Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Foreign.
[00:00:08] Welcome. Welcome to this beautiful 21 days to digital freedom Digital Detox.
[00:00:15] But really it's digital freedom because the whole point of this is to feel.
[00:00:23] Ah, yes, to feel free and happy and light and not be suppressed with negative feelings. Now, the reason I'm doing this 21 day digital detox is because I feel so much better when I'm not consuming unnecessary media on the Internet.
[00:00:49] I have been aware that this has been a problem for me for over 10 years.
[00:00:55] And I have had varying degrees of success and failure, mostly failure, to be perfectly honest.
[00:01:02] And I'm doing a program called Awaken Millionaires, which basically is about helping my students to become internally wealthy and externally wealthy, sharing their work, becoming coaches, creators, authors.
[00:01:16] And as part of that, I'm also doing the program. And one of the things is, what are we doing that makes the biggest difference in our life? And what are we removing from our life so that we can do all those good things?
[00:01:31] You know, there's a handful of things that totally change our life in a positive direction, but the things that we want to do are almost impossible to do on a consistent basis if there are these negative things in our life pulling us back. You know, it's like if I want to take five steps forward, but then I do something and pulls me back six or seven steps, then even though I'm going forward, I'm actually really going backwards. And I had this awareness many years ago when I was walking on the beach when I was living in the beautiful north shore of Kauai, Hawaii.
[00:02:09] It was perfect day, perfect morning. I was walking down the beach and I was thinking about how there are certain things in our life that literally can ruin our life. And some people it might be alcohol, some people it might be gambling or shopping addiction or sex addiction, or drugs, right? In other people it might be the Internet. It could be all kinds of things, right?
[00:02:38] And those things are enough to totally throw us off. And just as I was thinking this and really tuning into how powerful these evil things are, these negative things, I saw $100 bill on the beach, which I've never seen before and never seen again. And to me it was a sign to pay attention to what I was thinking about because this is very, very important. It's like a.
[00:03:03] This is a gift from the universe to make me remember this particular thought. That was literally what I was thinking. That there are certain high level actions that change our life and there are certain negative actions, just a few of them, that wreck our life. And if we can get rid of those Everything's possible. And then I saw the bill and so this has been something I've been thinking about for a long time. I actually wrote a book about this happiness kryptonite and how those little things pull us back and ruin our life. And we can apply this to anything in our life that is bad for us. And everyone's different. Some people, for example, they can have a glass of wine with their meal and it's not bad for them and they enjoy it and it's all good. Other people, they can have a glass of wine and it totally. They'll go on a bit bender, right? They'll be end up in hospital.
[00:03:57] So it's not the thing itself that's the problem, it's how we use it and our relationship to it.
[00:04:07] And so for me personally, I have a problem with story based media. Like if there's a TV show like one of these series of interesting shows, if I watch the first one, I'm going to have to watch the whole thing if it's a good one because I want to know how it ends.
[00:04:29] And I feel restless not knowing. You know, they design these things on purpose.
[00:04:35] You're always thinking what's going to happen next? What's going to happen next. They're consciously designed that way.
[00:04:40] And so I'm a sucker for that sort of stuff.
[00:04:44] Same thing with movies, same thing with certain YouTube videos. Same thing with the news. Actually the news is again a story.
[00:04:52] That's why it's a news story, because there's endless stories, stories, stories. So anything that is a story based media, and even the news quite frankly is to a large degree fantasy media because they pick the most crazy stories and then they put a spin on it.
[00:05:11] And we're not seeing reality when we look at the news, we're seeing it edited version of reality that a certain company who makes money just in the same way as other fantasy media makes money.
[00:05:28] Often these, these news companies are owned by the same companies that produce the movies, right? And the TV shows is all the same thing, right? So it's all basically just fantasy media in one way or the other. And it's designed to get us hooked and get us addicted, to get us caught up in a story to make us keep coming back for more. Because when we keep coming back for more, they make money. And if we don't keep coming back for more, then they lose money and then someone gets fired and they go out of business.
[00:05:59] And so people's livelihood is dependent on us watching this stuff. And the same is true for social media. Social media is designed, the algorithm is designed to keep us looking at the screen for as long as possible because they can send us ads and the companies get paid for running the ads. So if we're not looking at this stuff long enough, then they don't get ad money and then they go out of business. So there is massive amounts of people who are literally living off our attention. Like if we stopped watching all these things and turned everything off, a lot of people would become unemployed. Right? And I don't want people to become unemployed. I don't want to, you know, take someone's job away. And I'm not sure most these people are evil. I really don't think hardly any of these people are like actively thinking, hahaha, let's see if we can get them all hooked and addicted. I really don't think they're actively trying to cause problems on purpose. I think they just want a job and this is a very well paying job. Right? If you work for one of these social media companies or you're producing TV shows or movies, right. It's often quite fun and they can make a lot of money.
