I Turned Off All of My Push Notifications + This Is What Happened...

I feel like a new person! I have a new lease on life! With just a few taps of my finger, I took back control of my mental state and low-level anxiety. I know this might sound dramatic, but I'm telling you guys, it's real.

Last week, prompted by a therapy session and a feeling that no matter how hard I was trying, I just wasn't able to be as present as I wanted on my days "off" with my daughter, I decided to try--just for a day--turning off the push notifications on my phone.

[Sidenote for those who don't know: "push notifications" are the alerts that pop-up whenever you get a new message, a like, a new friend or follower, a text, an email, a reminder from an app, etc.] 

I'd turned off my email notifications long ago (I've actually never had them turned on), but was still getting almost all of the Facebook, Facebook Messenger, and Instagram notifications. And if you're as active as I am on social media, that means I was getting A LOT of notifications.

My phone was lighting up all day long and even on days that I was "off," I was feeling the pull of my online biz {via social media} in a big way. I guess it's been like this for a long time, but now that I'm a mother and am trying to have better boundaries between my work-time and my family/Charlie Mae-time, this has become a bigger issue for me. 

Thus, last week, on Thursday morning when Charlie Mae started stirring in her crib, I went into my phone's settings and turned off all of my social media notifications. All of them. Then I put up an Instagram post--knowing that I wouldn't immediately see if someone commented on it or liked it--and then went upstairs to snuggle my girl. 

You guys: the swift relief I felt from making this little change was pretty staggering. Without the reminders popping-up on my screen all day, I stopped feeling the pull of my phone immediately. Of course I still checked my accounts and feeds throughout the day, but now I had to be intentional about it. I had to think, 'Okay, I'm going to go get my phone and check my Instagram account right now,' instead of reacting to my phone when it called out to me. 

It was actually eerie how much of a difference I noticed in just one day.

It's now been 5 full days with no notifications on my phone and I can tell you [with confidence] that I will not go back to that horrible place where I was constantly plagued by notifications (only a slight exaggeration).

I'm done with the constant alerts about things that are happening in the cyberworld; I want to live in the real world. OBVIOUSLY I'm not going anywhere when it comes to social media, but I am going to decide when and how I use it from here on out. 

If you, too, feel any sort of low-lying anxiety, pull, or urgency about what's happening on your phone (or even worse, your watch--eeekkk!), I urge you to try turning off your notifications and see if it makes a difference. Just for a day. And then you can decide where you want to go from there...