Your Phone is a Tool
Your phone is a tool.
It's existence is neutral.
It’s not much different than a hammer.
Think of a hammer. You probably have no real thoughts or feelings about a hammer just sitting there.
But if you just hammered your finger hanging a painting on the wall, then you will have many thoughts and feelings. You may think the hammer hurt you. Or that it shouldn’t have hit your finger. How could it do that? Stupid hammer. I’ll never use that hammer again, I’m so mad at it.
Who is really at fault for hitting your finger? It’s not the hammer’s fault that it hit your finger.
The hammer has no power without you picking it up and using it.
You picked up the hammer, aimed it toward the nail on the wall and missed accidentally.
Ultimately, you are the one who hit your own finger. It’s not the hammer’s fault. The hammer couldn’t do anything to move and hit your finger on its own.
You used a tool and hit yourself. The pain in your finger is real, but the anger and frustration and all the other feelings are just stemming from a thought about the hammer.
This is similar to our phone. A phone is just a tool that allows us to communicate. That’s it.
Similar to the hammer, what we end up doing is pick up our phone (as a tool) and then we feel bad about ourselves. Say you get a text notification and when you pick up your phone to read it, you compare yourself to the photo of your friend on vacation. You may think, "they’re having more fun than me", so you feel mad.
But that is just you hitting your own finger.
It isn’t the photo in the text that makes you feel bad. It’s the thoughts about the text and what you make it mean about you.
Texts and emails are words on a screen. A photo is pixels on a screen. They are not inherently good or bad. It’s what you make them mean about you.
Start to notice how many times you are taking a neutral circumstance as truth. "They’re having more fun than me" isn’t fact. A photo can show people smiling, and you infer they are having more fun than you, when really they could not be having a good time at all.
The photo is neutral, and the phone -the tool that allowed you to see the photo- is neutral. It’s your thoughts about what you see on your phone that makes you feel good or bad.
Becoming aware of that is so key to improving your life around your phone.