Mindful Tech: Reframing Our Digital Lives and Creating Healthier Digital Habits

Mindful Tech: Reframing Our Digital Lives and Creating Healthier Digital Habits

Jeffrey Besecker:

This is The Light Inside, I'm Jeffrey Besecker.

Distractions. When it comes to our ability to engage and communicate, our ability to focus and connect can fluctuate with the influences around us. In today's world, time is precious, and numerous demands constantly vie for our attention, leading to deeply ingrained patterns of automatic responses driven by our default neural network. As a result, our tech habits sometimes dominate our lives. You might ask yourself, how can we develop healthier, adaptive behaviors regarding tech usage? With one simple practice, mindfulness. Disrupting impulsive tech use by fostering intentional awareness and conscious emotional regulation. Research illustrates how mindfulness reduces compulsive smartphone use and improves our ability to manage stress. Today, we join author, outdoorsman, and marketing expert, Emmanuel Rose, as he shares how clarification, solitude, meditation, and time in nature helps us mindfully disconnect from our devices and tech, empowering us to re-engage with life more thoughtfully. In his book, The Seven Principles of the Magic Rock, How Solitude and Nature Anchors Your Mental Health, improves your leadership skills, and unleashes your creativity, serves as a roadmap to mindful awareness. In an era where digital overload and the mental health crisis intersect, Emmanuel Rose offers sanctuary through his unique magic rock principles.

Tune in to learn how to mindfully reconnect with life and those around you when we return to The Light Inside.

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The dopamine rush from tech usage and social engagements can have an intoxicating effect. When we receive notifications, likes, or messages, our brain releases dopamine, a powerful neurotransmitter associated with pleasure and reward. Triggered in brain centers such as the amygdala and insular cortex, this chemical boost reinforces the behavior, making us crave more interactions to experience the same pleasurable sensations. Over time, this compounding effect creates a feedback loop where our brains become conditioned to seek out and prioritize tech interactions, often at the expense of real-world connections and activities. Neurologically, this process involves the brain's reward system, particularly the mesolimbic pathway, which is responsible for reinforcing reward behaviors. When we engage with technology, this pathway becomes highly active, making the behavior more compelling and harder to resist. The constant influx of notifications and updates triggers intermittent reinforcement, a powerful conditioning technique where rewards are unpredictable. heightening our engagement and making it more challenging to break these unhealthy cycles. Emotionally, we may become attached to the validation and social connection provided by tech interactions. This attachment can lead to feelings of anxiety and stress when we're not connected, creating a dependence that mirrors addiction. The compulsive need to check our devices can interfere with daily activities, relationships, and mental health, fostering a toxic cycle of tech use driven by the brain's desire for dopamine-induced pleasure. In essence, the neural processes and chemical effects associated with tech usage create a powerful and often detrimental attachment, making it difficult to disengage and foster behaviors that can adversely impact our well-being. Today, we talk to Emmanuel Rose as we discover the role simple daily practices like mindfulness play in breaking the spell of compulsive tech use. So this is a fun opportunity. We're kind of on a roller coaster ride right now, looking at communication and being a central through line and theme we're looking at, especially where our subconscious and unconscious patterns might create gaps in that communication. So I feel this is a really fun and unique opportunity to kind of get to know each other and see where we might serve that mission of bringing mindfulness into our communication. That's cool. Yeah.

Emanuel Rose: I'm with you on that. I'm on a 90 day emotional intelligence program for myself right now. So that's kind of cool. I have an executive coach and I got some feedback from one of my friends. He's like, you know, you're kind of a knucklehead. You're trying to do everything with your brain instead of your EQ. And I'm like, all right, thanks for the feedback. So I'm going to dig into that.

Jeffrey Besecker: That's fun. That's fun. It's great that we get those opportunities to kind of question and challenge where we're going with things. I know that's something I try to be mindful of myself and interactions, particularly again, I noticed where not only in my own observations, but in my feedback cycles and my mentors in my direct line of external feedbacks, where that role pops up with me, you know, where to be more mindful of effective communication. So I think it's a fun through line to kind of play with today and throughout there. Tell me a bit about your connection. First, you know, your background is in branding, correct? Yeah. Yeah. We have a similarity there. That's where my core arc of adult career development, I call it career development. Personal development was also subjective in that, but by the through line. travels that arc through communication and through brand development and how we connect as human beings. I think we've got an interesting chance to kind of balance some of that perspective and contrast it with each other and see where we go with it.

