What an Adjustment

I had my monthly adjustments after work today. Chiropractor first, then deep-tissue massage after. And just like a caterpillar makes the awkward-but-refreshing transformation to a butterfly, it was worth it.

First of all, I arrived fresh after a writing workshop where we learned and discussed the short attention span of humans these days – and how do we write to capture that less-than-one second of time they/we take to read content. 

Our roadblocks? Many. But they include this fact: Researchers at the Institute of Psychiatry at the University of London studied 1,100 workers at a British company and found that multitasking with electronic media caused a greater decrease in IQ than smoking pot or losing a night's sleep.

Yup. Our phones are making us stupid. We need our phones to communicate and receive information, but we can't go very long without them. We, as a whole, cannot handle sitting idle.

So, much like the briefly resting butterfly on the leaf above, I decided to test the theory. I arrived 5 minutes early to the chiropractor and had to sit outside of her office door anywhere from 5 to 10 minutes. I vowed to just wait and not look at my phone. Uff da. 

I remembered that since the pre-internet dawn of waiting room time, they've always had magazines for this purpose. So paging through reading material isn't technically a technical device, right? Instead of grabbing a magazine, though, I grabbed a book. I wish I would've taken a picture of the name of it because, like the effects of smoking pot or losing a night's sleep as mentioned above, my memory is squat these days.

I think the title had something to do with coping with stress. I do remember one of the strategies mentioned, though. And that might have helped me more than my physical adjustments today.

Here's what I recall. When you perceive something as negative and label it as a negative event, then it's going to carry a negative stress on you. For as long as you let it. Instead label it neutrally – like stating the facts.

For example, and this is just an example (honest), instead of saying, "My boss just assigned me a writing job knowing full well I am overloaded right now," say (and think), "My boss assigned a job. I am going to write it." This acknowledges that she had to assign it to someone. And maybe as a positive, she assigned it to me because she's confident in my abilities.

In other words, don't fold your wings ready for battle. Don't be paranoid – and definitely nip your ego in the bud. Not everyone is out to get you. You are not a victim. A series of events happened and now we move on.

Pretty decent 5-minute lesson, eh?

I guess it just spoke to me – while my phone was on silent. 😀