Why I Bought an Alarm Clock

I'd love to take a poll of people nowadays, especially my generation, to find out how many people actually use good old fashioned alarm clocks to wake them up in the morning. I'd be willing to bet that more people than not use their cell phone. Not only have we swapped out our house phone and strictly use our cell numbers for people to contact us, we've also thrown away the old alarm clock as our wake-up-call in the morning. This in and of itself, it not necessarily a problem. What happens because of it however, I have found to have a negative affect on my life.

Maybe some of you can relate to this bedtime routine: hopping in bed, watching some tv, chatting a little with your spouse, checking in on your phones to get any last minute emails, Instagram pics, Facebook updates, Twitter, etc. and then turning off the light.

Fast forward a few hours and morning comes. Your alarm goes off- in our case, our cell phone alarm. So what do you do? Turn off the alarm and of course, spend the first 5-10 minutes laying in bed and again, checking your Facebook, Instagram, (I like to check the weather and my Time Hop), and then get out of bed. Seems innocent enough right? Well, in theory yes, but as I've been experiencing lately, my brain is on overdrive and needs a serious SHUT DOWN. Like actually pushing that little button on top of my phone and powering it OFF - did you know it actually does that?!?

I think a lot of it comes from being a relatively new business owner and feeling like the life of my business depends on me, which well, I guess it does in some sense. But I feel as though I NEED to be reached at any given moment of the day by my clients. And while honestly, I don't think any client would be offended that I did not immediately respond to their email at two in the morning, the truth is that only a portion of the time spent on my phone is for actual work. The rest is just for stimulation.

It's a problem I feel almost silly calling a problem, but there it is. We're addicted to our tech. So many studies have been done about the affect of this "blue light" or light from technology, and how it negatively affects our sleep pattern. Our generation is the first to actually deal with this too. So I'm going to give us a little break in falling into the addiction. But at any point of the day, I feel as though I am always doing SOMETHING. Between the things I HAVE to do- eat, work, play with my kid, cook, clean, etc., I fill up the time with my phone- checking on things, playing games, or calling/texting friends. It goes on this way throughout the day and all the way up until the moment I shut my eyes to go to sleep. Then I wake up the next morning and do it all over again. My poor little brain needs some SPACE! Some time to process what's happening in the day, to be grateful for thin gs, to REMEMBER things (my memory sucks as of late). Yesterday I went to make myself a turkey sandwich for lunch and realized I put the turkey not in the refrigerator but in the cabinet under the sink... yeah. I'm on overdrive.

So here is my new plan for a healthier, more "with it" Leah. I'm going to turn OFF my phone every night, starting at 9:30 (hopefully I will bump up this time to earlier in the night as time goes on), set an alarm clock to wake me up, and not turn my phone back on until the following morning- after my hour of either working out or quiet meditation time. I want to live every moment of this life, and I also want to remember this time in our family's life. I am so grateful for technology- it makes so many things possible- like my job! But I need to find some healthy boundaries with it, just like everything else in life. If this post speaks to you at ALL, I hope you will consider making a healthy change as well, maybe even purchasing an alarm clock. Here are a few cute ones to choose from:

Anthropologie $38.00

Light in the Box $25.99

For the one that can't get out of bed in the morning... Ruggie Alarm Clock $79.00

Good luck with the decompressing, or brain time-out as I like to call it. Life just gets busier. We need to help ourselves out by stopping and slowing down from time to time. If you have any other brain-time out tips or tricks for me, please comment here!

#alarmclock #healthyliving #technology #lifestyle