direction to go. And we see these lampposts, these lights guiding us in the right direction. This is a great way to view our values. They can help us make decisions when we're at a crossroads or when we come upon a difficult situation, we're not sure what to do. They can help us figure out suitable way forward. In the next video, we're gonna get more concrete. We're gonna look at another important aspect of transformation and getting unhooked. This is about setting appropriate and motivating goals for ourselves. When you're ready, I'll see you in the next video. 8. 1.6 - Goal Setting 101: Welcome to goal-setting 101. Goal-setting is helpful in habit change because it harnesses that aspect of our human psychology that wants to achieve things that wants to check-off boxes, that likes to accomplish. It can help us get unstuck and help us move forward. We're going to look at what are the basics of goal-setting. And we're going to take some time to figure out some appropriate motivating, aspirational goals for ourselves. First, a quick recap of smart goals. This is something that you might have heard about when you were a young child or a kid in high school or maybe in college, we're gonna look at what our smart goals so that we can develop the goals for ourselves. So the S stands for Specific. This means creating a goal where it's easy to know whether or not you've completed it. In the words of Cal Newport, it should have clear criteria for completion. So an example would be instead of saying I want to be able to focus more, you might say something like, I want to spend two hours doing deep work every morning before I check my phone. The idea is to create a goal that is so specific that a toddler or a teenager could understand exactly what you're talking about and know exactly when you have accomplished it. The M stands for measurable. So this should be obvious to you if you can measure it, it's much easier to track your progress on it. For example, instead of saying I want to be a better runner, you might say I want to run a 5k in under 25 minutes. Or you might say something like, I want to meditate for ten minutes every morning. Instead of just saying I want to meditate in the mornings more often. The a stands for achievable. While I do want to encourage you to dream big in your life. To think large. It's also important to create goals for yourself that you know, are at least in the realm of possibility, that they are achievable. For example, I might not say I want to join the NBA next month. In contrast to that, I could say, I want to find a pickup basketball league and find a way to play at least one game once a week. The R stands for relevant, and this is super important. Finding a goal that is connected to that long-term vision of the future. Why are you focused on this goal? This should actually be at the very beginning. Is this something that's important to you? Is it moving you towards that vision of the future that you have for yourself? So for example, in the last explanation that I talked about joining the MBA, that's not relevant for me because I don't like playing basketball. I might not choose that as a goal. But what is important to me is to be doing deep work every day to spend time focusing, diving deep into work like writing and reading and creating. I might create a goal around my ability to do deep work that R stands for relevant. Is it relevant to your long-term aspirations? And T, the final letter in the smart acronym stands for timed. And this is where it's important to give yourself a deadline or a timeline. There's so much research around the benefits of having a deadline for setting yourself a goal. If you just say, I want to do this by some time in the future, it's not as compelling. It's not going to lock into that psychology as much as if you give yourself a timeline or a deadline. So for example, in this very course that I'm creating for you, I gave myself a deadline. And that deadline is allowing me to giving me that fuel that I need to make progress rather than slipping into procrastination. For whatever goal you have, it's helpful to slap on a timeline at the end of it. Quick note on this, it's helpful to sit positive or approach oriented goals rather than negative or avoidance based goals. Rather than saying, I want to avoid ****, you might say, I want to spend more quality time without the phone. That's an example is helpful too. Set it in those positive terms, that positive light, what is the thing you want to be doing more of rather than the thing you want to be doing less of. Of course, you won't always be able to figure out an approach goal. There might be some times where it is really important or relevant to have that, that negative goal, the avoidance goal, myths totally fine. 9. 1.7 - Creating a 90-day Goal: Alright, so now that we've covered the basics of goal-setting, we're going to do some work, some journaling, some exploration to help you figure out what our goals for you. Now this practice, it's going to be a bit of journaling and it's going to help you figure out what would you like to focus on in the coming months. Now this next exercise we're going to do is the 30-second goal planner. Now research has found that if you're given thirty-seconds to map out your goals, you'll come up with roughly the same goals as you would if you're given much longer than that, let's say ten minutes or 30 minutes. So we're gonna give you just 30 seconds for each of these prompts. So go ahead and grab your pen and paper and get ready for this 30-second firing of goal planning. Just write out whatever comes to mind. Don't overthink it. Don't worry about creating a super smart goals on these, but just get the basic ones out. In the next 30 seconds, I would like you to write out what are your top three physical health and fitness goals? Go ahead and take the time for that. All right. Time's Up. Next one. What are your top three professional and career goals? All right. Time's up. The next one. What are your top three relationship or community goals? Time's up on that one. Next one, what are your top three? Hobby or fun or enjoyment goals? All right, Time's up. And then the last one, what are your top three overall goals in life right now? That is the 30-second goal planner, just a way of getting some ideas out onto the page. A way of starting this brainstorming process around what might be some appropriate goals from me. You can take any of those and turn them into more fully developed smart goals later on. But now we're gonna shift into another goal planning exercise, another way of discovering what might be some good goals for us. Once again, grabbing your journal and a pen, and I'm going to ask you some questions. All right, This next one is called the three by four method. What it is, is you're going to do some planning around different timelines in your life. So what I'd like you to do next is to think about what would you like to accomplish in your life in the next three years? Pause this video, take the time to think about this. What would you like to accomplish in the next three years if you could really accomplish anything you wanted with something that is achievable and relevant, what would you accomplish in the next three years? So pause this video and take the time to think about this one. Alright, the next part of this is, what would you like to accomplish in the next three months? Given what you wrote before, what would you like to accomplish in the next three months or 90 days? Pause this video and take the time to answer this. All right, great job. The next one, I hope you can see where this is going. What would you like to accomplish in the next three weeks? In the next three weeks, what do you hope to accomplish? Go ahead and pause this video and answer this. Then the final one, you've guessed it, what would you like to accomplish in the next three days? What would you like to accomplish three days from now? What is one thing that you would like to accomplish? So take the time to answer this one and I'll see you back in a second. All right, so now you have some ideas around how to set goals, how to discover some goals that might be appropriate for you. What I'd like you to do is just pick one thing to focus on for the rest of this course. That timeframe of three months or 90 days is a great timeframe to focus on. Before you finish this exercise, before you move on to the next one, come up with one thing that you'd like to accomplish in those next 90 days. What is one thing that if you could accomplish it, you would really feel like you're moving forward in life. What does that 90-day goal where you could say, if I can do this, it will feel like I've made genuine progress in my life. Come up with that 190 day goal and we're going to stick with that for awhile. Alright, that wraps it up for our basics of goal-setting 101. By now, what you've done is a few things. You've spent some time diving into your default future. Where are you headed if you don't make a change? We've also looked at establishing or creating that compelling vision of the dream future. What do you want to get to? What's really important to you? Where is that shining light in the future? We've also spent some time getting clear on our values and figuring out where we're out of alignment with our values and where do we want to be more in alignment with our values? Then in this video, this lecture, we've looked at goal-setting and decided on some goals to focus on. The next video we're going to look at taking ownership of your life. How do you take full responsibility for your life? When you are ready for that? Go ahead and click on the next video and I'll see you there. 10. 1.8 - Taking Ownership: Before we move forward into the next module, we have to cover one final topic, and this is the topic of ownership. The essential idea of ownership is this. No one is going to come save you. You have to do the work yourself. When I realized that I had a problem with point addiction, I came to the realization that nobody was gonna come save me or fix the problem for me, that if I wanted to change my life, I really had to take action. If I didn't take action, if I didn't take ownership of that problem, I was going to end up in my default future. I was going to end up as that perverted or 80-year-old man. And I knew that I needed to do the work. Now this also relates to the concept of karma. Karma is very misunderstood topic in the world is a lot of misconceptions around it. Usually in the West, it's misunderstood as being this sort of cosmic magical law of karma. You get what you deserve. The idea is if you tell a lie, then a piano is going to fall on your cat the next day. And people will say, Oh, it must be your karma. You've got what you deserved. But the truth is, karma is much closer to the law of cause and effect. That everything you do has ripple effects, has consequences. And it's also understanding that everything that exists today is because of the causes and conditions that came before it. It's a very scientific way of looking at the world. Understanding that everything you do has consequences. Not only what you do, but even what you think and what you pay attention to has ripple effects. And so taking responsibility for your own actions and the ripple effects that they have. This is what ownership is about. It's also good to know the difference between fault and responsibility. And I loved this idea that it's not your fault, but it is your responsibility. For social media. It's not your fault that you're addicted to it. It's billions of dollars of investment has gone into making things like social media endpoint. Very addictive to the human mind. It's not your fault, It's important. Society's fault. It's the cultures fault. It's the fault of our physiology. But the question is, whose responsibility is it to make a change? And the only important answer to that is you. There are other ways to answer it. It is also the responsibility perhaps of the **** industry to not make things so addictive or whatever. But the only one that you should focus on is that it is your responsibility. You can't wait for other people to make a change in your life. That's what this lecture is all about. Taking responsibility, taking ownership for your life. The more you understand this concept on an intuitive or experiential level, the easier habit change is going to be. It's one thing to understand this conceptually or theoretically to know that it's your responsibility. But when you really start to grasp it on that intuitive level, that you need to take action to take responsibility for your life. The more you get that from the inside out, the easier it is going to be to change your habits, to change your life, to really transform the way you're living. Taking ownership is what keeps us out of that victim mentality. It keeps us out of laziness. It's what allows us to move forward. How do you cultivate this sense of taking ownership? How do you get started? While you, by now you've probably guessed that we're gonna do a little bit of journaling to help you discover where are some opportunities in your life for taking ownership. Go ahead, grab that piece of paper and a pen. Grab your journal and get ready for the next journaling exercise. So the first thing to write about, the first thing to journal about is this. To whom or to what have I been giving away my power? To whom or to what have I been giving away my power? Do this one is a free flow journaling exercise. So just let thoughts flow onto the paper. See what comes out. Spend a few minutes on this one. So go ahead and pause the video, spend a few minutes and I'll see you back here. All right, the next one, next journaling prompt. In what ways have I been avoiding taking ownership in my life? What ways have I been avoiding taking ownership in my life? Again, do this as a free flow journaling. Let your thoughts flow onto the paper and see what comes out. So pause this video and I'll see you back in a second. Alright, the next journaling prompt, where can I start taking responsibility? Where can I start taking responsibility in my life? Pause the video, take some time to answer this one. Finally, this is the final reflection question of the lecture. To reflect on this question, if I were the CEO of my life, how would I live differently? If I were the CEO of my life? How would I live differently? Really take some time to reflect on this. Give yourself the time and the space to ponder this question, to dive into this question. This is something we're going to come back to again and again. Cultivating that sense of being the CEO of your life, being that leader within how do you take responsibility? How would you live differently? Pause the video, take the time to answer this one. I'll write. I hope these questions have helped to inspire you, give you some of that self-awareness around where you can start taking ownership, taking responsibility for the things that are going on in your life. 11. 