Consuming Ourselves to Death 📱
We’ve started consuming more than we are creating and pursuing.
About a year ago I had a dream where I saw the spirit of gluttony. It was personified as an overweight man who ate everything on the table in front of him. Once he consumed everything on the table, he started frantically searching for more. He got so desperate that he began to tear his chest open and start eating his own flesh. Eating himself to death, quite literally.
It feels like that’s where we’ve come as a society, becoming addicted, not just to food but to entertainment. Not challenging ourselves enough to think from a place of boredom and create new things that ignite us.
The power of consumption in todays world holds a grip on us. Doom scrolling and being glued to your seat and screen have become real issues for many. I know it has for me.
The noise now consists of t.v, podcasts, social media, keeping up with everyone online, addicted to entertainment.
I looked back at my middle and early high school years when I didn’t have a phone and spent all my free time reading, writing, taking photos, learning how to edit and dreaming of the future. I didn’t binge watch any shows because Netflix streaming didn’t exist yet.
We’ve started “treating” ourselves over the most basic things. Buying things just to buy them. Treating yourself doesn’t always mean giving into your impulses.
Treating yourself can look like denying yourself of these goods because you know it’s better for you.
I have so much respect for people who follow through with what they set their mind to because of their discipline when many people don’t have that in todays world. It’s so much easier to get satisfaction from entertainment than it is to do the hard thing and study, learn, create, launch, get that job, stay consistent, whatever it is on your goals list.
Besides blocking out time to get work done without distractions, taking the time to let your mind, eyes and adrenals rest is one of the best things you can do for yourself.
This looks like taking a walk without listening to anything. Taking a long bath and journaling or reading a book.
Studies have shown that if you can’t watch t.v without picking up your phone every few minutes means you’re already addicted to the dopamine hits from constantly receiving new information. It’s not necessarily our fault either, social media has been designed to be addictive.
These addictive patterns not only hold us back from our potential and success, but causes issues like increased anxiety, poor sleep, depression and ironically, lack of social skills.
How do we get out of this vicious cycle? Discipline.
It won’t magically go away on it’s own. You can’t hope to one day be better at managing your time or your cravings.
Being strict about your time and attention is the only way out.
Hebrews 12:11 “Now all discipline seems to be painful at the time, yet later it will produce a transformation of character, bringing a harvest of righteousness and peace to those who yield to it”.
