That’s what a guy who loves himself does

It’s hard to be distracted when you love yourself.

If you’re someone who accepts and forgives and cherishes who you are, then you will believe that you are more significant that whatever bullshit noise is being supplied to you at every moment.

Show me someone who has done the difficult inner work of learning how to cherish themselves, and I will show you someone who doesn’t have trouble focusing.

Georgetown once conducted a study that explores the impact of smartphone notifications on productivity. It was gripping, no pun intended.

Researchers explained that every day, billions of us receive these notifications. Designed to distract, these interruptions capture and monetize our time and attention. But while these smartphones are helpful, their current notification systems impose under appreciated, yet considerable, mental costs.

Each one of these micro distractions jolts our nervous system and stimulates our fear of missing out, provoking anxiety and lowering our productivity.

According to the scientists, to mitigate this problem, app and smartphone developers should build in features and tools that are designed for wellbeing. Perhaps batching notifications once an hour on the hour, to help reduce inattention.

It’s not a bad idea. Doing so would certainly help people stay focused.

The issue with this solution, it’s focused on the symptom, not the source.

Because our phones are not the problem. Our hearts are what need an upgrade.

Back to my original point. It’s hard to be distracted when you love yourself. Maybe that’s what we should be teaching people. How to trust that whatever idiotic notification is coming through our phones isn’t going to free us, complete us or make us whole.

It’s not going to phase us, amaze us or save our souls. We have everything we need, right now. There’s nothing missing. Almost everything is noise.

The hard part about this philosophy is, we live in a world that wants to distract us. In the economy of the past, companies made money by actually being useful to people, now companies make their money by distracting us with bullshit.

It is literally their business model. And we don’t have to buy into it. We can love ourselves instead, and use that energy to stay focused on what matters most.

Changing the notification settings on our phone is a good start, but only by upgrading the operating system of the heart will we truly be able to become fully present.

What if you believed that you were more significant than the noise?