1.9 - Module Wrap-Up: Congratulations on finishing module one. This module has really been about finding a direction to walk in our life and also finding the motivation to begin that journey. What is the fuel that's going to propel us and help us overcome the eventual or the inevitable obstacles we're going to find along the way. By now, you should have a good understanding of where you want to go. In the next few modules, we're gonna be looking at some of the mindsets, the habits and routines that are gonna help you get there. What is it that's going to take you where you want to go? So that's it for Module one. I'll see you in the next module. 12. 2.1 - Untrained Warriors: This module is all about cultivating a strong foundation, particularly a strong mental foundation. These inner strength qualities that are gonna be crucial on your path to getting unhooked from your digital addiction. I'd like to start off with one of my favorite quotes on the subject of training the mind. In this comes from the Indian monk Yogananda. And he says This, untrained warriors are soon killed on the battlefield. Also person's untrained in the art of preserving their inner peace or quickly riddled by the bullets of worry and restlessness, inactive life. So we'll also people untrained in the art of preserving their inner peace, riddled by the bullets of worry and restlessness, inactive life. If your goal here is to break free from the behavioral addictions, things like using your cell phone too much, using ***********, using social media. Then you've got to start with where the addiction itself starts. And this is in the mind. It's only once we build this strong mental foundation that we can move forward with our recovery. Again, I talked about this earlier, but if we don't work on that inner part of our inner strength, we don't build that strong a foundation then no matter what we do externally, those same forces of craving, of avoidance and procrastination will just pop up somewhere else. Doing this work at the outset, at the beginning. Building up those strong mental factors is going to be crucial. When you're ready to dive in. Go ahead and join me in the next video. 13. 2.2 - Neuroplasticity: Let's start with understanding the mind. If you are addicted to phones or social media, essentially what is happening is that your mind is out-of-control. You are continuing to do things despite knowing that they are holding you back in some way or causing harm. Often these habits are subconscious or unconscious behaviors. We're not really conscious of the fact that we've pulled out our phone and open up the Instagram app. What's going on is that your mind is stuck in a habit loop. The reason that this happens is that the brain forms these deep grooves over time. The same way that if you have a big field of grass, if you walk through that field of grass, once, nothing's going to happen. But if you walk on the same path again and again and again, eventually a pathway forms through that field. And this is how it works in the mind as well, is that we have formed these deep grooves in the mind. So the question we can ask ourselves now is, how do we get rid of mental habit patterns that are no longer serving us? If we find some mental habits that are detrimental, that are holding us back, how can we change those mental pathways? Now it used to be believed that your mind developed all of its neural pathways and connections when you were young. And then sometime in your teenage years you stopped forming new connections and that it was all downhill from there. For what we understand now is that your mind is constantly forming new pathways and forming new connections throughout your life. This is something that we know as neuroplasticity. The essential idea is that what you think and do an even what you pay attention to is changing the structure and function of your brain throughout your life. For example, if you're constantly thinking thoughts of craving, maybe saying, I want this new thing, I want this new thing. The mental pathways in the mind associated with the thought. I need this thing in order to be happy, are going to be strengthened. If you are constantly pulling out your phone and opening up Instagram. The neural habit of pulling out your phone, clicking on the Instagram app. Again, that is strengthening that neural habit loop. So a quote that I love that's related to this is that neurons that fire together, wire together. The more often you use any sort of neural pathway, you're literally strengthening the connections between those neurons. You're increasing the synaptic strength. The Buddha said something very similar 2500 years ago. He said, What you frequently think and ponder upon becomes the inclination of the mind. The more often we think a certain type of thought that is going to be the inclination of the mind. We're going to be steering the mind in that direction. Now when I first discovered this concept of neuroplasticity, kind of hit me like a rock hitting me over the head. I started to realize how much I was hard wiring **** into my mind. Every time I opened up ****, Every time I looked or clicked on a new lane or opened up a new window, I was hard wiring in that loop, that behavior in the mind of seeking out novelty, seeking ****. Now fortunately, we can use neuroplasticity to our advantage. We can identify the mental qualities that are going to lead us to happiness, to joy and contentment and success, whatever it is we want, we can identify what's going to take us there. And then we can strengthen those neural pathways. It's very similar to training muscles in the gym. Let's say you identify certain muscles you want to train. And then you go into the gym, you do certain exercises to strengthen those specific muscles. We can do the same with mental qualities that are going to lead us where we want to get too. In the following lectures, I'm going to be introducing the five key mental qualities or mental muscles that you're gonna need on this pathway of getting unhooked from your digital addiction. When you're ready, I'll see you in the next video. 14. 2.3 - Mindfulness: The first and arguably most important mental quality we can cultivate is simply awareness. Seeing clearly what's happening in our emotional world, in our mental space, and then the external environment. The reason that this is so critical is that it forms the foundation for everything else we can hope to do. If you're not aware of what's happening, how can you possibly think to fix it if you are just a drift on autopilot or asleep at the wheel, it really doesn't matter what intentions you might have. You won't be able to change anything. Often when we're stuck in addictions, we're living just like a zombie, just like a slave to whatever desires are in front of us. This aspect of waking up to our life, we're really seeing clearly how we're living is so critical. Now often what causes us to reach for our phone or pull out our laptop and act out in these addictive ways is often some hidden or subtle or subconscious emotion that we're trying to avoid or get away from. So it might be something like Fordham, might be loneliness. It might be regret of remembering something we did in the past that wasn't so skillful. Often these uncomfortable emotions cause us to act out without awareness, without mindfulness, we don't see this happening. But if we can cultivate awareness, we can see the link between the uncomfortable emotion, the desire to escape it, and then the acting out by pulling out our cell phone, pulling up the computer, go into the kitchen, whatever it is that we use as debt avoidance mechanism. How do we cultivate this mental muscle of awareness? How can we wake up more fully to our life? Well, this is really the skill of mindfulness that we're talking about. One very simple definition of mindfulness is being aware of what's happening in our internal world and external world as it's happening. I would also add that it's with particular qualities like curiosity and kindness. But in its simplest definition, we can think of it as just this quality of being aware of what's happening as it's happening. When it comes to the world of addiction and recovery and the work we're doing here. We also really need to focus on more awareness of our internal state, the internal landscape. What are the emotions that we're feeling in any given moment? What are the thoughts that are arising in any given moment? In this video, I'll talk about how can we cultivate more mindfulness? How can we get started with this foundational mental muscle? Sometimes the practice of mindfulness is referred to as a sixth sense store awareness. And this is how we're going to dive into this practice. You probably know that you have the five traditional senses. You have sight and smell, and taste and hearing, and touch throughout the body. There's also the sense door of mental phenomena, emotions, thoughts, and feelings. With mindfulness, we're really just becoming aware of any of those six senses. Becoming aware of any sound and smell and taste, touch in the body and you site and then any mental phenomena. So we might be aware of a thought, you might be aware of an emotion. This aspect of tapping into the sixth sense doors is one really great way of practicing mindfulness. Another technique that we can use in conjunction with this to amplify our awareness of what's happening is the technique known as noting or labeling. This is as we're paying attention to what's happening, we just give a soft mental note to what we're seeing. So I might start by following my breath and I might just note breathing in. Or if I'm paying attention to the feeling of my belly, I might note rising. And then as I breathe out in the belly falls, I can note following. If I hear a sound, I can just make a mental note hearing, hearing. We're just using this technique of noting as a way to begin observing whatever's arising in our experience in the guided meditation that's included in this course. You'll find a introduction, a tutorial step-by-step guide to cultivating this $0.06 door awareness. So go ahead and enjoy that guided meditation. And then I'll see you in the next video. 15. 2.3b - Guided Meditation: Mindfulness: Welcome to this guided meditation practice on developing more mindfulness. Go ahead and find a nice comfortable seat. Posture where you can feel both relaxed and alert at the same time. Just take a few moments to settle into your posture. Maybe closing your eyes or having a nice soft gaze towards the ground. And we can start just by taking a few deep breaths, breathing in deeply, breathing out slowly. And then just allow your breath to return to its natural rhythm. Maybe start to check in and just notice where do you feel your breath in your body? Can you feel the belly rising and falling? This is mindfulness of body sensation. If you can just tune into the physical sensation, the texture of the breath. Noticing the way the belly expands on the in-breath. The way the belly falls on the out-breath. And then shifting your attention and bringing some awareness to hearing. Just notice what are the sounds you're aware of in this moment. Can you hear sounds that are far away? Maybe sounds that are close by. This is awareness of hearing. Now shifting your awareness to your nostrils. Just sensing into the sense of smell. Maybe there's no strong smell in this moment, but maybe there is just getting curious about that. Sense store smell. Shifting your awareness now to the tongue and the mouth. Is there any taste that's present? Maybe there's no strong taste and maybe there is again, just getting curious, sensing into that area. And then maybe checking in with the sense of vision and seeing. You might try opening your eyes just a little bit. Staring down towards the ground and tune into the sense of sight. What do you see? Can you be aware of different colors and shapes? Just the awareness of seeing. Closing your eyes once again, bringing your awareness back to your body. Feeling your breath. Back to that awareness of physical sensation in the body. Now, opening up to your emotional state. What emotions are present? Maybe a feeling of restlessness, sleepiness, hope, sadness, just checking in with that. Mental phenomena. Also becoming aware of thoughts. Words in the mind. This is the awareness of mental phenomena. Thoughts, feelings, and emotions. Great work. This is a basic introduction to the $0.06 stores of mindfulness. To close the practice, you can take a deep breath in. Deep breath out. Great job. 16. 2.4 - Concentration: In this society that we live in today, there is no shortage of distractions. There's YouTube and Instagram and Twitter, and email and dating apps, and our kitchen and the food. The list can go on and on of the things we can distract ourselves with. To make matters worse, we carry the ultimate distraction machine in our pocket at all times. That tiny little cell phone that has the most information the universe has overseen on one little device. I like to say that having a social media or **** addiction is like being addicted to alcohol and walking around with a flask of vodka in your pocket wherever you go. There's literally no escape from things like social media and ****. If that's what you're interested in, just ask yourself, how much time do you waste on all these little distractions throughout the day? How often does the thought? Let me just check my email, turn it into 30 minutes of doom scrolling on CNN or Twitter. Just imagine what you could accomplish in your life. If you can really take back control of your mind, if you could focus more and find that stillness and stability of mind. In this lecture, we're gonna be focusing on this quality of concentration or focus, building up that internal strength of mind. Now there are a few benefits to cultivating your focus. The first benefit is that it's a performance enhancer. We know now that it's so much performance is lost when we do this task switching, we often think that multitasking will make us better performers. But there's so much evidence now showing that multitasking leads to a decline in performance. Another benefit is that we can notice more quickly when we slip off into distraction. Instead of getting lost on Instagram for 30 minutes. Maybe you notice after five minutes that it wasn't what you intended to do, you can bring your attention back to the task at hand. And finally, focus or concentration. It just feels good. The final benefit is that it leads to a state of well-being when we are concentrated and focused in deeply engaged with what we're doing. To an extreme, if you dive into these in these meditative states, they can even lead to blissful experiences. Sometimes these are called the jhanas or absorption states. And they can be quite blissful. But just this sense of feeling good when we're engaged in something, when we're in that state of flow in the guided meditation that follows, all be giving you a step-by-step tutorial on how to do the basics of a concentration meditation. The essence of this practice is to set an anchor for yourself, to pick one object for your attention, and to keep your mind coming back to that spot again and again. For most people, this would be the breath using the feeling of the breath in the body. And then whenever your attention wanders away, you just gently guided back to your anchor, to the breath. This is going to happen again and again and again. What's important to know here is that it's the noticing distraction and coming back. This is like the bicep curl of concentration. To actually see distraction and wandering away as a good thing. Because it gives you the opportunity to come back to strengthen that muscle of returning your attention. Often people will try to practice some form of this focused attention practice. And whenever they get lost in thought, they'd get discouraged thinking this is a bad thing. But when you see it correctly, you see that it's actually an opportunity to do another bicep curl to strengthen that attention. You ready to try it out? Go ahead and click on that guided meditation to get a taste of concentration practice. Then I'll see you in the next video. 