Another thing you can do is put your attention in the sensations of your body. Check in with your emotions regularly. Doing so will increase the capacity to self-regulate emotionally.
What will higher self-regulation achieve? Well if you ask yourself, "Why do I keep getting on the phone?" and if you will find that if there isn't any intention there, it is usually an automatic response to a deeper need:
- feel better
- feel pleasure
- escape boredom
- relieve some underlying uncomfortable emotion
A body that is not well regulated isn't happy. It is actually uncomfortable to be dysregulated, so it seeks out pleasure. A well regulated human being is already happy, ad whole, and doesn't try achieve satisfaction or pleasure via the phone, so they put it down easily.
If you get this part right, after a while, all of your other methods of trying to put the phone away won't be necessary. Having deep sense of self-awareness will allow you to see that the phone is actually dysregulating you, so actually you will purposefully put it down, because you will notice that it doesn't feel good to use it for a long time. This is already true anyway, just notice how you feel after 2 or 3 hours: you feel like garbage! Only now, that feeling will come very quickly, after 5-10 mins, if you remain self-aware, it will make you uncomfortable to keep using it after a short time.
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