If you want to become more intelligent I think leaving your phone at home is the easiest, and fastest way to achieve that.
But that’s not the main reason I started doing that.
Neither it’s the most important benefit I got from it.
But this I will explain it after.
- I think leaving your phone at home will make you more intelligent because your brain it’s like a muscle.
You need to train it so it becomes stronger.
Every time you stop to check your phone you are stopping your train of thoughts.
Your mind needs time to absorb ideas and take powerful conclusions.
Some ideas, theories, problems, are so complex, that only with time we can really understand them and reach conclusions.
It’s like trying to run 10 km but every 5 minutes we stop and go back to the starting point.
Most of the solutions I found, for the challenges of my companies, were in the metro when I was “bored”, doing nothing, just thinking.
It is hard not to bring the phone with you all the time, but if you could do it sometimes, like going for groceries, I’m sure it will give you similar benefits.
- The second benefit I will explain you it’s about how it is affecting relationships (and friendships).
Some people, usually men (like me) feel like they lose their freedom when they are in a relationship.
But once, when I was dating someone, I decided to leave my phone at home when I was not with her.
Then for the first time, I stopped feeling as if I lost my freedom.
I was looking forward to talk with her as I didn’t experience in a very long time.
If I always had the phone with me, I could always talk with her, so I couldn’t miss talking with her.
What we want, and what we need, are different things.
We want to talk with our partner all the time.
But if we do that, because our phones now allow us, we don’t have the space to miss the other person, to be excited to see her (or him) again, to explain what happened in our lives.
We need this space to grow these feelings (even if we don’t want it!).
If you ever feel like that, maybe you just need to rest a bit from your phone, and have some space.
I think it’s normal that we need this space.
For millions of years, humans worked that way.
Just around twenty years ago that started to changed. But we know our human brain cannot addapt in that short time.
What we can addapt it’s how we use it!
- In this next point, I will tell you something totally eye opening for me.
It felt like a revelation.
The issue with having a phone with you all the time, it is not just the constant communication, and interruption.
The main problem is that: it’s like an open window to everybody you know.
You know you can be contacted any time, by anyone.
And the main problem it is about the people who: is not contacting you.
That create worriness in us, even if we are not very conscious about it.
We might think: “Do they don’t love me?” “Are they okay?”
When you leave your phone at home all this constant worriness disappear automatically.
You will have a lot of more energy, and you will feel more freedom.
You can enjoy more the present, and spend this energy in the present moment. It will help you be more your authentic you.
If you ever feel you have too much of these thoughts, you can just rest by going for a walk without your phone!
- And the last point is something I think Justin Bieber would have wanted to know too when he was a teen.
In one of his last songs he says how lonely he was feeling, that he had no-one to call.
When I bought my first phone, I didn’t have any number to call, and no one had my number. I didn’t have the time to give it away, or to get any number.
And this was the first time in my life that I felt lonely.
Rationally I knew it was not real, but emotionally I felt it this way.
When I quited my smartphone, and bought the new Nokia3310, I was bringing it with me all the time.
I thought it was perfect.
I checked the Nokia very often. To see if people contacted me, or just to check the time.
Because very few people call, or send sms, most of the time it was no news.
And that was what I wanted, only for essential communication.
But this was creating me a feeling of loneliness, but I couldn’t realize why.
Rationally, I knew it wasn’t real, I knew I had a lot of good friends, and I was in Portugal where I was meeting a lot of incredible people.
Until one day, while I was doing some sport, I had the revelation that it was the phone.
Every time I checked the phone it was like saying to my brain “No one contacted you”.
I stopped bringing the phone with me, and all these feelings of loneliness disappeared in no time, I felt so great, so social.
I think Justin was not feeling lonely only because he had no one to call, but because he had a phone, with no one to call.
I know it sounds hard to believe, but that was my experience.
So if that ever happens to you, maybe you want to try it as well, and see what happens!
- I know it’s hard to leave your phone always at home, but to do it sometimes it should be okay, when going for a run, to the gym, for a coffee, for shopping, groceries, seeing a friend…
And I think you will feel very well.
I know there are a million benefits we can have from bringing your smartphone.
It is incredible how much they can improve our lives in some ways.
But again, for me it is better not to bring it.
And now that you know these pros and cons, you can choose more consciously how are you going to use it, and how much time you will want to bring it with you!