Look up you might just see something
A popular video shows a man standing on a boat looking at his phone while a whale surfaced just meters away. Maybe he was looking at pictures of whales on his phone...maybe he was engaged in something really important...probably not. Whatever it was that he was doing, he was missing a possibly once-in-a-lifetime opportunity going on right under his nose, if only his nose hadn't been stuck in our phone.
Maybe you haven't missed out on anything quite as dramatic as a close encounter with a whale, but how would you actually know what you've missed, what interesting people or happenings have passed you by, simply because your attention was fixated on a small screen 10 cm away rather than being aware of the world around you.
Perhaps countless opportunities have passed you by, perhaps it was only one thing or person, but it might have been the chance of a lifetime. How many potential lasting memories or lucky breaks might you have missed up until now?....and how many more might you continue to miss in the future?
But why is it so important to be more aware of your surroundings? The world can be a grey and intimidating place at times, maybe it is better to distract ourselves as much as possible? Perhaps it is a safer bet to rely on the steady little hits of dopamine that our phones provide.
Staying connected
Direct attention to the world not ourselves
There is a whole world going on around you. Okay, so the whale example was a bit of an extreme - we can't all go whale watching. Putting increasing attention on the world around us takes our attention away from our self and our own concerns.
What amount of texts and messages is equivalent to going nose to nose with a whale?
Or a chance meeting with someone....or stumbling across some object?
Also, the more you look at your phone, the more you want to look at it. Have you ever been fully satisfied with your phone, or are you always looking out for the next message?
If we only ever stay dwelling on ourself then we remain stuck in our own little world.
Keeping out attention on ourself reinforces the sense of self.
If we ever want to have a sense of connecting to something bigger than ourself, it makes sense that we should try to spend more and more time not dwelling on ourself.
One trap that is easy to fall into is of immediately relating to our surroundings by thinking about them, which immediately puts our self back into the equation.
So how can we avoid immediately jumping back into the picture?
Here is an exercise that simultaneously takes us out of our self and makes us more aware of our environment.
The shifty eye technique
For the shifty eyed technique, all you are going to do is to look around at things in your immediate environment. Fix your eyes on an object, it is probably best to use objects rather than people, as thoughts and feelings arise far quicker when looking at people. Don't allow yourself to gaze at the object, simply look at it for a few seconds and then move on and look at another object. Don't just merely glance at the object, really take in it's details. This doesn't mean that you are going to stop and analyze the object, but make sure that you look at it carefully, even though it will be for only a few seconds.
If you gaze at something it's possible to start zoning out or to start a change of thought based on whatever object we see. Once soon after a change of thought starts, we stop seeing the object as it is, and start seeing what we are thinking about the object.
If our vision latches onto something in our environment, then don't hold it for more than a few seconds - keep moving on and deliberately looking at different objects.
As well as being less likely to daydream or make up fantasies, you may also find that you start noticing details that you simply overlooked before.
A shout out to Dr. Charles Tart for the shifty eye approach.