[00:07:24] So nothing against anyone. The problem is that for me personally, I'm losing chunks of my precious life to stupid nonsense that I really don't care about if I'm totally honest about it. Obviously I love a good movie and I love these things and I'm interested in them to some degree, otherwise I wouldn't click on it or I wouldn't watch them. But I think the addiction to these things started way, way, way, way younger way a long time ago when I was a kid and I used to watch the cartoons in the morning and I just found it as a nice escape from my life. You know, it's kind of like a reprieve from the stress of life.
[00:08:18] So I think I became addicted to these things on some level when I was a child.
[00:08:25] And over the years I've come back to this. Oh, I'm a bit bored, let me just look at this thing. Or I want to just watch this thing, I want to watch this movie, I want to just check out the news and piece by piece it's not a big deal. But when, when I add it all up, what it's done to me is it's made me not fully experience my own life story in the.
[00:08:50] I'm living vicariously through the stories of others to some degree because the only times where I'm interested in media is because I'm not enjoying my life if I'M feeling happy and free and I have people around and everything's going great. I don't want the media. I'm not interested at all. It's just when I am feeling slightly disturbed or I'm bored or I'm not sure what to do with myself, that's when I go for it because it fills a certain gap in my day.
[00:09:27] So anyway, I've done lots of sessions and programs on all these topics for a long time. But what I'm doing here is I am doing a 21 day challenge for myself and you're most welcome to listen to it where I am going to not have any unnecessary media for 21 days. I'm actually going to do 30 days or even longer. I plan to do this indefinitely, but I'm going to record it for 21 days and I'm going to be radically honest with you and with myself about exactly what's going on. Today actually is day two. Yesterday I didn't have any unnecessary media at all.
[00:10:10] And I woke up this morning feeling so inspired and so excited and so clear headed that I thought like I need to do something to make sure that I really do this properly and the best way to do it is to be held accountable by other people.
[00:10:25] So here's exactly what I'm doing, how I've set it up in case you're interested in doing something yourself.
[00:10:31] So the first thing is that I have already purchased various blocking devices. I have a KSafe which is basically a plastic box with a lid that has a timer on it and you can choose how long it is. So the first thing I'm doing is that at 7pm or earlier I'm going to unplug my WI FI router and put my cell phone in this box and I'm going to spin the wheel. There's a wheel on the top and I'm not going to be able to open that box until probably around 8 o' clock in the morning the next day. So I'll be offline for about 12, 13, 14 hours depending on how, how early I put it in the box. Right. So I'll be completely offline. I literally can't go on the Internet at all for more than half the day.
[00:11:27] And I highly recommend that I also have a landline so if any emergencies happen I can call someone on my phone. Also I can just talk to people on the phone because I like to talk to people and so I can not have any temptation to check something late at night and stay up and that will help Me, go to bed earlier, put the house to bed, tidy up, get a nice meditation, go to sleep, wake up fresh.
[00:11:55] I also have a brick which is a device where you can lock certain apps on the phone. So I'm going to use that so that I can't click on things.
[00:12:08] And I also have this other thing called Cold Turkey Blocker which basically blocks the Internet different. There's many ways of doing it. I have all the apps actually. I've got one called Focus, another one called Freedom, I think cold Turkey or. So what's the best, best, best, best, most hardcore one? And turns out it's called Cold Turkey Blocker.
[00:12:32] So I'm setting that up. That's actually been quite tedious getting that set up the right way because I set it up where I couldn't get access to my email and I had to type in this thing because you can have a timer, you can have a password, there's various ways of blocking it and I had to type this thing and I really need to check my email right now, blah, blah, blah, and press a button, then it opens up and I found that slightly tedious. So I'm still in the process of figuring out how to block these things in a way that actually works and isn't inconvenient.
[00:13:05] So that's the main thing, right. So if you're planning on doing something like this, it's important to discover what are your top, middle and bottom line media. Right. This is from a 12 step program.
[00:13:20] So top line means that the media that is necessary.
[00:13:25] So for example, or technology that's necessary, for example, I need to check my email. I don't need to check it all the time, but sometimes I get sent codes that I need to check there and then.
[00:13:37] So I can't block it all the time for that reason, obviously I need to get back to some people. But realistically I don't really need to check my email hardly at all if I'm totally honest, because I have people who take care of my emails for my business and I don't get that many emails personally. So really I don't actually need that much email, if I'm honest.