Emanuel Rose: Yeah, that's cool. Yeah, I've been in sales and marketing for 30 plus years of my career in the last 15 years have been as an agency owner working with B2B clients primarily and written a number of marketing books and then a number of children's books and natural history books that are encouraging humans to spend more time outside. Oh, fun, fun.

Jeffrey Besecker: That has to be such an enriching and rewarding project to work in.

Emanuel Rose: Yeah, it's funny because it's the disparate, like one of my marketing books is about marketing in the age of AI. And then I've got, you know, a book about spending time alone in nature meditating. So, you know, it's all around being this authenticity, right? And being a real human in both domains. That's the thread for me.

Jeffrey Besecker: That's an interesting thread to look at, our notions and assumptions about authenticity and what constitutes that. I don't know that I'm going to dive so far into that aspect today, especially from the subconscious perspective, unconscious more than anything, you know, where we draw some of those assumptions, but I'm going to leave that out there today. So we don't kind of drag down into that conversation. It might dilute, dilute being one of the things we utilize as a subconscious unconscious pattern, where we're heading today. Give me a little bit of background on what drew you into first and foremost, looking at mindfulness and utilizing that. And what was your inspiration and purpose in driving into that particular focus, whether that be related to your business or just a core purpose you were drawn toward?

Emanuel Rose: I think, well, I was a I was a psych major in college, so, you know, we're always trying to understand ourselves first. Right.

Jeffrey Besecker: I'm looking in the mirror today in a lot of ways, as we do anyway, but you know, we have a lot of similarities that we're able to compare in our experiential arc today.

Emanuel Rose: That's cool. Yeah. So the, uh, the wounded healer, right. Is, uh, the kind of the, the not so mysterious mystery. And, uh, I'm kind of like that true seeker, you know, even as a kid, I would observe the adults and just wonder what in the hell is that guy doing? I thought adults were supposed to be smarter than that. And, uh, You know, I read the Taoism in high school and then I saw the psychics when I was in my 20s and I studied martial arts and that martial arts led me to meditation and tapping into intuition and then looking to blend and bring in my psychology into my higher self and get all these things aligned through purposeful conscious action.

Jeffrey Besecker: Interesting. Sounds like we have a lot of similarities in that through line also, and I'll kind of leave it open on that today. That could lead us down a dangerous path from my perspective and foreshadowing myself again, kind of falling into that pattern identity of selfhood. So with that regard, where did that path and journey bump up into that idea of our tech usage? And was there kind of a defining factor that led you to focus on that?

Emanuel Rose: Well, as I was researching my book about marketing to Generation Z, I found the research about all the toxicity of technology and social media and the brain chemistry and socialization issues that are triggered by the overuse of tech, right, which are well known. And so I'm like, oh, well, shit, I know how to create the antidote to that because I do that. That's what I'm a hunter and a fisherman and a backpacker and a camper and I am very committed to spending time outside. And then I did that research about nature bathing and all the studies about what happens biochemically and spiritually to back up what I had experienced. And then that's why I wrote the book about the seven principles of the magic rock and as the antidote to that book that I wrote about how to market to these kids. So that was my windy path.

Jeffrey Besecker: Genesis of the path. So in contrast or kind of counter argument, counter perspective to that. In that research, what benefits, and I'm kind of deflecting away from that idea of the toxicity or the patterns that can be inherent in those toxicities, have you found as beneficial aspects of balancing that mindfulness while using tech rather than disconnecting from it and how we also can leverage that in a healthy man to balance the two so we don't become binary, which becomes its own pattern of conscious and unconscious behaviorism. It's not like we're trying to walk as we go down that through line now.

Emanuel Rose: I'm with you, though. Yeah. Yeah. The position I hold is that it's a tool. Right. This is a great tool. Zoom is amazing. You and I are having a conversation that we would never be able to have had 20 years ago. Right. We would have had to have gone to a conference in Cancun to have met each other. Right.

Jeffrey Besecker: Sometimes I regret that move because I would rather be in Cancun doing the conference.

Emanuel Rose: Right. So it's a tool that we have to manage. And so that, for instance, I have Starlink. I have it on the top of my truck when I go on a trip and I use it either in the morning or in the afternoon, depending on what the other activities I have, but I cut it off. I manage it and I put it away. And sometimes it gets put away for five days. Sometimes it gets put away till the next day. So, you know, that's kind of the adult version of having control of the tool versus the being addicted to the dopamine and having to have that drip.

