Mel Robbins (48:26)
Alrighty. I wanna make sure that you really understand the weight of what Dr. K is trying to teach you and me, because when he shared that with me, it was such an enormous wake up call. That really helped me connect the dots. And the whole purpose of our conversation today is to give you a reason why you need better boundaries with your phone and tech, that you have to use it as a tool. And you've gotta stop allowing big tech and social and the phone to turn you into the tool. And so what Dr. Kaye just said is that you've got all of this dopamine reserve and dopamine circuitry in your brain, and you've probably heard that word, but, you know, I don't know if you're like me, I'm constantly forgetting what these big words mean. But dopamine is related to your drive, it's related to motivation, it's related to pleasure. And what Dr. K is saying is that when you wake up first thing in the morning, you're ready to go. The gas tank in the brain in terms of dopamine, it's full. The circuitry is ready to go. It is primed and there to help you experience pleasure, to help you move toward things that give you meaning in your life. And then you and I make a really dumb mistake because we don't recognize the game that we're in. We make this mistake first thing in the morning of picking up the phone, and then we get on social media and then we read the headlines. And when you step into that arena, in the words of Dr. K, Technology in the phone and social media, it's like taking the lemon that represents the dopamine and squeezing all the juice out so that by the time you start your day, if you spent too long on your phone, you've literally drained the dopamine tank simply by stepping into the arena and allowing yourself to be turned into a tool. And now for the rest of the day, you're playing catch. Up. This is why everything seems dull. This is why you don't really feel the drive. This is why your mood is kind of low and you're a little numb. And this also then means that at the end of the day, when you're done at school or you're done at work and you get home and you're done feeding the dogs and making dinner and you collapse on the couch, all you want to do because you've got no dopamine left and you're not really feeling much of anything and you're exhausted is what. Pick this thing up again, and you enter the arena and you make people more money, and then you just feel worse. And I want to give you a little test to really just highlight for you why the phone is designed the way it's designed. Have you ever turned your phone to the grayscale feature? It's pretty unbelievable. When you move your phone to grayscale, it is gonna be so startling that you don't even need to hear research about this. But I do have research, and this research is unbelievable. There was a study done between Cornell and researchers at IE University in Madrid all about grayscale. When people like you and me just switch the phone to black and white and grayscale, it reduces your daily screen time by 50 minutes. 50 minutes. And you could use those 50 minutes, right? I mean, I know I could use those 50 minutes. I want you to intentionally try to turn your phone to grayscale. I'm not even going to ask that you leave it on grayscale. I'm going to ask that you just try to find it, which, even as I'm talking to you, I can't freaking find it on my phone. That's how they've hidden this. But when you ultimately get your phone to grayscale, you're going to look at it and be like, ew. Well, that's not fun to look at. Ooh. All those influencers don't look so tan and amazing and fabulous when it's on grayscale. Ooh. Like, this isn't that neat to be in. It's sort of like the same way a casino is bright and shiny and loud, and you have to walk through it and you can't find the elevators, which means you stay in it long enough. Because when you strip away the colors, your phone is very boring. It's literally the difference between watching a movie that is 100% AI driven, where somebody's arm twists into a snake and then it morphs into a cheetah and it's just this absolutely unbelievable visual. Just craziness versus thinking about the original Frankenstein movie that was black and white and amazing at the time, but you're just now looking at it like, is that my uncle dressed up in a suit for my party? I mean, that thing's pretty terrible. You can barely even watch it. And the reason why I'm saying this is because when you strip away the colors on your phone, you're going to get the chills. Because I think beautiful design is something that's exciting to see. But holy cow, when you just strip away all the bells and whistles, you'll now see your phone for what it should be, which is a tool. A tool you can use to get work done. A tool you can use to connect with people you care about, A tool that you can use to search for information that you need that makes you smarter. A tool that you can use to market. But boy, oh boy, does it not make you want to stay on this thing. Because it's super boring. And the reason why I'm telling you this now is because if it's super boring and sort of like, ugh, why would I want to use that? I don't want to hang out with an Excel spreadsheet all day. I mean, this is like what. You'll also realize what Dr. K is saying. All the pretty colors and the moving things and the pop ups here and the thing over there and the scrolling that you're doing, it's very stimulating. And it's also draining your dopamine, which is keeping you on there. And that means it's draining the reserves that you need for motivation and pleasure for the important things in your life. And that brings me to another thing that I want to add to this conversation. So we've already talked about the fact that you've got to wake up and recognize that you live in the attention economy and that tech is designed to steal your attention and that you've become, unknowingly and without consent, a tool in someone else's game. And the game is let's make money on you. So that's ick number one. Ick number two is that it's not just making other people money, it's actually costing you something important. It's costing you your dopamine reserves. That first thing in the morning when you