17. 2.4b - Guided Meditation: Concentration: Welcome to this guided meditation practice on developing concentration. Once again, finding a nice comfortable seat somewhere or you can sit comfortably, relaxed, but at the same time alert and awake. And allowing the eyes to close. For this practice will be using the tool of an anchor. Single spot in the body that you come back to over and over. Maybe start by connecting with your breathing. Just allowing the body to breathe naturally. Notice where do you feel your breath most clearly in the body. As you sit still. Whereas the breath most apparent. It might be the movement of the belly or the expansion and contraction of the chest. Maybe the feeling of air coming in and out of the nostrils. Just choosing one spot where you feel it most clearly. For the rest of this meditation, make that your anchor spot. See if you can just follow the movement of the breath. Physical sensations at that one location. If you're using the belly, just feeling the rising and falling of the belly. Eventually you'll notice your mind starts to wander off. And when this happens, just gently guide yourself back to that same anchor spot. The mind again gets distracted by a thought or a sound very gently without any judgment. Guiding your attention back. Feeling the in-breath. Using the out-breath. No matter how many times your mind wanders off. Practice is to simply guide yourself back to the breath. Starting again. Knowing that each time you notice the distraction and come back here, strengthening that muscle of concentration. Strengthening your ability to reorient your attention. Just noticing where is your attention right now? Can you guide it back towards the breath? Connecting with the feeling in the body? If you find it helpful, you can quietly in your mind, say breathing in with the in-breath. Quietly in your mind, say breathing out with the out-breath. Breathing in, feeling the sensation of the breath. Breathing out, feeling the sensation of the out-breath. The moment you notice that your mind has wandered off, really see if you can be gentle with yourself. No judgment, no criticism. Just noticing, lost in thought again. Start again at the breath. Then to close this practice, we can take a deep breath in. Deep breath out. Great job. That was an introduction to concentration meditation practice. 18. 2.5 - Impulse Control: The next key skill we can cultivate is what we might call impulse control or self-management. This ability to not act on every impulse, every urge that we have, but to be more intentional about our actions. Another way of thinking about this is to be responsive rather than reactive. There's this great quote, and it comes from a summary of Victor Frankel's work by the author Stephen Covey. And the quote goes like this, between stimulus and response, there's a space. And in that space is your power to choose your response. And in your response lies your growth and your freedom. So the question is, can we access that space between stimulus and response? For most people that space is 0. There's some stimulus and we just react right away and maybe we see a doughnut and we grab for it and put it in our mouth. We pull out our phone and we see the Instagram app and we just click on it without thinking. The question is, can we be more intentional? Can we see these impulses to act? And then think about, is this how I want to live my life? Do I want to click on this button? Do I want to eat this food? Do I want to behave in this way? Or is there something that's more aligned with my values, a different way of living? So what are the real-world applications of this mental quality for? I hope it's obvious. Let's say you're sitting on the couch late at night and you're watching a movie, and all of a sudden there's a boring spot in the movie and you get this impulse to pull out your phone and check your email. Can you actually have the willpower, this strength of my net impulse control to not actually reach into your pocket and pull it out, put to just leave it there. In the world we live in of hyper distractions and tasty foods and tasty tidbits on the Internet. Having impulse control is a bit like a superpower. So how do we cultivate more impulse control? How do we learn this tool of self-management? One very simple practice that I love is to simply practice sitting still in your meditation. The key to it is this. The next time you sit down for a meditation? Let's say it's a five-minute meditation or a ten minute meditation. To sit down with the intention. At once you get yourself in your posture to not move a single muscle. To notice when you have an H that you'd like to scratch, but instead of itching it to simply notice the urge. The same for shifting your legs or fidgeting and see if you can avoid actually moving. Just notice the urge to move, but don't act on it. The more often that you do this, what you're doing is training yourself to not act on every impulse you have, but to observe and just notice the urge without acting on it. Another thing we can do to cultivate more impulse control is to cultivate something called equanimity or to do an equanimity meditation practice. Equanimity essentially is the ability of the mind to be non-reactive. It is that aspect of impulse control. At the root level. What it is, it's the ability of the mind to see something pleasant without grasping after it, and to see something or experience something unpleasant without running away from it or pushing the thing away. This is the quality of equanimity in the form of a meditation practice. What this would look like is simply noticing what's arising, whether it's pleasant or unpleasant, without reacting to it. For example, you might notice an unpleasant sensation in the body, like a pain in the body. To simply notice unpleasant without trying to push it away or think only this pain weren't here. But to observe it, to turn towards that experience. Similarly, when you experience something pleasant, can you simply observe it without feeling the need to grasp after it, even emotionally? Often if we have a pleasant experience in meditation, we think, oh, yes, that's it. I want more of that experience. But can you simply say, Oh, that's pleasant. I don't need more of it. I don't need to hold onto this feeling. I can just let it pass through me. This is cultivating a detachment or non-attachment to pleasant sensation. And it's cultivating, letting go of aversion or running away from unpleasant. This is gonna be really valuable in your task of building up your impulse control. In the meditation that follows, we'll do a bit of both of these, the sitting still practice. And then also this practice of equanimity. Noting whether something is pleasant or unpleasant without reacting to it. Go ahead, enjoy that meditation and then I'll see you in the next video. 19. 2.5b - Guided Meditation: Impulse Control: Welcome to this guided meditation practice on cultivating more impulse control. Once again, finding a comfortable posture, allowing the eyes to close. Maybe starting with just a few grounding deep breaths. Breathing in deeply. Exhaling fully. One more deep breath just at your own pace. One way of cultivating impulse control is to simply practice sitting still. For this meditation. I'll invite you to find a comfortable seat and then see if you can just keep that posture. Noticing when you might have the impulse to change your posture. Maybe to scratch an itch. Instead, see if you can remain still. Like a tall, majestic mountain. Over time, this practice of sitting still can help you deal with impulses. Instead of reacting impulsively. Can you simply sit and watch? As you sit? We can also practice some mindful breathing. You breathe, just feeling the sensations in the body. Feeling the belly rising with the in-breath, falling with the out-breath. Cultivating that focused attention or concentration. Staying with the anchor. Whenever your mind wanders off, just gently coming back to the breath. Again with that intention for this practice of sitting still. If you notice an impulse in the body to move or shift, can you just give it a label? There is an itch. A desire to move my legs. No need to judge it or grit your teeth in resistance, but just notice when a desire to move or shift arises. Nothing else you need to do right now. Just allow yourself to sit. Maybe notice your breath. Good feel that stability of sitting still. Sometimes the urge to move, fidget will be strong. There might be a strong itch in the body. When this happens, see if you can notice the urge in that first moment. If you need to shift or just do it mindfully. Not a reactive movement. Intentional decision. It can also be helpful to bring in the phrases of equanimity. Reminding yourself this is how it is right now. Right now it's like this non-reactive, calm state of mind that's just aware of how things are. Without grasping after pleasure or running away from pain. Simply sitting still. And to close this practice, we can take a deep breath in a deep breath. Great job. This is a first meditation, introduction to impulse control and learning how to sit still. 20. 2.6 - Self-Compassion: One of the most overlooked mental qualities that we can cultivate, compassion, and in particular, self-compassion or self-love, especially when it comes to changing habit patterns that we might be ashamed of or insecure about cultivating this ability to treat yourself with kindness, to love who you are. It's an absolutely essential part of the path to recovery. Why is self-love so important to recovery at the foundation of any type of addiction, whether it's a drug or alcohol addiction or won't one of these more behavioral addictions is this fundamental inability to be at ease with yourself and who you are. There's this underlying need to escape the reality of who you are in that present moment when we're self-critical or judging ourselves, it can lead us into these downward spirals of acting out. So what happens is we feel bad about what's going on. We seek to act out either from distraction or numbing out or some way of easing the pain of that moment. This leads us to feeling worse about ourselves. And so we act out again, and that's the downward spiral. The solution to this problem is to learn how to love who you are. Not in an egotistical or conceded way, but from this place of knowing that you are worthy of love and respect, developing that sense of self-worth from within. When you start to love yourself and you start to heal the relationship you have with yourself. Not only is it easier to break free from addictive behaviors are addictive habits. But your world in general is just a more positive place to live in. Your world becomes more joyful, more contented. Just a nicer way to live when you actually enjoy the voice in your head. It reminds me of this ancient samurai poem. It goes like this. I make my mind, my friend. Just imagine what your life would be like if your mind and your thoughts were supportive rather than critical. If you were your own best ally in any situation, what would that allow for you to achieve or accomplish or feel? Just stop and think for a moment of how much better your life would be if you could be kind to yourself even when you mess up at something. So how do we begin to cultivate this quality of self-love? How do we start loving ourselves, particularly if our whole life, we've been beating ourselves up. There are two key methods, so I'll describe both of them. The first is to reflect upon this question. What would a friend say to me about this issue? If a close friend or a mentor, we're here in new about this problem I were facing. What would they say to me? Often when you do this little reflection, it can help and give you this additional perspective to realize you might be treating yourself a little too hard. You can also flip this around and say, if a friend of mine were struggling with the exact same issue, what would I say to them? Usually again, when you do this reflection, you see that you shouldn't be so hard on yourself. So that's one way of starting to cultivate this kind or voice in your mind. The second way is through what we might call a loving kindness meditation practice. This is where we are intentionally using these phrases of loving kindness, sometimes called metta meditation, to wish well for some being. And we can direct those well-wishes at other people. We can also direct those well-wishes. I'd ourselves. The main idea, again, getting back to neuroplasticity is that if we practice a thought often enough, over time, it becomes the inclination of the mind. It becomes the habitual responsive demand. So in loving-kindness meditation, we simply repeat these phrases of loving kindness again and again and again over time. That becomes the habitual response. For traditional loving-kindness. You might repeat phrases like, may you be happy, may you be peaceful. May you be safe? May you be protected. For this one? We're going to shift it a little bit. We're gonna do a bit more of the compassion phrase. And this is to specifically oriented towards the suffering of someone. What the phrases would be in the case of compassion or something more like, I care about my pain. I care about my suffering. May I be free from pain and suffering? It's this quality of orienting the mind. Well wishing in the face of someone suffering. We can do this by directing it at someone we care about. And then we can turn that same quality on ourselves. So go ahead and check out the guided meditation. You're gonna get an introduction to a compassion meditation practice. After that, I'll see you in the next video. 21. 