Paper Example on One Week of Silence: A Life-Changing Mental Therapy

I managed to spend the whole week in utter and complete silence, without social media communication- meaning no internet or cell phone. For the one week, I woke up every morning at 5 am and spent every minute silently meditating. It was a little extreme, and it was a critical mental therapy after burning out for recalibrating. Just one year ago, I left my job to do the social experiment on the human connection that resulted in my life design and brand coaching business. I am currently keeping up with a social media presence, which is considerable and growing my online business. That means that there is a lot of crap that I need to be dealing with every day, such as messages, emails, among others. In the act of much-needed self-care and despair, I decided to crap it all and keep away all my digital communication for a week.

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The outcomes of not being close to the technology distractions were very astonishing. My digital detox for one week taught me an essential lesson that my body is as important as my mind. It means that we are human beings, and no matter how successful, capable, and smart we are, we are confined to the body at the end of the day that needs to eat, rest and sleep - mentally and physically. There is no path around that one should rely on technology to find a way to change them into cyborgs. I did not realize how difficult I was pushing my life until I found that after getting disconnected from the distractions of technology constantly, all I could do was to sleep. On the first day, I took uncountable naps since my body was damn tired of all that I have been subjecting it to do for the past months before giving out my cell phone: I could sleep late, get up very early and eat on the go. Therefore, I realized that if the body is not operating at its full capacity, the mind as well will not be able to operate effectively.

Consequently, when I was disconnected technologically from people, there was a great improvement in the quality of my in-person interactions over a week. When I interacted with people face to face, I could listen to them keenly. I concentrated on the conversation as much as possible instead of pawing at my pocket to get into the social media platform that I often do. And if I realized my friend was talking about a topic that did not interest me, I could take out my phone and scroll mindlessly through Instagram or twitter updates.

Actually, after staying for a week without my phone, I came to realize that using the phone when a family member or a friend is conversing is something very rude. For example, when I was communicating with my dad, and he pulled out his phone to check on some messages, I asked him if he was listening, and he responded yes without looking up at me, making me wonder. From that experience, I started to believe that without my phone coming across when in a conversation, I could get more attached and connected to the people I value and love.

On the same note, I realized that I felt more relaxed without my phone. Instead of being agitated by the text messages when I was asleep or relaxing with a book, I could have enough sleep and enjoy my leisure activities without any interruptions with my phone. Thus, I had peace and silence. Besides being relaxed, keeping away my phone enabled me to focus more on my academics. Usually, when I read, my phone is always next to me, and I touch it almost every minute, checking things that are not academic-related. I could read a sentence and then embark on the phone to check the updates or send a text message to my best friend. By doing so, my concentration will go back to zero.

However, after giving up my phone, I did not have it as a crutch of escaping difficulties I faced on my academic work. Of course, there were still some distractions like searching for some concepts on the internet, but I had to direct my attention to different journals and articles without my phone. Generally, keeping away my phone for one week helped me to focus on my academic tasks.

Conclusion

To conclude, I found several benefits compared to setbacks when I gave up my phone for one week. I reconnected with family and friends and also my academic tasks. I had enough time to relax without getting distractions from my phone every minute by checking emails or social media. However, it is not realistic to relinquish my phone forever. I need it to communicate to my clients, to talk to my friends who are away, to make plans, and for any emergency since no one would love to get stranded on the way without a cell phone.

Therefore, it is difficult to give up my phone forever, the best thing I can do is to cut back on its usage on having specific times that I turn it on and off. I can recommend to my readers that they should embrace the change because they will see more benefits from limiting their cell phone usage the way I have. While people may value most reaching each other at all times via cell phone, the constant connectivity could be putting more stress on the real-time interaction's quality.