look at the stuff and you expose yourself to this arena that you're stepping in where it's designed to make you lose. You're not just losing time and attention and energy, you're also Losing your dopamine, it's like that lemon hard squeeze gone. And it's not your fault. The whole game is rigged. And that's why you feel how you feel. And, you know, the really awful part about all this is that it keeps you on it and addicted to it. Because if you are getting that hard squeeze on the lemon by looking at bright and shiny things, guess what? You're gonna keep going back to it. Just like people keep going back to cigarettes, and they keep going back to slot machines and they keep going back to alcohol. Because the game itself and the device and substance itself is designed to do this to you. And that's why it's not your kid's fault, it's not your fault, it's not anybody's fault. But we have a responsibility to ourselves to wake up and recognize what's happening so that when the world that you see changes, you change the way you see the world, and you change the way that you show up. Wayne Dwyer said that. And it's time to change the way that you show up. Because the third thing I want to tell you is that it's actually already changed your brain. This is not just a problem for the kids and the high schoolers and the college kids in your life. Most of us just don't realize that it's happened to us, too. For example, this is when I really first started to notice it. For me, personally, as I said earlier, I've understood the attention economy, and I've both understood it because I've been sucked into it. And I also understand it because I'm an entrepreneur and I'm in the media business. But for me personally, this really started to hit me a couple years ago when I just started to practice being in line at a grocery store and not checking my phone. It's a very hard thing to do. I want you to try this, like, just like you tried the grayscale, the next time you're standing in line, you're standing at a hardware store. You're standing at a checkout line at a little corner store. I want you to not look at your phone. Like, keep it in your pocket or in your back pocket or in your purse. And here's what you're going to notice. You get fidgety. You feel this sense that you need to look at it. You're gonna feel yourself looking around, and you're gonna notice everybody else that's standing in line, unless they're talking to a child, they literally are looking at their phones. And then when you see other People looking at their phones, you are gonna start to really feel like you need to be looking at your phone. This is a sign that all of this intentional programming and engineering is working because it's changed the wiring in your brain, and it's made you want and crave something that you don't need. You know, Another example is, can you watch television without having your phone nearby? Like, how quickly when the series that you're watching gets slow, do you reach for your phone? I'll give you one more. One more. This is the big one. Do you lay in bed and look at your phone? Does the idea of even going to bed without your phone nearby make you feel agitated? And this is not just a problem for teenagers. I have a really close friend of mine who was telling me that they're very worried about their father because he, since retiring, has become addicted to his iPad. Like, he literally sits with it and rocks as he's watching it all day. He goes to bed with it. The man is 80 years old. It is creating huge problems in his marriage of 45 years, and everybody's kind of relating to it. Like, he's got, you know, he's got a problem. This is his problem. Like, he's addicted to a thing that's actually designed to be addictive. And you're watching your father pull away from life while other people make more and more and more money on him. That's what's happening. And if you can't see that for yourself, that the game is rigged to keep you playing. That's why you feel these things. That's why you and I stay longer on our phones than we intend to. That's why eventually you open up your wallet and you're clicking shop now, and you're buying all this stuff that you didn't intend to. And while this is not good news, that it's engineered to change you and keep you addicted. And these small examples that I'm pointing out are evidence that it's true. The good news is that your brain has something called neuroplasticity, which I'm sure is a word that you've heard. It's just a fancy word that means your brain can change. It's bendy. It can create new connections. Just like your brain learned that it needs the phone to go to bed, it can learn that it doesn't go to bed with the phone. You can retrain your brain. You can train your brain to see the phone and go ick. Just like an old boyfriend or girlfriend, you know? Have you ever had A relationship in the past where. Or a friend that you were super, super close with, and then you started to kind of feel like, oh, I've spent a little bit too much time with them. But you keep spending time with them, and then all of a sudden something happens and you're like, ick. Ugh. Ugh. That's what I want you to feel about the phone. That's what I want you to feel. Every time you play the Hunger Games and you step into the arena that is social media, AI or the Internet, I want you to see it for what it is. Because when you see the game for what it is, you can actually now play the game and win. And that brings me to the final thing. What to do? What do you do? What do you do now that you hopefully have the ick? And if you're younger and you're listening to this and you still have aspirations of having an online business, and you still have aspirations of becoming an influencer or a YouTuber, that's great. You can do whatever you want with your life, but you will make more money and be more successful if you go into those professions understanding that this is a tool, that your phone is a device, and that you don't collapse who you are and the meaning in your life with your ambition and job and wanting to use the tool for marketing or learning how to make money online. It's an incredible thing to do. And if you're listening to me and you're a