2.6b - Guided Meditation: Self-Compassion: Welcome to this guided meditation on self-compassion. Go ahead and find a nice comfortable seat. Relaxing into your posture. Maybe closing the eyes. Take a few moments to soften the body. Maybe relaxing the tension in the neck and shoulders. Softening the muscles in the face, the muscles around the eyes, and letting the belly be soft. For this practice of self-compassion, we'll do a form of loving-kindness or compassion meditation. To do this first, bring to mind someone from your life who you care about. Who has also been a mentor for you. Benefactor might be someone like a former teacher or coach, maybe an older relative. Someone who has helped you out in life in some way. Visualize this person sitting in front of you. Seeing the way they smile. As if they were looking directly at you. And reflecting on this person's life. Knowing that they also go through times of difficulty. In times of sadness and frustration. Times of anger or loneliness. Reflecting on the pain that this person inevitably fields from time to time. Knowing this, we can send them our compassionate wishes. In your mind, repeating these phrases. As you imagine sending these wishes to this person. I care about your pain. I care about your suffering. May you be free from pain and suffering? Again, just visualize this person and connect with that feeling that cares for their well-being. Again, the phrases, I care about your pain. I care about your suffering. May you be free from pain and suffering? Can you connect with that feeling of wishing well for this person, caring for them? Maybe in your mind, you might imagine giving this person a hug. I'm putting an arm around them. Just letting them know that you're there for this person. Is feeling is the feeling of compassion. Now we can shift this feeling towards ourselves. Bring your own self to mind. Think of something difficult in your life right now. Maybe a feeling of irritation with someone. Maybe frustration with yourself, is something that is difficult. Then can we become this compassionate friend for ourselves? To do this? Repeating those phrases. I care about my pain. I care about my suffering. May I be free from pain and suffering? See if he can connect with that feeling of just caring for yourself. Can you turn towards your suffering with kindness and compassion? I care about my pain and care about my suffering. May you be free from pain and suffering? May I live with ease? May be helpful to visualize giving yourself a hug, whatever that looks like. Putting an arm around your own shoulder. Just saying to yourself, I'm here for you. Tapping into that flavor of care. Compassion. Great job. This was a guided meditation on cultivating self-compassion. 22. 2.7 - Contentment: In the final quality we need on this pathway to getting unhooked is contentment. In many ways in our life, we are training the mind to want more without even realizing it. From the ads we see on TV to the curated Instagram profiles that we're looking at, to the **** videos we might be watching where everything is kind of fake and manicured. We are training the mind to always be wanting more and better and faster and stronger. It can feel like no matter how far we've come, no matter how much we've achieved, we're always in this state of lack of not being good enough yet. And that can be really detrimental to our mental health. Of course, the antidote to this state of lack or not having enough, we're not being enough is to cultivate that sense of contentment with her life. To cultivate this satisfaction, this deeply rooted satisfaction with what we have and who we are, you can be the richest person in the world. But if you're always focused on what other people have, you can still be miserable. We probably all know these stories of celebrities who seemed to have it all, who have all the material positions in the world. But then are suffering from depression are sometimes commit suicide because of that mental illness. Hopefully we can learn the lesson in this, which is that happiness and satisfaction doesn't come from external things. It doesn't come from material wealth, comes from our relationship to what we have and who we are, and the relationships we have in our life. And that the more we think our happiness lies in external things or an approval, the more miserable will become. So think for a moment about your own digital addiction and what brought you here to this course. And how much of your behavior around that digital addiction is from some subtle yearning for more in life. Maybe you want more likes or more comfort or more pleasure, more approval. Whatever it is, is this sense of not having enough or not being enough. Just imagine what it would be like to be truly content with who and what you are in the present moment. Most of these addictions would fall away if you were truly content. So how do we cultivate contentment? Again, what we know is that what we practice grows stronger. One simple way that you are probably familiar with is something like a gratitude journal every day to simply write down three things that you're grateful for. Each time you're doing this, you're training the mind to look at what am I grateful for in my life? What do I appreciate in my life right now? That's one very simple way of cultivating more containment. We can also do this in a formal meditation practice to do something like a gratitude meditation, where you are actually simply being grateful for whatever you notice in the meditation. One way that I really like to do this is through a gratitude body scan. This is to go through the body and simply bring some gratitude to each part of the body. For example, to feel the breathing of the lungs and be grateful for the air that it's bringing to the rest of your body. Even on a very subtle level of attending to the breath ring mindful of each breath. Can you be content with just the way the breath is, not wanting it to be deeper or more pleasant or anything like that. But just saying this and breath the way it is right now is good enough. Also with your meditation in general, can you bring that quality of acceptance and contentment to the quality of your meditation, not wanting it to be other than India's purchased. Saying the way this meditation is right now is good enough. Checkout the guided meditation that's attached and dive into this practice of contentment and gratitude. And then I'll see you in the next video. 23. 2.7b - Guided Meditation: Contentment: Welcome to this guided meditation on developing gratitude. Finding a nice comfortable posture. Allowing the eyes to close. Starting with deep breath, breathing in, exhaling, fully. Softening the body. Finding that place of stillness. Starting by tuning into the breath. Noticing where you feel your breath. Cultivating that mindful presence. There are many ways to practice gratitude. We can simply orient the mind towards appreciation of what is present in our life. It can be as simple as starting with the breath. Can we be thankful for each and every breath? As you breathe in? Can you appreciate the feeling? The subtle warm vibrations in the body? Perhaps sending gratitude to the body for breathing, bringing air and the oxygen, all the different parts of the body. We can expand this gratitude to other parts of the body as well. Starting at the top of the head. Moving downward. Bringing your awareness to your eyes. Can you be grateful for the eyes, for seeing? Thank you for giving me the gift of sight. Down to the nose. Thank you for smelling. Thank you for giving me the gift of smell. And down to the mouth, feeling the tongue, the teeth. Thank you for giving me the gift of taste and the gift of speech. May I not take these things for granted? Moving down the neck and into the shoulders. Moving your awareness down through the arms and into the hands. Sending some appreciation for the arms and hands. Thank you for allowing me to use my arms and hands to interact with the world. Feeling into the palms of the hands and all the fingers. Appreciating what these allow you to do. Cooking, writing, typing, playing games. Moving throughout the world. Bringing your awareness back up through the arms and into the center of the chest. Being aware of the lungs. Can you be grateful for the lungs? Thank you for breathing every moment of my life. Moving down through the abdomen, all the way down into the legs. Maybe feeling the right leg first and then the left leg. Again feeling that appreciation. Thank you for moving the throughout the world. Giving me the gift of mobility. Then expanding your awareness throughout the body and just seeing is there anywhere else is calling for a year. Gratitude. Now I'm bringing your awareness back to the breath. Can you be content with just this breath? Nothing more and nothing less. To close this practice, we can take a deep breath in. Deep breath out. Well done. This was a gratitude body scan and appreciation practice. 24. 2.8 - Module Wrap-Up: Great work on building these strong mental foundations. By now you've done the work to establish a strong and compelling vision for the future. And you've started to lay the foundation of mental qualities that are going to help take you there. In the next module, we're gonna start diving into the science of Habit Change, habit formation, and looking at the routines and behaviors that are going to bring real lasting change into your life. When you are ready for that, go ahead and check out that next module and I'll see you there. 25. 3.1 - Physical health habits: This module is all about activation. How do we activate a new set of daily habits and routines? How do we master the art of self-discipline? And what do we need to know about habit change to be on that transformation journey? This is all about the nitty-gritty of changing your habits and behaviors. And it all starts with the body, if any habit change or recovery program that you are taking part in doesn't include a honest and courageous look at how you're taking care of the body, then it is incomplete. I don't care how much mindset work you do. If you're not taking care of the three physical health habits, then whatever change you find is not going to be sustainable. It's not going to last in the long-term. And it's not gonna be as effective or as easy to reach. In this video, I'll be covering the three physical health habits that should be at the forefront of your recovery journey. These are exercise, nutrition and sleep. Just a note here, this is not going to be a comprehensive coverage of any of these three categories. Each of the three categories can and should have its own course. And we're just going to be covering the basics here, just some quick tips to get you started for these physical health habits. So first up, physical health habit number one is exercise. So many people think that energy is a limited supply, that if you exercise it's going to deplete your energy and take away from other activities. But the truth is, is that the opposite is true. The more we exercise, the more energy we have on a day-to-day basis. It actually replenishes your batteries, it gives you energy back. My guess is that you've experienced this. If you sit on the couch all day. If you're lazy, if you're not doing a whole lot, you feel lethargic, like you don't have any energy to even go for a walk around the street. But if you get in the habit of, let's say going for a run each morning or going for a walk every day. You actually feel more energized on a day-to-day basis. You feel lighter on your feet, like you can do more in each day, aside from the fact that exercise actually gives you energy, we know it also plays a role in changing your habits. It actually improves your ability to regulate your emotions. It improves your self-control in your willpower, and it boosts your mood and well-being. Exercise should really be at the forefront of any transformation you're trying to bring into your life. So i'll, I'll offer to you just a few basic tips if you're new to exercise. If you don't know how to get started with it. Here are a couple easy tips of how to introduce it into your life. Tip number one is to simply start your day with five push-ups and five air squats. This is an easy way to start getting the body moving, especially at the start of the day. All it takes is five push-ups and five air squats. There is literally no excuse that you can't do that. Anyone can get started with that. Tip number two is to walk more often. Here what I recommend is see if you can get around 10 thousand steps per day. You don't need an activity tracker. Most phones will also be tracking your steps. It's not gonna be as accurate, but it's a good sense of how far you're moving. That 10 thousand mark is a good amount to aim for. It gets you out of the house, gets you moving around. Tip number three is to find a sport that you like or a group exercise activity. This might be going to a yoga class. It might be going and playing some pickup basketball, but finding something to do that you actually enjoy the movement is going to help you get more exercise. What it comes down to is just finding something that works for you, find ways to move the body everyday. Physical health habit number two is all about nutrition. This, we can look on that quote that we've all heard before, that you are what you eat. Now this is a literal statement. You are literally made up of the atoms, the molecules and compounds that you put into your body. So the question for you is, do you want to be made up of candy and Doritos and junk food? Or do you want your body to be made up of real whole foods? There's so much science behind how proper nutrition can make us feel better and live longer and improve our mental performance as well. So just take a moment and reflect on how your nutrition is going. Are you feeding yourself with nourishing food? Or are you putting junk into your body? Here are my top three nutrition tips. Tip number one is just to reduce the amount of sugar in your diet. We know that sugar is the **** of the food industry. It's hyper stimulating and there's no real nutritional value. It's addictive, it's just overall not that good for you. You don't need to be super extreme about this. You don't need to cut it out completely. And it's great to enjoy your life and treat yourself once in awhile. But just see if you can reduce the amount of sugar, the sugar in so many things these days, it can be easy to go overboard without knowing it. Nutrition tip number two is just to eat whole foods. And when I say whole foods, foods that don't have too many ingredients on the ingredients label. If there's a whole list of things that you don't know how to pronounce. There's a good chance it's not a whole food. Things like whole vegetables, fruits, meats, things of that nature where it's just a single ingredient in there. That's gonna be a whole food nutrition tip number three is to eat in moderation to see if you can eat just up until the point before you get full. A tip that I like to offer to some of my clients is see if you can stop eating two bytes before your full. This is gonna be a great practice in mindful eating and also just self-awareness, knowing what's going on in your body. Those are my three tips on healthy eating and nutrition, physical health habit number three is all about sleep. Again, there's so much science on this topic. I don't need to go into too much, but just we know now how important sleep is for all sorts of aspects of your mental health and well-being. Not to mention what it can do for our ability to self-control, to have self-discipline, to manage our cravings and addictions. So if you want to be at your best, It's important to improve not just the quantity, but also the quality of your sleep. Here are a few tips on improving your sleep. The first is see if you can get at least eight hours of sleep a night. The next thing you can do to help yourself out is to limit the screen time before bed. Nice rule of thumb is to put down all your screens, whether it's your phone or computer or your TV, at least one to two hours before you go to bed. The third tip that's gonna be really helpful is to keep your phone out of your room. This is a huge one, particularly if you're struggling with any sort of digital addiction. Keep that phone plugged in, in your kitchen and your living room. You can leave it in your car. If you have a car just somewhere that is not in your room within reach of your bed, is one of the most important things that you can do for getting better sleep and also helping to beat those digital addictions. The last tip is to make your room as dark and as cool as possible. We know that the body thrives for sleep. These dark and cool conditions. So putting out blackout blinds, getting that AC on if you're able to finding a way to optimize the sleep environment. Now that's just a crash course on sleep. If you want more information on the science behind sleep and the research on different sleep habits. You can check out my other course sleep masterclass. All right, those are the three physical health habits that you're going to need on this journey of getting unhooked. Again, the key idea is to set yourself up for success by keeping your body healthy. We know that a healthy body leads to a healthy mind. And a healthy mind is going to be one that is easier to break free from these digital addictions in these compulsive behaviors. With that, I'll see you in the next video where we're going to dive into the topic of building a powerful morning routine. 