Pull The Plug and Recharge Your Relationship

The other night I was furiously working on my laptop in the living room with my husband, and he started laughing at himself. He actually had the TV on, was watching a movie on his kindle, AND was hooked into his phone.

And I’m guilty too: I probably had a million browsers open, and may have been using my phone for a couple other things.

Clearly this was not a time we were deeply “connected,” though we were able to laugh at ourselves, but it’s an accurate picture of what living rooms must look like in many homes.

Meanwhile, my now 3 year-old son can FaceTime with his 2 year-old cousin or Nana in another state, I’m making business besties all over the globe, and I get to hang with clients in my coaching practice from all corners of the world.

Technology is good.

But we have to be very careful.

The book Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in the Digital Age by Sherry Turkle discusses the sacrifice of conversation for “mere connection.”  This mere connection is a mindless kind of connection. Four Facebook conversations at once while texting snippets to someone else. A tweet with an incredible, mind-blowing article. An update about a friend’s new job who I haven’t spoken with in over a decade.

I’m all for it, we live in a super exciting time, but when it sucks the life out of my real life connections with my family (which it does at times, whether I’m with my kids or my hubs), I know I’m riding a fine line.

You know the scene: You are in a room full of people and everyone is plugged into their phones. We try to avoid it at all costs but sometimes it just happens.

I can easily get sucked into the Facebook vortex on the regular, as much as I say I loathe it, and my husband can get glued to updates the latest NY Giants injuries.

Sometimes (ahem, frequently) I’m with my daughter who’s not even a year old and checking my email as she’s crawling around. I know the importance of emotional connection, it’s so central to my work, and question myself – am I robbing her?

What will her brain and my son’s brain look like growing up with all of this? What will all of our kids’ brains look like? How will they speak? Will they know how to express themselves without emoticons?

I don’t mean to paint the picture of me always being plugged in and being an absentee parent glued to a screen. But I am mindful of it and know I feel the pull and find myself resisting it as well as giving into it at times.

It’s an addiction, like any other.

Addictions can pull us away from what really matters.

Be mindful of it.

And unplug. Recharge your relationship. Put your phone on airplane mode at night, set rules around phone usage that you agree to at home, and enjoy the people in your life instead of on your device.

If any aspect of your business is online, it’s crucial that you maintain some kind of online presence, but beware.

Let me know in the comments, do you and your family have rules around technology usage? What are they and how do they help?

Cheers to thriving in business & love, online and off 🙂

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