realtor or you have a side hustle, you should be using the phone and the Internet and social media as a tool. But what's going to make you wildly successful is understanding that you're the one in charge and here's what you're going to do. And I'm almost embarrassed to give you the advice, right, because you already know the advice. But the thing about advice is it's easy to know what to do, because we've all been told you gotta have less screen time, right? You gotta spend less time on the phone. Okay, thanks, Sherlock. I think I'm aware of that now that Mel has explained attention economy and the fact that I've been losing the game and the fact that this is designed to steal my time and the fact that I'm losing dopamine and that my brain has been rewired. Now I have a reason why I actually want to do something. And so I'm just going to give you the things that have mattered to me, because there's lots of things that you can do, but there's really one major thing that I think is super important, and that is boundaries. I want you to have very clear boundaries with your phone. And the only thing that has helped me is physical separation. I've tried to limit the screen time and to put the timers on. I just suspend the notifications. I have moved my apps from the home screen to pages in. It just ends up making me scroll more for real. The grayscale and going black and white. That's a big deal because it's not that fun to be on the phone. And it reminds you that this is utility rather than addiction and a time waster. But the biggest boundary that's really worked for me is physical separation. Not having the phone on your body. Because I'm just like you are. I have a need for the phone. I'm addicted to the phone. Like, I recognize that. So if it's in my hand or on my body, I will look at it. And so physical acts of separation have made a big difference in my ability to establish boundaries and not casually enter the arena. So what does that look like? Well, the biggest boundary that I have, I talk about it a lot. And so you may have heard me say this, but again, this is a daily boundary I have to set. I don't take the phone into bed at night. As hard as it is, I charge my phone in the bathroom because if this phone were next to me, I would reach for it full stop. I would. So I make it very difficult to reach for it by having it separated from me. That's number one. Number two, I leave my phone typically on my desk. Now I have my phone in my hand. If you're watching on YouTube, you've seen me holding this thing. It's got a bright pink case. All day long. If I'm during work hours, I keep my phone on my desk. And I try not to have it on my person because if it's at my desk and then I go to a meeting, I'm not checking it. If it's at my desk and I'm doing some work, I'm not really looking at it. If it's on my body, I'm looking at it. Another thing that I do, here's another physical boundary. When I'm out taking a morning walk, in particular, my phone is zipped in my fanny pack. Yes, I have a fanny pack. The dog treats are in there, but it's in my fanny pack. Or it's in a back pocket if I don't have that on me. Or it's in a zipped pocket so that I'm not engaged with it. I'm actually present with my surroundings. I don't walk and hold it, because why I'll look at it. Another boundary that's been a really important one for our family is we do not allow phones at the dinner table, period. Whether we're at home, whether we're at a restaurant, they're not allowed even resting on the table. They are on your person, like in a pocket, or they are in your bag. And it's made a big difference in just encouraging meaningful conversations and connections. And the more you do that, the more you're gonna dedicate time to hobbies, to interests, to actually building the business, to doing the art, to marketing what you're working on instead of being the one that's being marketed to, and that's what's available to you. It's time for you and I to wake up and be smart about what's actually happening. And instead of being used by them, how about you and I turn the tables and we use them to achieve our goals and to make our lives a little bit better. Go look at everybody that you follow, all the accounts, and I promise you, you're gonna realize you only see the same five accounts over and over and over again, because they're the ones that the social media platforms are serving to you because they think you're gonna stay on longer, and that means they're gonna make more money. But if you are following somebody, you're giving them access to your brain and your attention, and that has value. And so what I want you to do is audit who has access to that. If the accounts that you're following do not give positive input, they don't make you laugh, they don't make you a better person, they don't make you feel good. Delete, unfollow. Because it is a privilege to for that account to be able to show up in your feed. And when you start treating the input as a tool like, who can I follow? That's gonna make me better. What accounts can I follow in order to grow and achieve my goals? When you use it proactively, that way, you're not actually stepping into the arena waiting to be killed by everybody and waiting to be a tool in everybody else's game to make money. You're actually stepping into the arena and selectively seeking out allies that now can help you achieve your goals and win the game. That's gonna change all the time. And look, if you follow me and I'm not lifting you up, do not follow me. That's how much I want you to truly honor your attention. I want you to really look at it like a gift. And the way that you win is, is by putting up a gate between you and who's allowed to put input into your brain. That's how I think about the accounts that I follow. Are you actually making me better? Are you lifting me up? Are you teaching me things? Or am I following you out of guilt? Or just because I followed you 10 years ago or because we went to college together? Eh, that's not what I'm doing in this arena. I'm looking for allies that make me better. And that's what I want you doing, too. And you can curate your social media feed to uplift you rather than just constantly be