26. 3.2 - Morning Routine: Now one of the best ways to start transforming your life and your daily habits is to have a powerful, inconsistent morning routine. When you look at some of the most successful people in the world, the majority of them have some sort of daily ritual or morning routine practice. Whether it's just sitting down with a coffee in the morning paper or doing some gratitude, journaling or meditating. There's some aspect to that daily routine, that daily ritual at self-discipline in the morning. That is important. Now there are three major benefits to having a strong morning routine practice. The first is that it just sets a positive tone at the start of the day. That positive tone gets carried out throughout the rest of the day into all your other activities. There's really nothing better than waking up and starting the day off on the right foot. The second major benefit to having a morning routine is that it gives you a quick win for the day. And you can use that momentum to accomplish other things. In the same way that a line of dominoes, you drop the first domino and that hits the second and that hits the third. It's the same with getting these quick wins at the beginning of the day. It makes it easier to accomplish your goals later on. The third major benefit, and this is probably the most important, is that it's an opportunity to tackle the meaningful and important things in your day while you're energy is high before your energy drops later on in the day before you have a lot of excuses or just start to procrastinate on things, gives you that opportunity to tackle what's really important to do those meaningful things right at the start of the day. These are some of the reasons why it's great to incorporate a morning routine practice. Particularly if your goal is to break free from digital addictions. Most people, when they wake up, the first thing that they do is check their phone. And so if you can learn how to break that habit and instead replace it with some healthy alternatives. That's going to make a huge impact on your life when it comes to formulating or devising a morning routine for yourself, I have six key recommendations that you can use. The first recommendation is to make your morning routine tech free. What I mean by that is to put your phone on airplane mode and put your computer away. And don't turn any of that on until after you complete whatever your morning routine is. So it might be a few minutes this a few minutes of that. But leaving your phone on airplane mode, not checking your phone, not checking your e-mail, not really doing anything tech related until after your morning routine has done. This is one of the most valuable things you can do for that morning routine. It's something that my client is telling me all the time. Just that alone makes a huge difference. Just imagine starting your day and having 20 minutes to an hour where you're not plugging in instantly to the latest gossip and breaking news, but you have that time to connect with yourself. That's gonna be a huge benefit for you. My recommendation number two for morning routines is to have something called a start-up sequence. Start-up sequence is a thing. It's the very first thing you do in your morning routine practice and it should be so simple that there's no real thought involved. It's that thing that just gets you going. It's the momentum. You get out of bed and you instantly go and do this startup sequence. Maybe it should be less than five minutes or so. It's the thing that because it doesn't take much thought, you can just kind of get it started and that gets the ball rolling for the rest of the morning routine. So as an example, my start-up sequence is a wake-up. Go use the bathroom or washed my face, and then I go start making coffee. That's my start-up sequence. And everyday it's the exact same thing. It's easy for me to know exactly what I need to do. And it just gets me out of bed and gets me moving. Recommendation number three is to write. This can take many different forms. It might be something like gratitude journaling or you're just writing out a few things you're grateful for. It might be a free flow journaling process where you're journaling on a prompt and just letting your thoughts flow onto the page. Or it can be something like planning the day and listing out the things you're going to do that day and what's really important. But some way of getting thoughts onto the paper or some way of writing freehand. There's something to that that is really beautiful part of a morning practice. Lot of successful people, people who are living intentionally have some sort of journaling or writing practice in the morning. Recommendation number four is to read. Here is where it's about nourishing your brain, feeding your brain with healthy stuff. So I love non-fiction of all different kinds, psychology, meditation, productivity, business. But doing just a little bit of reading in the morning can go a long way, particularly if you do it every day. Imagine if you spent five to ten minutes reading and you did that for the rest of your life. Could really learn a lot of stuff. And it also sets that positive tone for the rest of the day. Often I find myself reflecting on something I read in the morning and using that insight or wisdom in whatever I'm doing later on in the day. Recommendation number five is to make time for meditation or stillness. Time to slow down, to be with yourself, to kind of turn off the mind or center the mind, or cultivate the mental qualities that we talked about earlier. There are many different forms of meditation. Some are about cultivating specific things. Some are more about just resting and being with whatever is arising. In the last module, we talked about all these different mental qualities. What I'd recommend is even just two minutes can go a long way with meditation. Just sitting down and we focusing on your breath for two minutes, really make a big impact on the rest of the day. Recommendation number six, the final recommendation for the morning routine is finding some way to move. And this can be part of a formal exercise program. Maybe you decided to go on a run a few times a week or do some more formal sports activity. Just finding ways to get the blood pumping in the body, to move the body is going to be really beneficial for that morning energizing your state, shifting your state into that kind of powerful stance. That is the final recommendation for the morning routine practice. Now, all of the steps I've talked about, all of that morning routine juiciness can be done in less than 20 minutes. There's really no excuse that you don't have time for a morning routine practice. You can always wake up a little bit earlier. But it's just about being committed, being disciplined enough to actually do these different things. My recommendation is to do a small enough amount of each of those where you feel like you can do it consistently each day. For you, it might look like just picking one or two of those things I've mentioned. And using those for your morning routine, consistency is much more important than the overall depth that you do in these morning routine things. First, you just want to focus on getting it so that you're doing it every day. Here's your homework. Get started on your morning routine practice tomorrow morning. What you want to do right now is make a plan. What is your morning routine going to be? What's your start-up sequence and then what is your morning routine include? Then tomorrow you can get started. That's it for the lecture on building a powerful and consistent morning routine. In the next video, we're gonna talk about how to best activate your other habits, your other goals that you have. We're gonna be looking at something called behavioral architecture. Don't miss it and I'll see you in the next video. 27. 3.3 - Behavioral Architecture: And now, back in the old days, it used to be thought that habit change was all about self-control. That you just needed to toughen up and be stronger. And that if you couldn't change your habits, if you gave into temptation, it meant that you were just weak willed or not determined enough. For what we know now is that habit change is much less about this quality of self-control, much more about what we might call a stimulus control or behavioral architecture. Now what does that mean, stimulus control and behavioral architecture. What it means is that the environment that we find ourselves in, or rather the environment that we often put ourselves in has a big influence on whether or not we choose to eat that extra cookie or watch that extra episode on Netflix, or spent another four hours watching **** online. That the environment actually plays a key role in our ability to choose healthy habits or to get sucked into unhealthy habits. So here's a simple but easy to understand example. Let's say that you're trying to lose weight and eat healthier. One of the things that you struggle with is eating donuts or pastries. Now, if you decide to take the route to work each day that passes you directly in front of that doughnut shop. And every day you have to walk by and see those delicious looking donuts in the window, you're going to be much more likely to cave in and go and eat those donuts. And the person who chooses the route to work that doesn't pass them by those doughnut shops. Or another example, let's say you're trying to quit watching ****. But on your Instagram feed, all of the people you follow, our bikini clad Instagram influencers. And every time you open up the app, you're basically seeing these things that trigger your list. Again, it's gonna be much harder to quit watching **** if that's what you're feeding your attention every few minutes. Now the good news is that we can use this to our advantage. We can actually switch that example. Let's say you're trying to improve your fitness and run more often. If you put your running shoes and your workout clothes just next to your bed so that every morning when you wake up, it's much easier to just put on your workout clothes. That's going to help cultivate that healthy habit of running in the morning. Let's say you want to eat healthier. If you stock your fridge full of carrots and celery and things that are healthy to consume. When you open the fridge again, it's gonna be easy to make that choice with the healthy option. And this is where that term behavioral architecture comes in. We can actually be the architects of our environment to help enable healthier behaviors and help to diminish our unhealthy behaviors. We can set ourselves up for success by the things we put around us and by the things we don't put around ourselves. How do you actually do this? Let's very simple. First is just to notice anything that triggers your unhealthy or unwholesome habits or behaviors, whether it's **** or social media. Finding out what triggers that and removing as much of that from your environment as possible. Removing those stimulants, those triggers. The next step is to figure out what are the healthy habits you want to cultivate. And putting things in place that make those habits easier, that removes the friction to completing those habits. When it comes to cultivating a healthier relationship with social media and **** or maybe stopping your use of those altogether. I have a few recommendations. The first is to remove all of the social media apps and all of the web browsers from your phone. You can still use social media on your computer, but just the act of removing it from your phone already pulls away a lot of those stimulants, a lot of those triggers when you might be looking at it, just standing in line or when you're walking down the street. Another helpful tip is to move around the furniture in your home. This might sound strange, but there's something about the act of just having a different environment, a different feeling of where you are at that enables you to start fresh, to feel like you're not in the same, stuck in the same rights that can the same routines. So try moving around your furniture and getting that fresh start for your mind. The third is to not sleep with any tech in your bedroom. This is something I mentioned earlier, but again, this goes so far. Leave your phone outside of your bedroom, leave your computer outside of your bedroom. Again, it just provides that extra level of stimulus that trigger when you're in bed, you have your phone, it leads to bad things. So leave your phone outside your room, leave your computer outside your room. And that's going to help out quite a lot. Then finally, if you're keeping social media and just trying to have a healthier relationship to it. I'd recommend unfollowing any people that either trigger your **** or trigger your comparison. Any people that are not making you feel uplifted. There might be accounts you can unfollow accounts that are no longer serving you in your life that aren't leading you to wanting to make your life better. So don't be afraid to unfollow people. So take some time right now and just think about what are the things that you can do in your environment? How can you be the architect of your own environment to set yourself up for success? So now that we have a solid understanding of what actually leads to habit change, what is really helpful? We can next look at what are called the three phases of habit change. So you have a roadmap and understanding of what are the different phases you'll be going through on this journey. So head on over to that next section. I'll see you there. 