Jeffrey Besecker: So that's the through line for me, is that we're in charge of this tool or we're not, but we should be ultimately healthy, adaptability and confident decision making like a grown up. And there again, we're making that subjective comparison to being grown up. I think this is a great opportunity. I feel we've got a commonality in some of our perspective here. And I think it's going to be fun to kind of look through and parse through as we dive in today. So Manuel, understanding the underlying psychological mechanisms that drive our tech usage can reveal significant insights into the mental health issues faced by young adults today. We all know that influence of social influence, so I'm going to frame it in that way today. Given the pervasive impact of this influence of technology on our daily lives, how do subconscious and unconscious behavior patterns influence our daily use of modern tech, and how does mindfulness help us become aware of these patterns from your perspective?

Emanuel Rose: Well, it's interesting because the technology has gotten so wrapped up into our daily life and what we used to do, like to go to the bank, we'd have to get in the car and drive to the bank and stand in a line and then talk to a person. Well, now that is contained on the phone. Instead of calling somebody who's a friend of mine, I can just text them or I can DM them or I can go onto Facebook and DM them. So, it's really now in the fabric of our daily lives and so that it becomes unconscious in just that factor. And then you add on to the fact that we get these little blasts of dopamine and biological triggers that encourage that usage. It starts to be invisible, really, the trap of technology. And so for me personally, the practices I'm in is to schedule time every day, every week, every month to be completely separated. And then that gives me time to recalibrate in a daily, weekly, and monthly process.

Jeffrey Besecker: Yeah, I think that's a very relevant setup today to look at that idea of the dopamine rush we get from our tech use. On one hand, it's very rewarding, yet we have that stimulus of stress that's tied to that response. I think that sets us up nicely to look at the role impulse control plays in this process.

Emanuel Rose: Yeah, impulse control. That's a fascinating one, isn't it?

Jeffrey Besecker: You know, when it comes to adaptability and healthy impulse control, emotional competency or just being aware of our emotions, cognitive flexibility and mindfulness all play significant roles in our ability to form those habits. Or more importantly, a new area we're kind of focusing on in our program here is dehabituating from those habits. Sometimes we have that ingrained pattern. There's times where we have to step into a healthy state of adaptation to form a new habit. We have to dehabituate from the old one. So in that regard, what role does impulse control play in our relationship with digital devices? And how can we become more aware of these automatic behaviors?

Emanuel Rose: Yeah, I think that's a great question. And I've really become way more aware of how I'm interacting with these tools and enjoying the dopamine and having compassion for that in other people. Right. And so for me, that's, that's kind of where I'm at. Uh, impulse control for me comes from whatever a super ego of the parent archetype. And so I'm monitoring and managing myself in a structured way in order to build the habits so that I set that time limit, 10 minutes on Facebook, whatever the thing is. And then having those conversations with the people who are younger than me to help them understand that they need to put those parental controls into place for themselves.

Jeffrey Besecker: So ultimately for me, I'm looking at how we connect that emotional response. Sometimes it's that emotional fulfillment that we feel, you know, that sense of joy, that sense of happiness. Yet there's the other side of that coin where we engage in things like anticipatory anxiety relating to FOMO or that fear of missing out, which has a much deeper root. We'll get to that in a bit here, I think. And ultimately, where we start to engage some of those trauma responses, going back to those ego filters, as you mentioned, through the superego, where we start to measure our perception, where we start to measure our sense of identity.

Emanuel Rose: Yeah, and I think the practice I'm in also is observing myself in those moments. And so, and when I say, oh, I'm having anxiety right now. And what is this anxiety about? Right? And so that little self-check then allows me to pull out of the intensity of that unconscious response.

Jeffrey Besecker: subconscious behavior such as maladaptive or unhealthy social comparisons, anticipatory anxiety, as we said, that fear of missing out, and impulse engagement contribute to emotional regulation and tech usage. And I'm going to reframe that impulse engagement rather than impulse control? Are we able to develop an adaptive engagement? So often we look solely on that idea of control rather than adaptability. From that aspect, can you explain how constant digital distractions affect our ability to consciously regulate our usage? And might there be some strategies you suggest that help us counteract this, especially through mindfulness practices?

Emanuel Rose: Yeah I think that I love the turn of the phrase there and to say I'm going to engage in this now or I have this impulse that where I want to engage in this but I need to go and do something else and then I'll come back to it right and so that you're making it a choice so For instance, when I go into the store to pick up a loaf of bread, I'll leave my phone in the car. And then when I'm shopping and in line, I'm present in that experience versus being in the mindless meander of the automaton, right? Which is also a practice that I'm in as well when I'm not paying attention.

