I just want to turn my brain off.
It’s been a long day, I’ve been pulled in a number of different directions, running back and forth, and I finally just got home. My body relaxes as I let out a long sigh, and get ready to put away any sense of responsibility for the day.
I want to tune out. So after patting my dogs on the head, I slump down on the couch and turn on the TV. I load a show on Netflix (currently Star Trek: Deep Space Nine), or maybe I don’t turn on the TV at all. Instead I pull out my phone and get on Facebook or Reddit. Sometimes I do both, scrolling on my phone with the TV on in the background.
I could spend anywhere between hours like this. Drunk on media.
The end result is almost always the same. In the end I tend to feel as tired as when I started. I start to feel a little listless, uninspired to do anything, but also increasingly bored with what I’m doing. The best thing to do to escape the boredom seems to be loading the next episode, or scrolling through the next page…
But my sense of agitation grows, and after a few hours like this I can feel more drained than when I started.
Now I don’t want to give TV or social media a completely bad rap. I’ve felt great inspiration and learned a lot from the stories of some of my favorite shows, and social media has had a huge impact on my ability to stay in touch with and learn from others.
There are absolutely days where plopping down on the couch and vegging out in this way can be recharging and restful.
And yet I tend to rely on tuning out too readily.
It is a go-to habit for me, and the times it feels depleting tend to outweigh the instances in my life where it is genuinely recharging. It almost always feels easier to flip on the TV or whip out my phone, while sitting quietly on my porch with no distractions can feel overwhelmingly difficult.
The idea of doing 20 minutes of yoga or meditation can sound like an impossible task, but 2 hours of TV is easy as pie.
When prompted with the possibility of tuning in, rather than tuning out, it somehow feels like a huge commitment. There is something about it that feels demanding, or uncertain. I don’t know where it will leave me or what will come next. Whereas tuning-out is completely predictable. I know exactly what I’m going to get.
Yet the predictability is what ultimately drives me crazy.
The wonder, sense of possibility, and openness that comes from tuning-in is genuinely rejuvenating. It makes me feel like I am engaged in a life worth living, and the unexpectedness of things is both exciting and engaging.
I have often been surprised by how rejuvenating just 15 minutes of meditation can be.
Yet for whatever reason, most days, it feels like a great burden to tune-in.
In learning how to take better care of myself, I have worked to make more of a daily practice of tuning it. I am consistently surprised by the results, reap the benefits of feeling more vital in my overall life, and almost everyday tuning-in still seems like some terrible chore.
And just because I spend time tuning-in, doesn’t mean tuning-out goes away.
It can be easy to throw tuning-out into a trash bin of undesirable or unwholesome activities. Yet I find that by spending some time tuning-in my tuning-out actually becomes more satisfying. It feels better to relax in this way, and I tend to not tune-out for as long.
How do you strike a balance between tuning out vs. tuning in?
What activities in your life give you energy and a sense of strength or purpose, and which ones leave you feeling kind of blah? Whatever your answers I encourage you to play with both sides. If you tune-out a lot, see what it’s like to spend some time tuning in, even just 10 minutes. If you put a lot of demands on yourself to always be present, see what it’s like to give yourself a little more space to tune-out.
Be open to being surprised by the results.