28. 3.4 - The 3 Phases of Habit Change: Now as you begin to think about starting to change your habits, it may be as introducing a 30-day digital detox. Or maybe it's just changing your relationship to your phone and using it less. Whatever it is that you're thinking of committing to, thinking of changing in your life. It's important to understand what are called the three phases of habit change. These three phases that we're gonna cover really applied to any meaningful change you want to bring into your life. And when I seeing meaningful, I mean, it's gonna be something that you are going to face some resistance in any meaningful change. Anything that's going to actually make an impact on your life is going to have some resistance somewhere in there. Now the three phases of habit change is something that I picked up from the book organized tomorrow, today by Jason silk and Tom Barto. If you're interested in this topic and you want to go deeper into it and definitely check out that book. What is it a three phases. The first phase is known as the honeymoon phase. This is when everything is new and fresh and exciting. Your motivation is high. You're able to accomplish the tasks on a day-to-day basis that you set out for yourself. You just kinda feeling good about the change and everything feels easy and flowing. This usually happens in the beginning, first few days, maybe the first few weeks. That first honeymoon phase where it's all going smoothly. The second phase of habit change is what we call the fight through phase or the fight through stage. This is where you start to have these moments where maybe you wake up and you just have that thought. Maybe I'll skip one day or what's the problem if I cheat just a little bit? Or maybe pass on it today and I'll just get back on it tomorrow. It's when these moments come up where you start to slip back into the old habit or behavior. This is known as the fight through stage, because you actually have to fight through these moments in order to stay consistent. Now, in the fight through stage, there's good news and there's bad news. The bad news is that if you lose a fight through moment, let's say you have one of these thoughts of what's the big deal if I just cheat a little bit and you lose that fight through moment. What's going to happen is the next fight for a moment is going to be harder to win. It's gonna be harder to actually stay consistent with that habit because you will already have broken it and you think, well, I broke it a few minutes ago or a few hours ago. What's the problem if I break it again? So each time you lose a fight through, the next one gets harder. The good news is that every time you win a fight through every moment where you have one of these thoughts and you say, You know what? I'm going to stick with my habit. The next one you face is going to be easier. You're going to get more and more skill with winning this fight through periods. If you can learn how to get through your fight through moments on a consistent basis and allows you to get to phase three of habit change, which is second nature phase. Second nature phase is when you no longer have to think about what you're doing, you no longer have to put effort into the process. You simply do it like a second nature. Like it's part of what you've always done. For many of us, brushing our teeth, we are now in the second nature phase. With that. We do it every day, maybe twice a day. And we just kind of feel weird if we don't do it. If you've missed brushing your teeth in the morning or the evening, you feel a little bit gross for like something's off. This is second nature phase. As you try to change your habits and behaviors around your technology. Whether it's stopping yourself from watching **** or getting off of social media, we're just using it less. It's going to be really helpful to have this understanding, this framework of the three phases of habit change. To know when you're in that honeymoon stage, to know when you're in a fight through period, and to see how to get to that second nature phase. Now that we have an understanding of the roadmap of changing our habits, the next video we're going to look at what do we do when we're in the midst of one of those fight through periods. What are some things we can do when we're dealing with strong urges or desires. And how do we cultivate some self-management in those areas? When our behavioral architecture has failed us, when we're in the midst of that strong impulse or desire to act out. So head on over to the next video where we're going to talk about how to deal with urges. 29. 3.5 - Dealing with Urges: Now hopefully by this time you've done enough of the foundational work. Things like creating a compelling vision of the future and setting up your environment and doing that behavioral architecture and stimulus control. And then also cultivating these strong mental foundations. Hopefully you've done enough of the foundational work where overall you're experiencing less craving in your life. Now that being said, there are still going to be moments where craving pops up, where you have these fight through moments where the urge, the temptation to act out against your values, against your better wishes still arises. In this video, we're gonna talk about what do you do when those strong urges arise? What do you do when you have that strong compulsive feeling to reach for the phone, to reach for the computer to act out in some way. I'll be covering five basic strategies you can use for dealing with urges whenever they arise. The first strategy for dealing with urges is to use the power of investigation. Here what you want to do is use that technique we talked about earlier of labeling or noting. Whenever an urge arises to simply notice it and note it. Give it that label of, Oh, maybe it's ****. Maybe it is craving, maybe it is restlessness. Just kinda notice what's present in that moment. Little bonus here is that see if you can watch the urge for about 90 seconds. There were some interesting research that was done that shows that the majority of emotions only last for 90 seconds unless we feed them. If you don't feed an emotion, it should dissipate after about 90 seconds. What I'd like to recommend is if you notice that strong compulsive feeling to act, set a timer for 90 seconds and just do some mindful observing of your body and your feelings and then see what happens after 90 seconds. Oftentimes you'll find that the emotion, the feeling has passed away and you no longer feel the need to act out. Second strategy you can employ is to change your state, to change the state of your body, changed the state of your mind. And my favorite tools for this are our good old friends, push-ups and squats. So wherever you are, you can always do five push-ups or ten push-ups. You can always do five or ten squats. Just that act of moving your body, changing the state, getting the blood pumping often will make a craving go away. Strategy number three for how to deal with urges and temptations is to call a friend. Here. It doesn't have to be something where you're calling them unnecessarily saying, Hey, I'm trying to deal with a strong urge to watch **** or to get back on social media. You can just call them to chat and just say, Hey, just wanted to see how you're doing or ask them a question. You can also make it an accountability buddy. If you feel open, if you feel vulnerable enough to share that with them, you can let them know what's going on and that you're using them as a way to just kind of let an urge or a feeling pass through you. But calling a friend is a really great way to kind of change your state mentally. The fourth strategy is to reconnect with the envisioning practices. You can either connect with that default future vision and say, where am I headed if I keep giving into this? Or you can connect with the dream future vision and say, what's really important to me? Where do I want to get to and is this thing going to get me where I want to go? Sometimes just the act of connecting with those different possibilities can give you that perspective and give you the motivation that you need to hold out a little longer. Strategy number five, and this one I love to talk about, which is if all else fails and you just can't resist it any longer to do the act, whatever it is, whether it's watching **** or getting on social media or eating that junk food, whatever it is you're trying to resist to allow yourself to do it, but to do it with mindfulness, to really pay attention to how you're feeling as you're doing it, each step of the way. As you open up your computer, as you do whatever it is, really be aware of the different emotions, the feelings in the body. Often this is the most sustainable route to habit change because you start to see how the thing really makes you feel. It's like putting your hand in a fire. You don't really put your hand in the fire and need to think about this is hot and what are the pros and cons? When you put your hand in the fire and new experience, the heat, you automatically pull your handout. And it's the same way with being aware of the different emotions and feelings of doing whatever habit you know, is not good for you. When you really see how it affects you. Your body naturally will start to pull away from it. You start to be less attached to that habit or that activity. So that's the fifth and final strategy for dealing with urges, which is to just do the thing but really pay attention as you do it. Those are the five strategies for dealing with urges, dealing with temptation. In the next video, we're going to talk about the final thing that breaks us down when it comes to changing habits, changing behaviors. This is the saboteur. So we're gonna look at how do we deal with the Sabbath tour. What does that all about? So I'll see you in the next video. 30. 3.6 - Dealing with the Saboteur: If you're going to be successful on this self transformation journey, you've got to understand who your biggest enemy is. Your biggest enemy is the enemy from within, that you are your own greatest source of sabotage and resistance. One of the ways that this battle is going to manifest is with what's called the saboteur. The Salvador has many other names. Sometimes he's called the inner critic. Sometimes he's called the judge. In the Buddhist tradition and the name is Mara. Sometimes it's called resistance and this will show up in many different ways in your life. It might be procrastination or self judgment, might be fear and anxiety, might be victimhood or blaming other people. There are many different ways that the saboteurs is going to show up. But ultimately the saboteur is there to keep you in the comfort zone, to keep you away from growth. Whenever you try to make a big change to improve your life, the saboteur is there to keep you stuck, to keep you in that stagnant place. I want to say a few words on how to deal with the cyber tour. How do you deal with this self-sabotage that's going to show up in this journey. The first thing that's important to know about the saboteur is to recognize that the intentions behind the saboteur or actually good intentions. The saboteur evolved as this evolutionary mechanism that was there to try to keep you safe from harm. For example, think about self judgment or self-criticism that evolved as a way to try to keep you safe from being excluded from the tribe. It says, Okay, how can we make ourselves better so that we aren't going to be kicked out of the trie. We're not going to be left out so that we're not going to die alone. Whenever I recognize the saboteur showing up in my life, I like to just turn to it and say thank you for trying to keep me safe. But I need to do something else right now. It's this act of acknowledging. You're trying to keep me safe and you're just misguided. Another way to work with the saboteur or self-sabotage is simply to notice and label it. Again, this goes back to that power of investigation of labeling. But when we see the Sabbath tour, when we see it happening and we just say, Oh, I see You, then it will not have as much power over us. Often the saboteur is most effective when it's working behind the scenes. So again, whenever you see it showing up, just give it that soft label. The Salvatore is here trying to hold me back. The third thing you can do with the saboteur is when you notice the saboteurs speaking, you'd be saying these thoughts in your head. You can turn to the other voice in your head and you can ask, what would the inner CEO have to say? What is the voice of wisdom have to say. Sometimes it's helpful to have a kind of inner committee. You've got different people, different voices in your head. And you can check in with different people. You can say, okay, this avatar has this to say. What does my inner CEO have to say? Sometimes you don't have an inner CEO, but you can connect with the image or idea of a mentor or a coach. You can say, okay, what would the Dalai Lama say to the Saturday tour right now? Or what would my mentor, I have to say? Some way of connecting with a different perspective. A different voice can bring some clarity to the situation. But most of all, when you notice that the saboteurs present to see if you can be kind to yourself, to see if you can not judge yourself, not blame yourself, but simply be gentle and keep moving forward knowing that the Sabbath tour and self-sabotage and inner critic and visits everyone to know that you're not alone. And to keep moving forward. 31. 3.7 - Module Wrap-Up: Great work on completing this module of activating your habits and routines. We've looked at a few different things you can implement and integrate. Powerful morning routine, different ways to set yourself up for success, and then how to deal with self-sabotage and some of the things like roadblocks and resistance that's gonna show up along the way. In the next module, we're gonna look at deepening on this journey to real inner fulfillment and inner peace. What are the things that are going to bring us, the happiness that we seek? We've looked at what do we want to get rid of? Where do we want to go? Then what's going to take us to that deeper level of inner fulfillment and inner peace. I'll see you in that next module. 32. 