Jeffrey Besecker: So relating that to that subconscious need of control, I'm going to reflect on this from my perspective a little bit if I might today. Is that all right with you and me? Yeah, absolutely. So that subconscious need to control very often triggers that cavalcade of anticipatory anxiety as we start to get emotionally imbibed and connected with that need to control. starts to trigger subconscious mechanisms where we then have that fear of losing control or that fear of the uncertainty. Becoming adaptable with that somewhat requires us to surrender and be vulnerable to some of that idea of control, to just be vulnerable with ourselves in that regard. How would you respond to that? Yeah, throw that over your way.

Emanuel Rose: That triggers me into this idea of accepting the unknown, right? And that's one of my daily meditations is being okay with the unknown, which is the opposite of the control, right?

Jeffrey Besecker: And in some ways, going back to that, We've been doing a lot of talk, especially in some of our upcoming conversations, about access control or that ability to consciously connect and engage. That ability to influence through our choice, through our thoughts, through our beliefs, through our behaviors. we're able to access and influence the ability to adapt those behaviors and those responses.

Emanuel Rose: Yeah, that's powerful. So I have two practices around that. One is that when there's situations that I know are going to be challenging for me, then I will time travel or beam energy into those moments in the future. And when I'm in those moments and I'm triggered, then I trigger myself to breathe and to feel my fingertips and to connect with Source and to have a dispassionate acceptance of the situation.

Jeffrey Besecker: I love that framing dispassionate acceptance. You know, sometimes we do inherently become overly passionate about our intentions, imperatives, you know, those ways we enforce expectation and assumptions on ourselves. Sometimes we're harshly expectant of what we should do in any given circumstances rather than having that kind dispassionate engagement with vulnerability, you know, and we can kind of shift that and play around with that in a lot of different ways. Sometimes it is becoming more passionate about being vulnerable and being open to that.

Emanuel Rose: Yeah. And I say the the initial step for me was to cultivate not having opinions about some things or not having opinions about everything. I think we get trained that our opinions is who we are. And when I started to not have opinions about everything, A, it causes confusion socially, which is an interesting thing to observe. And then B, it freed me up to be able to do and be and see a lot of other things.

Jeffrey Besecker: In that regard, we've again had some really neat conversations lately. We're on a series right now looking at how to be more adaptive in those opinions. Are we able to have an opinion or a belief yet openly have a framework that allows us to step out of it, to step beyond it, or more importantly, to depersonalize? ourselves from. So often it's that personal attachment to the belief or the opinion. This is a part of my identity, this is a part of my story, this is a part of my role. That habit itself connects us to the opinion and we're not able often to then step back and consider a perspective beyond our own or even within our own sometimes.

Emanuel Rose: Yeah, and that locks us into these tribal connections and builds this us-them paradigm. You know, that's kind of what I've seen in the cascading of opinions versus why do I believe that? And is that still accurate? And is it still what I believe? Or is that just what I'm saying out of habit? And you know, that again, that third party observation of myself to have awareness of me in that time.

Jeffrey Besecker: So in that regard, what role do you feel? This might be a little sidestep here. Mindfulness plays in our ability to identify when we shut down to that ability to accept healthy, beneficial outside feedback that's compassionate and empathetic. I'm going to frame this.

Emanuel Rose: Yeah. Well, it is being able to be connected to source or however you want to describe being present. And typically, in my experience, that means I'm not locked into my ego and I'm not defending my positions. Right. And if I'm having a conversation with somebody that I trust and has my best interest in mind also, then that's the perfect combination of change. That's a perfect or at least of observation from my perspective.

Jeffrey Besecker: I'm going to frame this a little bit. Notice I keep using the word framing today. I'm going to point out how I'm reinforcing that because so much of our adaptability revolves around the practice or the practical application. Again, I'm intentionally framing here of being able to adapt and consider different frameworks or different perspectives. How we look at things is one frame. How someone else looks at things is another frame. You know, they're pieces of how we build our perception of how we build our beliefs. If we're able to adapt, it's like a puzzle. We can deconstruct those pieces. This is my piece. Here's your piece. Feedback allows us to consider those pieces and look at the bigger picture of that puzzle, so to speak, to kind of metaphorically frame it today, and just simply swap out those pieces to make a better picture or a better outcome together.

Emanuel Rose: Beautiful. Yeah, I had a situation just recently where talking with a very close friend of mine describing some breakdowns I was having with my clients. And he's like, well, as you're trying to high IQ them instead of high EQ them, emotional intelligence. And I was like, huh, okay. Well, then I took that and I said, I'm on a 90 day EQ program for myself. And I went and took the EQ test online from the guy who wrote the book. And they're like, my EQ on the test is off the charts. And so it is just that I was being dispassionate about applying the things that I know how to do. And so that feedback combined with action, combined with data, then put me into different practices and is yielding much more, at least not necessarily better results with my clients, but it's much more honest interactions with my clients.

