Be present or be absent. But not both.

Most of you know that last week I was at a professional conference that advertised itself as being all about leadership.  But in reality, I learned a whole host of things that I think get back to the core of an individual on a very personal level and aren’t about what we generally think of when we think about leadership.

Typically when we think of leadership, we’re thinking about qualities that have an impact external to a person – as in, leading others.  But this conference started in a very different place.  It started with leading yourself.

One of the main teachers had an excellent point that really hit home with me – “how can you lead someone else, if you can’t even lead yourself?”  Now to be honest, I’m not sure I would’ve ever really thought about it in just those terms but it’s an excellent question.  And it starts with some very simple lessons that you have to teach YOURSELF if you ever hope to get anywhere with anyone else.

This one in particular was one that I liked because I think it speaks to some common struggles today – one of which is… smartphones.  Most of us have one.  And most of us are ADDICTED to the dang thing. We’ve all seen them – the families out at restaurants, each person completely ignoring the others, bent instead over their own little handheld personal computers.  Now truly be honest – how many of you have been that person?  Lost in your own little high-tech world, and completely lost TO the family sitting around you?

I’ve been working really hard not to be that person lately but even this weekend, after it had been brought to my attention last week, I still found myself doing it!  Ugh.  It’s so difficult to fight something that’s mindless – because you don’t even realize you’re doing it until after it’s already done.

So I’ve decided to make some changes that will, hopefully, change my relationship with this stupid electronic tether (which sits in front of me  even now as a type on a much bigger computer – for reasons I myself don’t even understand) and lessen its hold on me.  It’s time that I reclaim my mental self – and part of doing that is to clip the apron strings that bind me to my phone.

In search of this reclamation, I have committed to the following:

1)      I removed my work email from my phone.  Let’s face it – I’m not that important.  And if someone does have something that needs more immediate attention, they can call me.  It’ll be faster than sending me an email anyway.

2)      When I got home with Grady this evening, I left my phone in the other room while we ate and played and goofed off.  I had the ringer up high so if someone called or texted, I would hear that but out-of-sight, out-of-mind – and it worked like a charm.

3)      Not phone related but I’m also going back to no real-time TV.  I have three shows right now that I want to watch in new episodes but Grady doesn’t like it when they’re on because it’s pretty obvious my attention is directed not-at-Grady.  And is any show really worth making my son feel like I'm not paying attention to him?  (Another good observation from teach last week: you can hurt those you love with where you choose to direct, or not, your attention.)

I’m sure it’ll be a continuing battle because the difficult thing about changing a mindless habit is that we’re not aware we’re doing it –which makes it hard to stop. But I think the first two of these things will drastically improve my phone dependency. The first because I’ll just have less to look at when I do look at my phone and the second because if it’s not in front of me, I can’t mindlessly pick it up.  I can't help but think - doesn't my family, don't I deserve that?  Deserve to disconnect and focus and just truly BE in a moment, instead of constantly worrying about what's going on outside of that moment?

I’ll let you know how it goes.  But in the meantime – do me a favor and try to implement this in your own life to whatever extent you need to.  I think that our constantly-connected society these days is always pulling us in a hundred directions at once – which, if you think about it, makes it hard to truly be anywhere.   So pull yourself back out of the craziness and just BE wherever you are.  With your family, with friends or even just by yourself.  Be present or be absent, but let's stop buying into the hype that we have to try to be both.