4.1 - The Ultimate Goal: Welcome to the fourth and final module of the unhooked course, breaking through to deeper fulfillment. So let's start with a question. Why are you here? I mean, why you really hear? What's the deeper point of trying to break free from your digital addiction? At the heart of most people's goals and aspirations lies a deep desire for real happiness, for inner peace and well-being. I know that this is what got me started on this journey of self-mastery and meditation and mindfulness. My guess is that it's what brought you here as well, is that yearning for a deeper life, more fulfilling and satisfying life. Happiness is said to be that one goal that we pursue for its own sake. In this module, we're gonna be looking at what are some of the things that we can focus on and cultivate to tap into that deeper sense of fulfillment, real happiness in life. If you're thinking, Jeremy, I don't really need this module. I'm just here to break free from my tech addiction. Well, think again. Why do you think that tech addiction formed in the first place? All the addictions we have, whether they're tech addictions or drug addiction or substance addictions? Form because there's some fundamental unmet need in our life. There's some underlying pain or suffering that's going on. And we're using this addiction as a way to cover up that pain, that suffering in our life. So until you tackle that problem of deeper discontent or dissatisfaction, these addictive patterns, these addictive behaviors are gonna continue popping up in your life. Even if you're able to squash one addictive habit through brute force. Another one is just going to pop up somewhere else. This is why we need to cultivate this deeper, more fulfilling life. In this course, we're focused on long-term recovery, real freedom from addictive habits and behaviors. Our goal here is to help you create a life that doesn't need any form of addiction. A life that we don't need to distract ourselves from. In this module, I'll be covering the five important pillars of a deeply fulfilling and happy life. 33. 4.2 - Solitude: Now there's a quote that I love from Blaise Pascal, who was a French mathematician and philosopher and theologian. He says this, all of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone. Now that might sound like an exaggeration to say that all of humanity's problems stem from this issue. But you could probably make a strong argument that a lot of the suffering that exists in the world, a lot of the violence that exists in the world is because of this inability to fundamentally be alone with ourselves. It's that Each that a lot of us feel to need to be going out and achieving and conquering and owning and doing all this stuff. As opposed to being able to sit quietly in a room alone. That fundamental tendency of the mind, of the human spirit that wants to go out and conquer and own and achieve causes a lot of suffering. Now, regardless of the outer consequences of this human tendency, hopefully you can see that there's a direct link between this tendency, this inability to sit quietly in a room alone, and our inner consequences, our inner suffering that we experience. This is what tech addiction most of the years is that inability to be with our own thoughts. And so this leads us to the importance of cultivating what we call solitude. The importance of being able to be alone with your thoughts. If we truly want inner peace, we have to learn how to be still, how to not be jumping from distraction to distraction, from Escape to escape, to dive into this, I really like the concept of solitude as illustrated are described by Cal Newport in his book digital minimalism. The way he described solitude is that it's the absence of input from other minds. We can see that it's not about finding a quiet place where nothing's going to disturb you. It's about what you're letting into your mind. Often we might be in a quiet place, but it's, we're bringing in podcasts and news and social media and distractions of all sorts that are interrupting our ability to find that solitude. Solitude so important. I'll mention three reasons here, but there are undoubtedly more benefits to cultivating solitude. The first reason that solitude is important is that it's essential for self-awareness. If you want to know yourself on a fundamental level, you have to take the time to look within most of our attention, most of the day is looking outward. We're looking at news sites and Netflix and YouTube and work and e-mails and all these things that are pulling us away from ourselves. If you want to cultivate that healthy relationship with yourself, if you want to know yourself on a deep level, it starts with cultivating time for solitude. Your relationship with yourself is the most important relationship. You will ever have. This spending time of cultivating a relationship with yourself, of healing that relationship with yourself is really important. The second benefit, solitude, is that it helps us and break the cycle of addiction to distraction. Again, so often we're just jumping from one distraction to the next. With solitude, we are actively swimming upstream. We're going against the current to learn how to be comfortable with just being present with whatever is arising in the moment. The more we do this, we can start to remember what it's like to not be so connected, not be so distracted. Many of us, if we're old enough, remember a time in our childhood where we weren't so connected to our devices, we weren't so distracted. And remembering what that feels like is empowering. The third major benefit is that mastering the art of being alone gives you more power and more ability to be with other people in a real and meaningful way. That if you can learn how to be with yourself regardless of what's coming up for you. If you can learn how to be with yourself and not run away from what's difficult. It gives you more strength to be with others in their difficult moments. How do we make time for solitude? What are some healthy forms of solitude? I'll be listening five different forms that you can practice. But there are many others. Number one is meditation. In this can be as simple as sitting down for a minute or two minutes and doing nothing. But just that act of stopping what you're doing, being with yourself, your thoughts and your breath. This is a great way to practice solitude. Number two is going for a phone list, walk, or going for a hike. But some way of getting out and moving, being out in nature, getting some sunlight and fresh air. But importantly, without your phone, without listening to a podcast or an audio book, which is being out there by yourself without that input from other people. Number three is journaling. Journaling is a great way to practice solitude because it's about exploring what's going on in your inner world. Again, it's, there's no input from other people. It's about you exploring your own inner space, your own emotional world. Taking some time to journal in the mornings or on a regular basis is a great way to tap into solitude. Number four is to do household chores without podcasts, without audio books, without music. But just to do these daily routines like washing the dishes and being mindful while you're doing them. Another great way to find that solitude. The fifth one offer is to simply sit on your porch or a balcony or on public bench and just watch the world go by. This is a great way to slow down and to just be with whatever is arising. Again, no agenda, just sitting, just watching the world go by. So those are my tips on bringing more solitude into your life. Again, to help you tap into this deeper aspect, not running around, not having your mind so scattered, but learning how to be still had to be present for what's happening. To wrap up this section, I'll leave you with a quote that I love. And this comes from Henri knowing. He says this, to live a spiritual life, we must first find the courage to enter into the desert of our loneliness and change it by gentle and persistent efforts into a garden of solitude that covers it for the first pillar of happiness, all about solitude. In the next video, we'll look at the second pillar, which is all about living an ethical life. I'll see you there. 34. 4.3 - Ethics: When I think of my own life, often what causes me the most pain and suffering is remembering the times in my life, what I have acted unskillfully, where I've caused harm to other people through my actions. Whether it was through greed or anger or hatred or just my own delusion. The times where I have the most restless and sleepless nights are those times when I'm remembering the things that I've done that I've heard other people. On the flip side of this, the times where I sleep most peacefully or those days where I know that I haven't done anything wrong. And that I've been living in alignment with an ethical system, with an ethical framework of practicing nonviolence and non-harm and not living out of greed or anger or delusion. In the Buddhist tradition, we have a phrase for this. It's called the bliss of blameless business. In a sense, there is a certain kind of bliss or a certain kind of inner peace that we can experience when we know that we're living in a blameless way. One, we know that we're not causing harm to other people or not acting greedily or taking what has not been offered to us. That we can experience that sense of inner peace, that ease of mind without regret or remorse. And this is really related to that concept of ethics. Living in an ethical way to get a sense of the importance of ethics, it's okay at one of my favorite quotes. And this comes from a teacher named Anna Guernica Menander. He says something along the lines of this. He said, trying to gain spiritual insights without a grounding in moral action is like trying to row a boat across a river without first and tying it from the dock. In other words, you can do all the self-mastery work in the world. You can achieve all your goals and aspirations. You can earn a million dollars and you can be on top of the world. But if you're living in an unethical way, you're never going to find that sense of inner peace, that balance in the heart and mind. So how can we live more ethically? Well, it helps to have some sort of external framework, some sort of moral principles that you live by. And they don't have to be religious. Necessarily if you come from a religion and there is a set of moral principles or ethical guidelines, and they work for you. Then feel free to follow that. In this video, I'll be offering the ethical principles of Buddhism, which for me are very secular approach to ethics. There's nothing you need to believe in. There's no higher power you need to believe in for these. It's really just an ethical framework for how to live. The framework for ethics in Buddhism are called the five training precepts are the five ethical training presets. The first is to undertake the training to not harm any living being. In other words, this means to not kill and not hurt anything that has sentience, anything that can feel pain. The second precept is around not engaging in false or divisive speech. In other words, not lying, not gossiping, not using your words in a way to harm others or divide others. The third is to not take what has not been freely offered. This is a fancy way of saying to not steal things that aren't yours, but to not take what has not been freely offered. If it hasn't been given to you, it hasn't been offered to you to not take it. The fourth is to not take in toxicants that cloud the mind or lead to heedlessness. In other words, this one is around not taking drugs or alcohol or things that cloud the mind that lead you to do unwholesome or unskillful things. The fifth is to not engage in sexual misconduct. What this one means is to not harm other people with your sexual energy. It's not about celibacy, It's not about avoiding sexual contact. But it's about saying, how are you using your sexual energy in or you harming others with that energy. Now these five ethical training precepts should not be seen like commandments or things that if you do, it means you're a bad person. Instead, they should be guidelines. They should be seen more like stairways to happiness. The more that you can follow these, the more that you can live in this ethical way, the happier you are going to become. So it's not to say that you have to be perfect in any of these, but it's to assess your life and see where are you living out of alignment with some of these ethical principles. So maybe it takes some time right now and just assess your life and assess the way you're living. And maybe look at these five different ethical training precepts and ask yourself, where can I live more ethically? Or how can I bring more ethical practices into my life, right, Great job. So that is it on ethics. Next up we're going to be diving into the third pillar of happiness, which is all about playtime. I'll see you in the next video. 35. 4.4 - Play: Now, I firmly believe that a good life is a life that you enjoy living. One of the best ways to enjoy your life is to have more playtime. You might be thinking that play is just for kids, that adults, you shouldn't be playing around. But adults need played just as much as kids do. And the more you bring play into your life, the better off you're going to be both mentally and physically. What do I mean by play? I mean finding hobbies or activities or engagements that are putting you into a state of either flow or fun. Let's dive into these two different topics. Fun is obvious. When you're goofing off, you're being silly. You're laughing with friends. You're at ease and playful in your heart. This is what I mean by fun. The second is getting into a state of flow. Flow is a state of peak or optimal performance that you are fully engaged in the activity that you're doing. This has been studied by the researcher Mihai cheeks sent me high. And it is often described as being in the zone. It's that state where time is just flying by. You're not really aware of yourself anymore because you're so engaged in the activity. Some common examples of this are playing sports, doing mathematics, computer programming, playing video games. All of these things where it's challenging but it meets your skill level as well. So there's that sweet spot where it's something that's challenges you, but it also requires some skill and your skill is there to match it. Both of these are important. Fun is something that we used to do a lot when we were kids. Hopefully you can imagine what it was like to just play tag with your friends in how much joy you can bring into your life, just from running around in circles and trying to tag your friend. Flow is also important because it drops us into that state of letting go of the stories of ourselves. We're not so concerned about what people are thinking about us or what we think about ourselves. We just fully engaged in the activity that we're doing. This can bring a certain sense of vitality or energy to your life. We need to find ways to bring both of these back into our lives. Your homework is to simply reflect on these questions. The first question is this, what activities and bring me into a state of flow? Think about what are the activities that you do or you'd like to do that, you know, will bring you into that flow state. Or what are some activities that you want to get into that you feel like are going to be able to bring you into the flow state. The second question is, where can I be more playful in my life? Where can I be more playful in my life? Thinking about what areas, what people you might be able to be more playful with. What are some activities you can do where you can be goofy or silly or let go a little bit. Thinking about that question. The final question is, where can I bring more laughter into my life? So thinking about ways where you normally find laughter. Maybe it's watching stand-up comedy, or going to an event with your friends or playing board games. Finding ways where you can bring more laughter into your life. All right, once you're done with those reflections, you can head on over to the next section. We're gonna talk about the next pillar of happiness. All about generosity. I'll see you in the next video. 