Jeffrey Besecker: That's an interesting way to frame looking at meeting people in the middle, from my perspective, where we find that common connecting point.

Emanuel Rose: And doing the work, right. I had gotten, I'll call it lazy. That's how I call it in my head. I was being lazy about how it was. It's way easier for me to be IQ versus EQ. So it takes more effort for me, but it is it's more valuable in the biggest picture to have that EQ.

Jeffrey Besecker: Let's look at framing. I'm going to frame today. Good. Are we being lazy? There again, kind of becoming harsh in our self-assessments or our reflected judgments. Or is some of that a proponent just of default neural programming where we do ingrain that habituated habit that allows us to make better choices, faster choices, sometimes worse choices, you know, comparing and contrasting the feedback there. We're just simply moving toward that quicker choice.

Emanuel Rose: Yeah. And I would say that's exactly it for me. It's expediting, right? It's like I have, I have seen this situation 750 times, but I haven't taken the time to build a relationship that there's trust with that person to follow me. So I'm, I'm being an ineffective leader at the very least. And that's, that's based on outcomes. That's, you know, that I don't see that as judgmental. It's just, I'm not able to move that person from A to B, even though I know the process that they're in.

Jeffrey Besecker: We're there again, working on this framing today. This is a big task I'm myself playing with lately, putting into practice, becoming practical action, practical at its root, meaning practice. What are we practicing and engaging with vulnerability and adaptability? I'm doing a lot of reinforcing today and a lot of subconscious priming. How do we shift those perspectives? Again, looking at those ego filters. Very often, those harsh judgments come out of those ego filters. Can we reframe that idea of judgment itself? There are times where it's unhealthy or adverse. We're harshly judging versus judgment enrobed in that idea of discernment. It becomes a very grayscale of application in many regards. Wouldn't you agree?

Emanuel Rose: Absolutely. Yeah, it is a grayscale. And if it's life or death, it's very clear. If it's social interaction or learning, then yeah, it takes time to have a conversation like this and then reflect on it and then come back and then reflect on it and have the ultimate compassion for myself as much as I would have compassion for somebody else learning something.

Jeffrey Besecker: So often we become embroiled with those personalized associations or perspectives. In that regard, healthy depersonalization is when we're able to step back into those distanced, psychologically removed perspectives. You know, like you mentioned, those third and fourth person perspectives where we're able to take that equation out and just simply view it for the objective nature of things. healthy depersonalization and healthy ego development. That's not a phrase you hear a lot. We're trying to make it be one. But ego development, ego processes are always there. They're always interacting. They're a function. They're a set of processes. They're not necessarily just one identity. That's more aligned with the psyche. The processes are what carry out those associations of the psyche. So looking at ego development, where we're able to adapt those processes and create healthier outcomes from that contributes significantly to our emotional regulation, impulse control, and adaptive personal associations. Adaptive personal associations, how we relate to things.

Emanuel Rose: Yeah, and so I trigger in this idea of constantly reflecting on what's important to me. That's how I see ego now, like in big ego versus the little ego, like, you know, I want vanilla in my latte or whatever that those things are. But what's important to me? Is it this primary relationship that I have with my wife and meaningful relationships with my male friends and leaving a contribution to the earth and being in wilderness and meditating every day? These are the things that are my differentiation as ego and not these little opinions or little personality quirks.

Jeffrey Besecker: So looking at that, I lean into unitive ego development. We're looking more at egocentricism being when we're caught in more of those childlike or immature, quote, when you're younger, you're considered immature. You haven't developed those traits. You haven't developed those skills and habits. We're in that immature phase of pre-conventional development. We're starting to filter things from that self-view of egocentricism. As we evolve into conventional and post-conventional ego development, we start to make those big little ego assessments, quote-unquote, framing your perspective. Ego-systonic and ego-dystonic. where one perspective is ego empowering, where we're able to use that ego filtering for our benefit and for the benefit of others. And the other end of the spectrum, where that ego inhibits those interactions or diminishes our effectiveness for those interactions.

Emanuel Rose: Right. Yeah. So or where it disconnects us from source, from ourself and from the people that we care and love. Right.

