6 Easy Ways to Start a Tech Detox with Your Mobile Phone for a Calmer and Less Anxious You

A technology detox once a week (or everyday!) can do wonders for us busy individuals – it makes us more present and enjoy the current moment, makes us less anxious and helps us feel calmer and less frantic.

If we are used to replying calls and messages instantly, weaning off technology might make us even more anxious. The trick is to try tech detoxing once a week and progress slowly. I’m not advocating you to be 100% free of technology, but reducing your interaction with a device from 95% of the time to 60% of the time (or lower) will make you feel good mentally.

6 Ways to Start a Tech Detox to be More Present, Have a Clearer Mind, Enjoy Life and Experience Less Anxiety 

1. Switch off tech gadgets 60 minutes before bedtime. Turn off your mobile phone, laptops and TV an hour bedtime. What can you do during this time? Enjoy a hot shower, journal, talk to your partner, savour a cup of hot tea, meditate, stare into the distance… you name it. A more relaxed mind = better sleep.
2. Check your messages at hourly intervals only. Should you be free during a particular day with no urgent matters, check your Whatsapp messages or text messages every hour only, for example, at 2pm, 3pm and so on. With this tactic, you will be in control instead of letting your gadget control you.
3. Switch your phone to vibrate mode the entire day. Having your phone beep and ring -sometimes repeatedly – at unexpected times of the day can set off anxiety. Let it be on vibrate mode and check as and when you wish to do so.
4. Mute unnecessary Whatsapp groups. This is a no-brainer for some of us. We are sometimes pressured to be included in certain Whatsapp groups which notify us at unearthly hours with irrelevant information. Mute these groups, or if you are gutsy enough, quit those groups.
5. You don’t have to reply to every text message or email. Yes, this line says it all. You might have friends or family members who love chatting via Whatsapp, but once it feels draining to reply them, leave them be and reply those messages later or not all.
6. You don’t have to answer every call – you can call back later. This is a good tactic to ensure that you have less anxiety. If you don’t feel like answering someone’s call at that point of time, let your phone ring and call him or her back later when you are in a better frame of mind.

 

Last words

You are not obliged to be at someone’s beck and call, but unfortunately, society has the idea that you are supposed to answer calls and messages instantly or ASAP. You have the liberty to choose when and where you wish to answer your calls and texts. It’s not easy to do so, but once you have set your tech boundaries, your loved ones will get used to it and hopefully, respect those boundaries.

All the best.

10 Ideas for an Effective Morning Ritual

The most successful people on this planet advocate having a morning ritual and waking up as early as 5am.

Morning ‘rituals’ turn us off because it has a joyless, going-through-the-motions connotation to it. And waking up early is painful enough.

Morning routines and rituals are usually for adults, but they can be tweaked for your children as well.

Morning rituals are great because..

They give us the much-needed alone time before distractions start entering our day.

Rituals make us look forward to getting out of bed in the morning.

We have the luxury of having more time to accomplish our tasks for the day.

It instills discipline in children and teens

I had the experience of waking up at 530am one morning and wasn’t able to go back to sleep. Boy, I’ve never felt so accomplished in my life.

I made a smoothie, savoured it in the quiet of the morning, did light exercises, enjoyed the sunrise, took a hot shower, managed to meditate for 10 minutes and by 730am, I was fresh and in front of my laptop – ready to start cracking on work.

Needless to say, I completed so many things that day before lunch came around.

Everyone’s family situation is unique,thus, my morning ritual might not work for you.

Below is a list to help you and your family get started.

10 Ideas for an Effective Morning Ritual

(This is helpful for adults, but rituals can be created for your children as well!)

1. Don’t be afraid to tweak your ritual as time passes to suit your needs.
2. Incorporate the activities you love in your morning ritual. As time goes, different things will make you happy in the morning and thus, tweaking is essential.
3. Don’t plan on having the ‘perfect’ ritual. Everybody’s morning ritual is unique to his or her own liking. Your ritual should make you feel happy and enthused instead of filling you with dread.
4. Include light exercises to get your endorphins and blood pumping to give you a better mood.
5. Be patient. It takes 44 days to form a habit, thus, don’t be tempted to give up on a morning ritual too soon.
6. Go for a walk or jog in nature in the morning to give you perspective.
7. Begin your day with a beloved beverage of choice to enthuse you into getting out of bed – be it a self-concocted hazelnut latte, a banana smoothie, a cappuccino, fragrant tea..you get the idea.
8. Some people journal or write in their gratitude journals in the mornings. It’s not my favourite morning activity personally, but it might work for you.
9. Some meditate to clear their minds in the morning.
10. Enjoy the sunrise

All the best!

