#becom

a guide to take back your power ‧₊˚🦢✩

do what you want and don't be afraid to do it alone. if no one else wants to go with you somewhere, or do something with you, learn to have that ability to do it alone. and obviously i don't mean illegal or bad stuff, but i mean if you've been meaning to try out a new activity but no one else seems interested, go do it on your own! when you start doing this it'll show people that whether they join you or not, you will still go and do things that make you happy.

say no. just say no. its not that scary once you start saying it often. you don't wanna do something? say no. you don't wanna give something? say no. you don't need to have a reason.

get a life outside of them or get a life outside of whats draining you. when your whole life is primarily centred around maybe a toxic friend, a job that drains you, something that makes you feel very anxious, then of course you'd be on survival mode 24/7. because all you're thinking and stressing about is that thing. so instead maybe after a long day of school or work, go home and do something you love. because remember, your life doesnt stop after school/ work okay?? you can go and actually DO STUFF to take your mind off things. you don't even need to go out of your house, you could have a cozy night in with yummy food and your fav movie, pick up a hobby or if you do wanna go outside your house, meet up with some friends, learn a sport, join a club, go paragliding or something- anything that makes you feel happy!!

refuse embarrassment. because you can. because torturing yourself over what happened in the past is doing you absolutely no good right now. just learn and move onnn- LEARN AND MOVE ON! if learning takes time, so be it but make sure that you're focussing on learning, on why you did that, and not beating yourself up for making a mistake. and also because when you show people you're not embarrassed about something, they'll realise that they cannot hold that over your head. now you have the power.

As I walk and drive around Los Angeles, I am struck by how many people I see looking at their phone. On every block there’s usually a couple of people walking along looking at their phones. In a plaza, where people are sitting, sometimes nearly everyone is looking at their phone. In my experience, when I am looking at my phone, I am nearly completely unaware of my surroundings. I am very much immersed in the reality of the phone., and disconnected from the reality of the world around me. I tend to feel lonely and sad when I’m disconnected from the world around me, I feel happier when I’m connected to people and experience of this world. Plenty has been written about the greater the prevalence of smart phones, the greater the prevalence of depression. Blah blah blah, whatever. Talking to somebody while they are using their phone is always a drag.

There are ways in which the phone does connect us more and increases our level of communication. It’s just that there are so many other ways that it disrupts and disconnects us from each other. So what if there’s just a better way to use the phone? To use it in such a way that all of the ways it connects us are emphasized, and all of the ways it separates us from each other are minimized. It would basically be a way of using the phone that fosters more connection and better communication.

The more suited a tool is to the job, the better job that tool will do. If we define the job of our phone as enhancing communication and connection, then we ask ourselves what aspects of the phone are helpful in this respect?

So I am proposing an investigation of the phone. I expect to find and define a set of apps, settings, and actions that will increase the usefulness of a phone in terms of human connection, and remove or minimize the aspects that are harmful to connection. This would be an evolving set, and one that is open to discussion, fluid, and of course it is different things to different people.

Ultimately, it is a radical pairing down of the phone’s range of possibile uses in order to sharply focus it’s functionality toward realizing meaningful connection.

So, I’m going to try some things with my phone and I’ll let you know. I’ve got some ideas, and maybe this will be really good.