Jeffrey Besecker: So from that regard, it's a little bit easier perhaps to assimilate where we can watch that become a process, you know, where we can watch that become a piece of the puzzle equation. Like we mentioned before, you know, we can see that piece of the puzzle in our behaviors. We can see that piece of the puzzle in our attitudes or mindsets. We can see that piece of the puzzle and how we relate, reflect those actions onto others.

Emanuel Rose: Yeah, and so for me, I'm looking at the outcomes that I'm producing and whether those are coherent with what I want to create when I'm sitting by myself, right? And then I get some feedback and some guidance from my meditation time. And so Those are the that's the rubric that I operate in outcomes, reflection and connection guidance from my connection with God.

Jeffrey Besecker: That's powerful practice again to frame it. That's a practice of actions that we can utilize throughout our lives. So, Manuel, despite those interactions, sometimes we're more connected than ever through our tech usage. Yet many people experience increased feelings of loneliness. through their social media use, through this distancing of our psychological connection with tech, you know, where we're not having as much direct FaceTime or as much truly engaged person to person conversation. There's a little bit of a psychological barrier there or somewhat of a perception of a wall there. I'll frame it that way. So in that regard, why do you feel these interactions are becoming more prevalent than ever?

Emanuel Rose: Well, the ease and the comfort of it and our addictions, right? And the quickness and the rapidity of it. So, I mean, in some ways, the technology is like the perfect addiction drug because it palliates so many of the wounds as humans that we are all born with, right? That feeling of loneliness, the feeling of inadequacy, the feeling of wanting to connect with other people. And we get this little tiny flash of these things from the tech, but then ultimately it's cotton candy. It has no sustenance. And so the practice of going back and just saying, this is the structure. I need to limit and I need to be on this. X amount of time, whatever that magic number for you. You know, the psychologists and the physiologists will say every hour and a half, every 60 minutes, you need to get up, walk around, exercise, save your back, look at something that's big picture so your eyes aren't getting destroyed, whatever, all these best practices to help to get us connected back into reality, back into physical reality.

Jeffrey Besecker: In that regard, I think it's essential here for you and I to reinforce that idea of simple pattern interruption. When we're in that autonomic emotional cycle of the autonomic ladder, when we're in that default neural program of the brain or that pattern of neural response, which does not incidentally reside solely in the brain, I'm going to emphasize that point because so often we go to that default pattern of it's all mindset, yet there's a whole cavalcade of embodied somatic responses. So back to that idea again, I've strayed a little bit. I'm going to rain it back down of simple pattern interruption. Sometimes we have to get up and take that mindful break to just disconnect from that dopamine rush, from that serotonin rush, from that connection with inherently what becomes a stress response. as we're sensory overload. We're bombarded with messages. We're bombarded with this need to answer. I felt it this morning as I woke up Monday morning and first thing, you know, there's a long line of responses from future guests. Feeling that initial overwhelm that I'm stepping into this week, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, regulating that stressful response to say, I'm grateful for all these opportunities. Let's be mindful. Do we have to answer all these one by one in that fashion, simply because that social imperative is there, that assumption that now I have to expect to answer all of them first thing in the morning? You know, do we develop that healthy tolerance to break that pattern, healthy pattern interruption and step back and say, that was stressful. I breathe again, I just come out of my meditation mode, I stepped into that hyper stream of interaction. What did I do? I'm going to say what I did here. It was my practice today. Rather than feeling that feeling like I had to jump in, rather than feeling like somebody is going to be disappointed if I don't answer right away. I feel like I might let myself down if I'm not right on top of this and think about this in the moment. I realized when that stress level stepping up, I feel that dopamine ramp up. I feel that serotonin spike. Oh, I can answer to that. I feel that anticipatory anxiety. That's the emotion. underwriting, and that fear of animatophobia, which is that fear of addressing the emotion that was going on. I felt like I had to answer the emotion right now rather than say, you know what, I'm processing this emotion. I'm acknowledging this emotion. I'm also going to give myself the safe space and vulnerability to regulate this and say, if I don't answer this right now, the world won't end. chances are somebody's feelings are not going to be hurt other than my own because i'm implying this action upon myself i am creating an imperative for myself this is an unanswered rule that i feel i have to conform to right in this moment rather than giving that space so what i do i set all the devices down i took Three deep breaths. And, you know, the dog's there, too, this morning. The dog regularly voices his opinion every morning. He says, you know what, dog? You and I have good time. Once we're out the door, we're in nature. We tend to kind of dissolve a little bit of that and we just kind of flow into that flow. So we got out for that 40 minutes. Time just reconnecting of mindfulness and interrupting that pattern.