[00:13:57] I also have WhatsApp messages which, which I kind of feel I do need because it's important for me to connect with people. I'm living on my own at this point in my life and I have loads of friends and people I connect with and I don't know if I'm going to meet people physically unless I connect with them. When are we going to Meet.
[00:14:16] And so having WhatsApp is important, but using it all the time is another form of addiction.
[00:14:23] So having windows around that something that I'm going to work on, but for most of the time just keeping WhatsApp open is better.
[00:14:32] And so top line is basically certain amount of email, certain amount of WhatsApp messages, and then any of the website related things that I work on.
[00:14:43] I have various software programs and whatever else I use for my work and then things like marketing newsletters or spiritual teachings, you know, inspiring texts.
[00:14:59] That's all what I consider top line. In other words, top line is things that are either necessary or uplifting genuinely, and they're not harmful and addictive.
[00:15:10] Middle lines are things like podcasts that are sort of not really necessary but kind of useful.
[00:15:26] A lot of things can become middle lines from top lines if they are used excessively, right? So for example, if I check WhatsApp a thousand times a day, then it becomes a middle or bottom line, bottom line of the most toxic things.
[00:15:47] AI has been one of my biggest Achilles heels, to be perfectly honest. Because what happens with AI, and I'm sure you've probably experienced this, if you lose it, if you use it a lot for your work, if you just use it occasionally for like, oh, what's the, how am I going to fix my washing machine or something, right, that's different. But if you're using it for your work consistently, I give it these hard things to do, like building out websites and doing various marketing things, and it takes a while for it to come back with an answer because I'm giving it hard stuff to do. I'm using the highest level model, so it consumes a lot of data, data and a lot of compute power.
[00:16:32] So I'm waiting around and that's the time when I'm waiting around that I either am tempted to start another AI conversation while I'm waiting for the first one and then a third one and a fourth. And that's very, very dangerous. Don't do that. I've tried that doesn't work because I'm. That's called split tasking. I'm jumping from this thing to that thing to this thing to that thing.
[00:16:54] And that's very unhealthy for the brain. So I've realized just do one type of work at a time. Problem is, when I'm sitting around waiting, I am tempted to just check something in the meantime, right? Because using AI is a bit of a weird situation because normally if I wasn't using AI, I would be doing everything Myself. So I would be thinking about it, working on it, thinking about it, working on it all at the same time.
[00:17:22] Whereas with AI, I'm thinking about it, then telling the AI to do something, then I'm sitting around not doing anything for a moment, then it comes back, then I would look at what it did and tell it what to change.
[00:17:34] Do you see what I mean? So it's an. It's a very unusual way of working.
[00:17:40] It's kind of like sitting next to a computer programmer who you say, can you do this thing for me? And then they're doing it, but you can't see what they're doing because they're doing it in another room.
[00:17:53] And then they say, oh, here it is. And then you say, no, no, that's good here, but that needs to change. And you don't know what they're doing.
[00:18:00] It's a very strange way of working. So I'm.
[00:18:05] There's a lot of things I've realized I'm better off doing myself than using AI at all. So my intention nowadays is to cut AI down as much as I possibly can because it actually doesn't work very well.
[00:18:18] Even the highest level models, even the best of the best, even with all the best systems, there's a limit to what it can do. And studies have shown that even if it can knock something out quickly, if I say I'll build out this page, come up with this sales page, do this thing, it can do it really fast. And at first glance it looks quite good.
[00:18:42] But then the amount of time that it takes to look at it again. No, no, that's wrong, that's wrong, that's wrong. Change this, update this, change this picture.
[00:18:54] All of that back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, first of all, is emotionally draining and disturbing way of working, at least for me.
[00:19:04] And secondly, when I add up the amount of time it took to produce something, it's significantly longer by hours in many cases than if I just done it all myself.
[00:19:17] So AI looks like it's saving time and it is very, very good at certain techie things, but it's unpleasant to work with and it actually takes longer. So. So another thing I'm aware of is that I would consider AI as a middle line, almost bordering on a bottom line, to be perfectly honest, because it, It's. I find the negative effect on me causes me to feel like I need some dopamine to balance out working with the AI.
[00:19:56] So AI is definitely a middle line.
[00:19:59] And then bottom line is things like YouTube movies, TV shows, news, fiction, books, Any fantasy based media, sexualized media of any kind, all of that, anything to do with fantasy based unnecessary media, which, which unfortunately is most of the Internet, most of the Internet is unnecessary fantasy based media. Whether it's social media where people are producing a fantasy version of their life, or whether it's various kinds of TV shows and fiction.