36. 4.5 - Generosity: Now the third pillar of a deeply fulfilling life is to practice generosity. Why is generosity such an important part of cultivating a fulfilling or happy life? There are three reasons. The first reason is that there is no special training required back in the ancient time of the Buddha. Generosity was known as the fastest path to happiness. It was the simplest and most direct way of bringing more happiness and well-being into life. Why is this the case? Well, with generosity, There's no special training involved. You don't need to become a master practitioner of generosity. It's very simple, it's very direct. Unlike something like meditation where you really need to train for a while, you need to learn the basics, you need to build up your skill in that practice. With generosity, It's very simple. That's the first reason why generosity is a fast path to happiness. The second reason is that it brings immediate results. Generosity. You experience the joy, the lightness of heart, the moment that you practice it, the moment you give something to someone, in a moment that you help someone in some way, you experience that joy. And it's not just in the moment that you experienced the joy. There's actually three different times where you experience the happiness of generosity. The first is in reflecting on thinking about practicing generosity, you will experience happiness when you buy a gift for someone and you're planning to give it to them, just thinking about the act of giving it to them will make you happy. Then the second time is when you give that gift, you experienced that joy in the moment. And then the third time is when you're reflecting on the act of having given. Thinking about a, an act of generosity from the past also brings happiness to the mind, also brings joy to your life. So thinking about that gift that you gave your friend or family member and the happiness of brought to them will make you happy. Those are the three different times that happiness brings immediate gladness and joy to the mind. The third reason that generosity is a fast-track to happiness is that it begins to unravel the forces of craving or greed in the mind. Especially for you in this course, we're here talking about tech addictions and craving and desire and all the suffering that, that can bring. Generosity is the direct antidote to those forces in the mind. The forces that says, I want this, I must have this, I need more of this. The direct antidote is to give some of that away. When you experience still being happy, still being content, and still being even better than you were before, after having released your possessions. It begins to unravel the forces of craving in the mind that is a direct leading to greater happiness in your life. This emphasis on generosity as a path factor for happiness is also supported by science. There was a really interesting study or series of studies that showed that when you spend your money on other people, it makes you happier than if you were to spend that same amount of money on yourself. Let's say you have an extra $20 or €20. If you spend that money on someone else to actually makes you happier than if you were to spend it on yourself. This is counter-intuitive to how most of us behave. We typically go out thinking, I'm gonna buy something for myself and that will make me happy. What we don't realize is that if it was happiness we were after, we would actually be wiser to spend that money on someone else. When we talk about generosity, it's not just giving up your material possessions to other people. It can also be giving your time and attention as well. We don't have to necessarily give a gift or a physical and material object. You can also just be spending time with someone or giving your full attention to someone, as opposed to listening while you're checking your Instagram feed. Generosity can take many forms. Now I'm not recommending that you give up all your possessions, that you give away all your things and become a renunciation monk. But what I am suggesting is that you try practicing small random acts of kindness or random acts of generosity in your day-to-day life. Some examples of this could be something like holding the door for someone or buying a coffee for a friend, or giving money to a homeless person on the street, or perhaps donating to a cause that you believe in. One of my meditation teachers, his name is Joseph Goldstein and he has a deep generosity practice and his practice looks like this. Whenever he has the thought to give something to someone, whenever that thought arises in the mind, he does it. So if he thinks, Oh, maybe I should give this to this person, then he follows through on that. He does this before his mind starts to make up different excuses around well, maybe I'll need this later or what if I don't have enough? Whenever that impulse arises, he acts on it. And he is one of the happiest people that I know. He must be doing something right? So your homework for today is to try and practice one moment of generosity today. Whether it's with a friend or a stranger or a family member. Seeing if you can practice that gift of giving, releasing the greediness, releasing the sense of possessiveness around your things in your possessions and saying, oh, how can I help someone? How can I give something to someone that will improve their life? So try this out and you will experience the joy that comes from practicing generosity. Great work on finishing up this section on generosity. Head on over to the next video where we're going to talk about the final pillar of happiness, which is all about community and connection. 37. 4.6 - Community: So welcome to the fifth and final pillar of happiness, which is all about community and connection. There's a beautiful story from the Buddhist tradition around the value of community. In the time of the Buddha, there was a young monk named Ananda. Ananda was the cousin of the Buddha and also his personal attendant. One day Ananda was sitting in meditation and came upon a deep insight. He went running to the Buddha and he said, I have discovered something really important, some deep insight. I've discovered that community and spiritual friendship must be a full half of the spiritual life. The Buddha looked at him and he said, not so Ananda, not so community in the spiritual friendships is all of the spiritual life. I love this analogy, I love this story because it reminds us that many of us recognize how important friendships and community is. But we don't realize how important it is. That as this story illustrates, it's the whole of the spiritual life is in how we're relating with our community. Water are our relationships like now, you can disagree with this all you like and that's fine. There's room for disagreement. But I think what's important to take away from this is that outside of the context of how you are with other people, none of this really matters. You can do all the self-improvement work. You can do all this self-mastery and make a million dollars and get a six pack and do all of that stuff. But if you're not living in harmony with other people, if you don't have deep connections and relationships with other people, it's not going to mean anything that real spiritual practice is not about how long you can sit in meditation or how deeply you can focus on your breath. It's about how do you treat the people in your life? How do you treat the strangers that you meet on a day-to-day basis? And how do you treat yourself? This is backed by science as well. In the Harvard Study of Adult Development, one of the most comprehensive longitudinal studies ever looked at what are the factors that lead to overall happiness in life? What they found is that one of the most important things was our relationship with others. So people who have deep relationships, whether with a significant other or deep connections with friends and family. Those were the happiest people long-term. There was another set of studies and other study that looked at how taking care of someone else, whether it's a significant other or a pet, or even having a plant to take care of increased your lifespan. Now how crazy is that just having someone else to care for? Increased how long you live. So having this connection with others, having a sense of community is one of the most important things we can focus on when it comes to cultivating a deeply fulfilling life, a life that doesn't need distraction and addiction, and zoning out by numbing ourselves. On the flip side of this, we're witnessing an epidemic of loneliness and isolation in our society. It seems the more connected we become on social media, the more connected we become through the Internet and our devices, the less connected we are with other people in the real-world. So two questions that you can reflect on. The first is, how can you nurture the relationships that are important to you? How can you nurture the relationships that are important to you? The second question is, how can you be more present with the people in your life? So a lot of us have this tendency to be distracted. We're checking our phones and e-mail even when we're with other people. So the question is, how can you be more present with the people in your life who you care about? Sometimes we need to take a good look at who we're letting into our life as well. We might need to actually break up with a friend or put some boundaries in place with a family member. There's this quote that I like to reflect on, which is an average of the five people you spend the most time with. Thinking clearly about who are you letting into your life? What are the influence that they're having on your life? And you might come to the realization of the conclusion that there are certain people or places where you need to put up some boundaries or breakup with a friend. Now when you put a boundaries with someone, it doesn't mean that you stopped loving them, but it means that you protect your own energy, you protect your own space. This next question to reflect on or journal about is, is there anyone that you need to let go of or any one you need to set some boundaries with doing some journaling on that and really diving in. Is there anywhere you need to set up some boundaries? And finally, one last question to reflect on what is one thing you can do to nurture and important relationship this week might be as simple as reaching out to a friend who you haven't talked to in awhile or baby making time for someone who you've been meaning to. Thinking what is one thing you can do to nurture and important relationship. So those are some reflections on community and connection and their importance in cultivating a more fulfilling and deeply satisfying life. So head on over to the next video where we're going to wrap up this module. 38. 4.7 - Module and Course Wrap-Up: Congratulations on making it to the end of the unhooked course. Let's take a moment just to recap where we've been in the different modules. In module one, we took a look at envisioning and we saw the default future. Looking at where are we headed? If we don't make a change, then we figured out where do we want to go in life? What's really important to us? We looked at values and aspirations. We also looked at how to set goals. And finally, we understood the importance of taking ownership in our life. In module two, we looked at building a strong mental foundation, realizing that all of our problems start in the mind and that our solution lies in the mind as well. We looked at how we can train the mind for greater clarity, for greater concentration, for more self-control, more self-compassion, and finally, cultivating contentment and gratitude. In Module three, we looked more closely at a habit change in the science of habits. Starting with the body and figuring out what are the best ways to take care of the body and build that strong foundation. Then we moved onto building a powerful morning routine. We looked at behavioral architecture and stimulus control. The three phases of habit change hadn't deal with urges when they arise. And finally, how to overcome self-sabotage. In module four, the last module, we looked at creating a more deeply fulfilling and happy life. We explore the five pillars of deeper fulfillment, solitude, ethical living, Finding flow and fun, generosity, and finally, community and connection. Now you have all the understanding that you need to set up a live free from addiction. The question now is how will you take action on what you've learned? Here's my recommendation is to find the time to do a 30-day digital detox or digital reset. I feel that this is important because it's very useful to experience what it's like to be free from things like social media and **** and all the digital distractions that we use. It doesn't have to be a lifelong commitment, but at least experiencing what it's like to be free from it for 30 days. We'll give you that clarity to know what do you want to keep in your life for this 30-day digital detox, I recommend doing a full detox. What I mean by that is getting rid of all of your social media, all of your digital distractions for that full 30-day period. If you're addicted to Instagram, if you just get rid of Instagram, but you keep all your other digital addictions, then you're likely going to just transfer that energy over into something else. So maybe you spend less time on Instagram. It you might just start watching Netflix more as a way to make up the space. So a full digital detox is where you get all of it out completely and spend that 30 days remembering what it's like to be disconnected, be unhooked. If you can do this in the context of maybe a meditation retreat or spending this time getting connected to these hobbies that are more engaging, where you're finding your flow and your fun. Finding ways to use that 30 days productively and reconnect with what's important. What's gonna bring you real happiness in life. For great description on how to do a 30-day digital detox. I recommend checking out the book digital minimalism by Cal Newport. It's one of my favorite on the subjects. Really useful way to understand the ins and outs of that digital detox experience. I hope this has all been helpful. I hope you've enjoyed this course and I look forward to seeing your success in this journey. Don't hesitate to reach out with any questions, any thoughts or reflections. Feel free to send them my way. And with that, take care and I'll see you in the next course.