Emanuel Rose: Well, that's beautiful. And what I'm hearing is that it's not survival other than what's in your mind. There wasn't a tiger bearing down on you, but it still felt like that, right?

Jeffrey Besecker: Created the tiger. I could create a tiger, but reframing that again.

Emanuel Rose: Yeah, right.

Jeffrey Besecker: Is it reasonable to assume that if I don't answer this, most people are easing into Monday and a more reasonable assumption might become, you know, not that we discard all assumptions, not that we discard all conditioned beliefs, a more healthy window of tolerance becomes psychologically most people aren't going to be triggered to not having an instant reply. If they are triggered in that, how do you navigate that emotional dysregulation and help co-regulate the situation? And if it becomes too adverse, how do you disengage from that and allow that healthy boundary and space to say, I feel you, dude, but. Let's just ease on through that together.

Emanuel Rose: Yeah, it starts with the self-awareness of saying, yeah, I am in this mood or I am in this triggered response right now. And observing that first, you've got, that's the first step, right? Being able to observe it and then being able to have that somatic trigger, which is to touch yourself, say your name, take a deep breath, come back into this time and then make a clear value judgment about, is this something I want to complete and take care of? Now that I'm out of that emotion, or is it something that I can safely put away and take care of something else that I was already involved in? But it has to be recognition first and then coming back into present moment and making that conscious decision.

Jeffrey Besecker: Such a great reminder. Thank you for reinforcing that for me today. I am truly grateful for that feedback because sometimes that is the role we need to step into. When we're so heavily engaged with that path, looking for that confirmation bias, I want to confirm why I'm stressed by this. I want to defend against this or avoid it, sometimes becomes the emotional interaction. Sometimes the avoidance is that procrastination where we just continue in an adverse engagement with procrastination, which becomes a whole nother conversation. Healthy procrastination was me stepping back. and taking the time to go walk with the dog. Healthy pro-crastinating. Crastinating simply meaning to put something on. We're going back to its roots. Crastinating is not necessarily pro-free or post-crastinating. Free is when we start to put it off before it happens. We start to ruminate. before monday comes on sunday i'm pre-crastinating and say i'm not going to get up monday and and deal with these emails because i'm not prepared for it so we start to set the train of putting off addressing emails procrastination is when we're engaged with it we're pro actively involved in putting things off We don't hear that framing. What do we do? We go to the automatic default programming that says socially all procrastination is inherently counterproductive. Yet that act of stepping back and procrastinating answering those emails allowed me to reconnect. It allowed me to be mindful of the stress. It allowed me to be mindful of when the anxiety was creeping up. I'm vulnerable, you know, and sometimes that anxiety, I'm owning it, man. It creeps up there and you say, ah, why is this Monday? You know, you start to defend against it. Why is it Monday? You know, why, why is this bombarding me as well? People are starting their week. And when you put yourself out there and make yourself open, vulnerable, and available, the blessing is, is that you have those increased opportunities to interact. You build upon the strength of those engagements. So reframing that healthy, proactively procrastinating through procrastinating allowed me to consciously and mindfully establish the practice of disengaging those emails and establishing a more creative creative way to utilize that time to recenter myself, to refocus and say, it's Monday, I don't have to put out every fire by 9 a.m. on Monday. Chunk it down. Chunk the practice. Chunk the habit. Depersonalize your response to that, rather than feeling personally affronted from it, rather than engaging protective ego filters. I'm now able to step back and healthily and productively, proactively reframe that and take the practice within my ability to choose.

Emanuel Rose: Yeah, I'm with you 100%. That's a skill and it is the option that we all have if we can observe and breathe into it and then make decisions. And sometimes you want to go and solve all the problems right away, that way you can take the rest of the day off. And that's cool. Great. Then dig in. But it should be a decision every time.

Jeffrey Besecker: So keeping those concepts in mind, as we're kind of marinating in that today, we're going to marinate it, we're going to soak it in. From your perspective, Emmanuel, give us three tips on how to form some of that healthy connection based on mindfulness and reconnecting, especially reconnecting with nature.

Emanuel Rose: Well, the first thing is to schedule a time every day to be outside, whether it's raining, snowing, 107 or perfect, no matter if you're at the beach or in New York City. There's always a place to go and hear the wind, see some moving water, observe the squirrels, right? So take some time to be engaged and fed by reality's operations, right? That's the first thing. The second thing is to spend some time every day in meditation or prayer. And I prefer first thing in the morning and last thing at night, but you've got to take time when you can make it to connect with spirit and reconnect with your higher self and get out of the fray of culture and clarify some things for yourself. And the third thing is to be around your people, your mentors, whether they be alive or in books or in podcasts and spend time every day being fed in who you are and what's important to you.