[00:20:50] Oh dear, oh dear. Of course, the porn industry is a gigantic thing. So there's, you know, massive amounts of fancy media. And then even like shopping can be another form of fantasy because I've done these kind of detoxes with various groups for over a year actually, in one way or the other.
[00:21:09] And a lot of people, they give up the media that they end up spending their time going on and shopping.
[00:21:20] So then, so the addiction is just moving around. And the real reason I want to do this mostly is because I want to find out what it is that I'm actually running away from.
[00:21:34] What is it that I can't handle, what is it that I am afraid of?
[00:21:39] And I know what it is, in essence, I know that it's. I don't want to feel certain things, I don't want to feel certain things. That's what it comes down to. I don't want to feel disturbed, I don't want to feel bad, I don't want to face certain things.
[00:21:51] And I'm also becoming aware that I'm not sure I want to feel too good either. I actually have a feeling that the biggest issue isn't feeling bad. It's actually not being comfortable feeling too good. Strangely enough, I think that's actually what's really going on, is that the media puts me in a hypnotic trance where I stay in a smaller mindset and if I give it up, I have to expand and grow to a higher level. And some part of me is not up for it.
[00:22:26] So there's avoiding negative feeling, but there's also, I think, avoiding a bigger life and a positive feeling.
[00:22:32] And I'm sure there's other things which I will discover by doing this.
[00:22:38] So why am I doing it? Because of all the reasons I mentioned, what am I doing? I am putting my Internet in a box for at least 12 hours a day so I can't be online.
[00:22:49] And during the day I will be very, very consciously using the Internet as absolutely small amount as I possibly intentionally. Right? So I'm very aware I'm going online now.
[00:23:06] I have people that I am sharing my chart with, what, you know, what am I doing every day and how's it Going, I'm going to share how much time I spent online and what I did with some people as well to hold me accountable.
[00:23:21] So I'm actually tracking how much time and what's going on and these things are going to bring me into like, awareness of what I'm doing. Because a lot of this stuff, it happens unconsciously. I go into hypnotic trance.
[00:23:40] The reason this is so dangerous is because literally I feel like I've been hypnotized, right? I'm working on something and I think, oh, you know what, I'm just going to check this one real thing real quick. And I click on it and I can feel at a certain point I'm not there. Like I'm. I'm in this altered reality, which seems somewhat enjoyable at the time, but then afterwards I don't feel good because to me, most of this content is actually just basically junk food content. It's a bit like eating Pringles or eating junk food that because it's actually not really good for us and it's dissatisfying. It's never enough. So you have to keep eating more and more and more and more and more to try and get that satisfaction.
[00:24:37] If you eat healthy, natural food, our body can tell when we've had enough. Like there's only so much salad you can actually eat. At a certain point you're like, oh God, this is too much, I have to stop.
[00:24:50] There's a natural awareness. But this junk food stuff, there's no obvious stopping point. It becomes a pull.
[00:25:00] That is a dopamine loop. It's called the ludic loop, where it's never enough, never enough, never enough, never enough. And it goes round around and it can go on for hours and hours and hours and hours and hours.
[00:25:16] It can go on for hours and hours and days and days and months and months and years and years.
[00:25:22] So this is a very, very serious problem. I was recently talking to some spiritual teachers. Most of my friends are spiritual teachers and I haven't met anyone so far who says they don't have a problem with this.
[00:25:39] Everyone I talk to in private admits they got a problem with their Internet use and AI use.
[00:25:49] But doing something about it is different. You know, like a lot of people say, yeah, I probably should cut back on my drinking. Yeah, I probably shouldn't take some so much cannabis, or I probably should eat less sugar, or I probably should do more exercise. We all know we need to do things differently. Oh, I could do more meditation better if I went on more walks.
[00:26:09] But actually doing it is quite difficult. And so hopefully this. This 21 days is going to be interesting for you as well as it's going to be useful for me. So I'm just going to be radically honest.
[00:26:22] Today is Monday. Yesterday was a day of rest. I didn't do any work yesterday. It was a very chill day.
[00:26:31] Once I turn the Internet on today and I get all these messages and I have all these things to deal with and I start using AI, that's when the trouble comes, right? So it's easy. If I turn everything off, I haven't got a problem. But once it's on, then it's trouble, trouble, trouble, potentially.
[00:26:53] So wish me luck and I'll tell you how I do at the end of today. And hopefully this is going to be useful for you, too. Thanks for being here. Lots of love and many blessings.