staring at people that are trying to sell you something or bragging about their life or making you jealous of what they're doing. Get rid of those, because all that negativity impacts you. And there's one final thing that I think is super interesting that I want to unpack for you because it brings us full circle and really helps you embrace the gravity of what's happened in the last five years and why this isn't your fault, but how waking up and recognizing the attention economy and how it's impacted you has also robbed you of a lot of meaning in your life. And I wanna start that conversation by sharing a little bit of research with you that I found to be really important. And this comes from a study that was done by researchers in China, and they were looking at different interventions that could reduce symptoms of Internet addiction. So everything that we're talking about here spending too much time on your phone, too much time on social media, too much time online. And what they found, this was published in the Journal of Addictive Behavior, is that one intervention that had very strong effects on reducing symptoms of Internet addiction was exercise. Now, it begs the question, why? Why would introducing exercise reduce addictive behavior online? Well, there's an important reason why. Moving your body is an important way to positively and naturally squeeze that little juice of dopamine. It puts you in a better mood. And have you ever noticed that if you ever go out for a hike or you do a pickup soccer game, or you're playing like, you know, a set of pickleball, you don't have any interest in looking at your phone because you're engaged in the physical activity. Like, if I'm ever out skiing, I'm not skiing down a mountain looking at my phone because I'm moving my body and I'm connected to the environment. And so this is an important thing to understand because I think what's happened is as the rules of the game have changed, we didn't realize that the phone has turned into Hunger Games and that it's designed for us to lose, that it's created this self fulfilling negative loop where the more time you spend on the phone, the less time you spend exercising or connecting with friends or doing the things that bring your life meaning, like gardening and painting and picking up the guitar. All those things that lift you up naturally, you're not doing them. Why? Because you don't have time. You're tired, you're exhausted. And all of this is a result of the fricking phone and social media. So just as it sapped you and sucked you in over the last five years and you spend more and more and more and more and more time on has left you more and more and more drained, more blah, more tired and with less time. Which means you don't have the time or the energy to do the things that gave your life true meaning. And that's the most important epiphany of all, is that here you and I are, sitting there at the end of a long workday, making ourselves wrong. Cause we're exhausted and overwhelmed and stressed out. And we now just spent two to three hours doom scrolling, we've blown past our bedtime, we feel bad that we just wasted that time. And then we wake up tomorrow and instead of going out for a walk or changing our habits, we just pick up the phone again and squeeze all the juice and the dopamine's gone again. And here we are trapped in this trap. And my huge, huge number one thing is this is not your fault. The system's designed to do this to you. Which is why you and I need to wake up and we need to recognize that the phone and social media is now the Hunger Games. That you and I became a tool, that it stole everything for us. But we do not have to live like that. And big tech and the phone and social, it's not gonna change. In fact, it's gonna get worse. And so now's the time to understand that this can be a tool. It can be a tool for good, for connection, for growth, for learning, for art, for making great money, for making a difference in the world. It can be a tool for all kinds of amazing things, but only if you use it at that. And so the more boundaries that you create with this, the more you put it on grayscale, the More you keep it off your person, the more you look at it and go, ugh, I'm not stepping into the arena. Now that I see what it is, I'm not going to do that to myself. What you're gonna get back is kind of extraordinary. Number one, you're gonna get time back. Number two, you're gonna get energy back. Number three, you're gonna get your dopamine reserves back, which means your mood is gonna get boosted and your energy's gonna get lifted, and so is your optimism and your excitement, and you're gonna recognize, wow. There's a lot of other things that I'd like to be doing with my life and the time that I have other than just giving it over to big tech so other people can make money on me. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you for hitting play and thank you for sharing this with everybody in your life that you care about that has a phone. I think this is one of those conversations that I truly hope travels around the world to everybody, because waking up and understanding what's happening and seeing where you are not at fault, but you've lost a little of your power also helps you take that power back, because you do have power. And I am so excited to see what happens in your life when you start using your phone and social media and the Internet for good, because you can. And in case no one else tells you this, I wanted to be sure to tell you that I love you and I believe in you, and I believe in your ability to create a better life. And there is no doubt in my mind that the conversation that we just had will help you create a better life. Because you now see how the rules have changed. You now see the game that's being played. And once you see it, you can change how you play the game, which means you, my friend, are going to be winning at it. Alrighty. I will see you in the very next episode. I will be waiting to welcome you in the moment. Moment you hit play. I'll see you there. All right, here we go. Go, Jesse, go. Ten years ago, you didn't. You didn't spend a lot. When was the cell phone. When was the smartphone trace?
