relationship ADD
Turn off the phone and focus on the person in front of you.
If you do not, you will begin to lose practice in going deep with a person.
That was a practice that began the day you came from your mother and her smell, her touch, her taste, her voice was practically the only thing you knew.
In that depth and focus is a relationship built.
Edward M. Hallowell, author of Driven to Distraction, writes about devices denying us depth of experience, when we make them a constant part of our day. Ultimately, according to Hallowell, people are left less happy, less connected to others, less mentally agile, and actually describe themselves as “feeling stupid,” the more they spend time with devices.
Hallowell should know. He is who people turn to when life, family, career, have all taken a nosedive in the midst of overwhelming ADD and ADHD. Hallowell goes so far as to argue that our boundary-less interaction with devices all around us induce a crippling attention disorder that can devastate one’s life and relationships.
Something about focus allows us to develop ourselves in a way that we do not entirely make sense of: skills in thought and skills in relating to others are included in the long list of skills that benefit from your focus.
Modernity wants your life to be another revolving door of the latest headlines — headlines that you read, connected to articles that you seldom read, written about a topic that you seldom dig into.
Modernity wants you to multitask your way to mediocrity.
Fight that. Don’t let that happen.
The basic tenet required of any functioning adult can be found in that concept, as it can be found in many other concepts. It is a constant in life — it comes down to identifying that important boundary, communicating that important boundary, and defending that important boundary.
The day is full of opportunities to create boundaries between what you know to be right and what your moments of weakness beg you to do. Such moments have been described as “The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.”
Put good, effective boundaries around the flesh then. And let your spirit run free doing that which edifies you and others. That is an age-old solution around any temptation.
Modernity gives you a very attractive option to that though, to always just turn to some device for instructions on what to do next and where to set boundaries. It will often encourage no boundaries — to instead do whatever the device says.
You need boundaries, or you will multitask your way to mediocrity.
Project Pureblood was created in that vein — a slow, deep conversation with the best of the best. The entry to that group has closed. It is off to an incredibly successful launch and the most beautiful deep, slow conversations have begun as some 275 people begin doing what they signed up to do — to communicate with those who have put some very strict boundaries on their lives through 2020 and beyond, and who have prospered as a result.
“The Converts” was created in that same vein.
The Coverts launch period was initially going to be a few days. Instead, it will have a nice, slow, extended launch period through this week.
It is about depth. It is not about headlines. It is not about numbers. It is not about sharing links. It is not about consuming information.
It is a group of people who see the light.
With that special group of people, it is a place for this — the long, slow conversations that allow humans to relate to each other and to develop their humanness.
Are the conversations really that “long?” By social media standards, yes, since participants are encouraged to keep coming back to them. But truthfully, it only takes a few minutes every few days to have a long, slow conversation online.
It is less of a question of duration of time. It is more of a question of focus. It comes down to this seemingly simple crux: “Can I focus on what this person is saying and focus entirely on that person for these next few minutes?”
If you can draw yourself that boundary in your connection with another person, then you can accomplish so much. It is a “so much,” in fact, that modernity would prefer you not accomplish.
You serve this drive toward modernity well if you can fit into a predetermined box, if you can easily be defined as a commodity, no different than the next person who fit himself into a predetermined box. However, you are far more likely to serve yourself and others well if you can tap into that which makes you so special.
From where I stand, that is your creation in the likeness of God. Choice, individuality, and even prickliness can all accompany that. That all deserves nurturing and shaping into the best life you can live. Fitting yourself into a box designed by someone else denies that.
Online communication is not evil. Like any tool, it can be used for good or bad. When we use it to be an endless stream of superficiality, we use it for ill.
In The Converts, we will use those tools for good.
It is going to be a very different experience than any use of online communication technologies that you have seen.
You are going to be edified, not exhausted. You are going to be fulfilled, not distracted.
In this group you are going to regain a level of focus that you may have lost, even in face-to-face conversations in the outside world.
It will bring inspiration and encouragement to the rest of your life. It won’t be about advertiser click rates. It won’t be about shareholder value. It won’t be about data collection. It will be focussed on one thing — the relationship that is built between you and another person. And that will be reproduced many times over other relationships, developed one at a time.
And this moment in time needs so much more of exactly that focus.
Busy-ness, distraction, and an endless flow of information are unwelcome inside the doors of “The Converts.”
Focussed human-to-human communication is what you will find instead.
Not for everyone.
Most prefer to multitask their way to mediocrity. Most prefer to live the life “boundary-less,” and to pretend that it is freedom to have the outside world set your boundaries for you.
But for those who this is for, The Converts will change so much for you.
Allan Stevo