Jeffrey Besecker: I love that idea of feeding and nurturing each other. That to me becomes a very salient practice that when we do come out of that practiced habit of reconnecting, when we come out of that practice habit of establishing that mindfulness, now we're able to step into that new framework of feeding and nurturing each other in a healthy manner.

Emanuel Rose: I like this conversation. What an amazing conversation. I feel enriched by it and I'm grateful. Likewise.

Jeffrey Besecker: Thank you. Thank you for reminding me. Like I said, I had that moment and it was a moment today where coming off of my end was very ego filtered, that self-protective motive. coming in and bombing right away, you know, and that was a self-created projection based on a concept of self. When I'm able to depersonalize that self again and just set the self down, not filtering it through my eyes and my lens and just say, when I am connected with a higher source of consciousness, when I am removed from those associations in a healthy manner, I have healthy psychological distance. I'm not filtering it through me. I'm just allowing that reconnection to source. Yeah.

Emanuel Rose: And there's the magic. I mean, it makes, uh, it, it changes the way we spend our time with the way I spend my time in the day. And I'm like, I get done with a session like that. And I'm like, what day is it? Where am I? What time is it? You know, but yeah, there's all these things have been actuated, conversations or emails or a plan or some connection with people on my team. And it's, uh, it, it feels so pure and so right that loose sense of space and time, which is, is the beauty, I think.

Jeffrey Besecker: Finally, today, reinforcing that idea of developing that healthy window of psychological tolerance in that regard to become more adaptable. What role, from your perspective, kind of tying things up today, do solitude, nature and meditation play in counteracting the adverse effects of compulsive and excessive screen time? And how can we integrate these practices through our daily lives?

Emanuel Rose: Well, the time when we're able to separate from it creates some perspective for how much it actually has impacted us. So that's the critical part is it's just like if you love to eat grapes and you eat grapes every day and you take a day off and you don't eat grapes, you can go back in and enjoy it that much more. You have to have a little bit of a break. And then every day, every week, every month, we have to make a point to have periods of time when we're completely disconnected and completely fed by the natural source and by the spirit that moves through all things. And that way we can continue to explore who we are as the individual that's contributing to this great experience of being alive in this form.

Jeffrey Besecker: In that regard, here's my key takeaway today. It's essential to develop those actions, habits, practices, and behaviors that allow us that little bit of wobble room to just vulnerably accept and move with life.

Emanuel Rose: Yeah, it's beautiful. It's living a purposeful versus a reactive life.

Jeffrey Besecker: I want to thank you for being very purposeful in your message today and mindful of how we can engage these practices. Thank you so much for sharing that with us. This has truly been such a great series of conversations, and I truly value and appreciate you, Emmanuel. Thank you for sharing your insights with us.

Emanuel Rose: Well, thank you, Jeffrey. I too have enjoyed the conversations and I'm excited to see what your work looks like in the coming months and years. Likewise.

Jeffrey Besecker: Thank you. Thank you for being that reminder to simply be mindful because sometimes we need that reminder in order to get on track. All right. Thank you, Jeffrey. Thank you. Where can our listeners go to reach out to you, Emanuel?

Emanuel Rose: EmanuelRose.com has got all the contact information and or on LinkedIn. So, yeah, Emanuel Rose.

Jeffrey Besecker: Such an awesome resource. Reach out to Emanuel. Engage his wonderful knowledge and wisdom. You are such a heart filling and inspiring individual to engage with. So thank you for sharing that with us.

Emanuel Rose: All right. Well, thank you for having me as part of your show.

Jeffrey Besecker: Likewise, we're so grateful for you, my friend. Namaste, the light in me acknowledges the light in you. Cheers. Cheers.

In this new age of distractions, mindfulness can often become a monumental task, an endeavor made all the more stressful when we're driven by emotional dysregulation. In this episode, we explored how distractions impact our ability to focus and communicate. Our discussion centered around developing healthier tech habits through mindfulness. Author and marketing expert Manuel Rose shared his tips, practices, and strategies, such as clarification, solitude, meditation, and time in nature, to help disconnect us from tech and thoughtfully re-engage with life. If you found value and meaning in this episode, please share it with a friend or loved one. And as always, we're grateful for you, our community of curious academics and thoughtful change leaders. As friends, mentors, and valued peers, we appreciate your invaluable feedback and continued support. This has been The Light Inside. I'm Jeffrey Besecker.