How to Handle Difficult Relationships in 2 Steps

Our teens are not spared from relationship challenges in school.

They communicate with friends, teachers, school staff and classmates on a daily basis.

They are unlikely to get along with everyone everyday – there will be people whom our teens don’t have a smooth relationship with.

This is normal – even us adults face challenges when interacting with people whose personalities are not compatible with ours.

However, having a conflict-free environment in school is very beneficial to our teens, as we know. They may not get along with their classmate John, for example, but that doesn’t mean our child has to pick a fight with John every time they meet or skip school in order to avoid seeing him. There are better ways to handle such situations.

With proper guidance, our teens can interact with people they personally dislike with grace and manners.

So how can our teens take control of negative relationships (in 2 steps)?

Reframe the situation

Reframing is incredibly powerful. Instead of labeling a classmate as ‘irritating and selfish,’ for example, they can reframe some negative words as stated below:

1. ‘Irritating’ – persistent
2. ‘Selfish’ – focused, goal-oriented
3. ‘Loud’ – vocal, extraverted
4. ‘Strict’ – caring

and so on. They might require a thesaurus for this exercise. (just kidding!)

 

Highlight the positive

We can encourage our teen to highlight the positive aspects of facing challenging relationships.

For example:

1.  ‘Our teacher may be strict and fierce, but it has pushed me to be more careful and double-check my work in class.’
2. ‘Kayla likes to make fun of my curly hair, but it has taught me to be a more patient person over time.’ (admittedly, this particular example is challenging for most of us. Many of us will be tearing our hair out to remain patient with such a character!)
3. ‘I have a lot of homework today. However, this will ensure that I get ample practice before the exams next month.’

It takes time for our teens to grasp and practise concepts #1 and #2 above.

However, do not give up and praise him or her whenever a small positive change is noticed.

All the best

A Little-Known-Way to Boost Your Child’s Confidence

Today, we are going to learn how to boost your child’s confidence, spur him or her to achieve more successes and give him courage to take on new challenges.

As humans, we are preprogramed towards negative bias – we easily take stock of where we fell short, where we made (even the smallest) mistakes and so on.

It’s not easy for us – and our children – to recall and appreciate our (big and small) achievements.

This is the secret of many successful people. Successful people are often aware of their strengths and talents and are secure enough to acknowledge their past wins.

Research has shown that the more we celebrate our own successes, the more confident we are when facing new challenges.

This applies to our children and teens. In this exercise, we will be celebrating your child’s successes – no matter how small they may seem.

 

Step 1: Download the Success Log here.

 

Step 2: Complete the Success Log with your child.

Examples of successes: ‘I am good at drawing and my art teacher praised my work in front of the class before.’ ‘I scored a B – my ideal grade – for my Maths test last year.’ ‘I like helping my teachers and they appreciate it.’

Basically, include any achievement which your child or teen is proud of. It doesn’t matter if we *think* the achievement is small!

Further actions for you and your child:

Coax your child to re-read this Success Log when your child or teen feels doubtful or insecure about his abilities

Coax your child to re-read this Success Log when your child is fearful of taking a new challenge

When your child scores a new achievement, add it to this log!

I will guarantee that your child will feel good about himself and boost his or her self-confidence with this powerful exercise alone.

All the best.

5 Ways to Know if Your Child is Destined for Success

We know that IQ is needed for our kids to get into good schools, get good jobs, earn good money and lead good lives in future.

Do you know that there is one other factor which is as important – if not, MORE important – than IQ in determining your child’s success?

This factor is EQ – or emotional intelligence.

I don’t wish to bore you with details of how a high EQ equates to success (that will be for another blog post at another time).

Suffice to say that a healthy EQ will lead to

• better relationships
• better decision-making
• better conflict-handling

which brings

• better opportunities
• the best of careers
• the best of friends

and much, much more.

We’ll start with the basics.

Having the 5 EQ traits in the infographic below can predict your child’s success – even more than a high IQ (according to renowned researcher Daniel Goleman).

Unlike IQ, we can up our EQ levels through learning and experience.

And that’s good news for us!