Why Writing A Breakup Letter to Your Phone Might The Best Thing You Do For Yourself This Week

It's silly, it's weird . . . and it's effective.

Happy Wednesday, everyone! Welcome back to our February Phone Breakup Challenge. (Also, wow, that was a click-bait-y headline. I became an early 2000s Buzzfeed editor there for a second, and I apologize—to you and to me.)

Moving on . . . thank you to everyone who took me up on my suggestion that you write a “breakup letter” to your phone — I’ve read every single one, and they’re fantastic. (Visit this thread to read them and post your own.)

I particularly love the balance people struck between humor (“I love the feel of you in my hand, my wide grasp hugging your sides”) and poignancy (“The more I connected through you, the less I connected without you”).

You talked about the things you love and appreciate about your phones (“You made me feel not as alone during the time when I felt the most lonely and worthless I've ever felt”) and the ways in which your relationships with your phones have harmed you (“I find it hard to do anything for more than a few minutes”).

I so appreciate all of you for taking the time to write them!

Dear Phone . . .

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Hey Catherine, WHY did you ask us to write breakup letters?

Thanks for asking. Partly, it was because I had fun writing my own (I pasted it into the bottom of my previous newsletter if you want to read it) and was curious to see what you all would write. But I also did to show you how fun and playfulness can be powerful tools that can help us see things more clearly, get in touch with our authentic selves, and—this is crucial!—be kinder to ourselves as we struggle to build healthier relationships with our phones.

This self-kindness is important because whenever we look at a habit that we know is problematic for us (e.g. eating or drinking too much, or not exercising regularly, or wasting hours on our phones even though we know there are things we’d rather be doing), we run the risk of becoming angry at and disappointed in ourselves, sometimes even ashamed.

Indeed, this may have already happened, and it may have been my fault: in addition to inviting you to write breakup letters, in my last newsletter I also asked you to check your screen time statistics—including the average number of hours you spent on your phone every day last week, and your average number of pickups. (In case you’re curious, 41% of respondents so far report spending more than four hours a day on their phone, and more than 75% of respondents are picking up their phones more than 50 times a day — indeed, 23% of people pick it up more than 100 times per day.)

If you took that poll and found yourself in the higher categories for time and pickups, how did it make you feel about yourself? I’m projecting here, but for me, a “bad” number triggers feelings of shame and guilt. And news alert: shame and guilt don’t feel good. They leave us feeling demoralized and angry at ourselves—and, in extreme cases, like failures.

Do you know what feeling like failures is really, really, really effective in getting us to do?

Nothing. It’s very effective in getting us to do nothing. Or, at least nothing positive. Instead, our response is often to double down on the exact behavior that’s making us feel like failures — which in this case is numbing ourselves by mindlessly scrolling through our phones. Which, of course, only makes us feel more like failures—and the cycle continues!

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Enter playfulness

As I’ve written about in my previous posts about fun, playfulness—which I define as having a lighthearted attitude and not taking yourself (or life) too seriously—is a very underutilized tool.

First of all, it makes life more fun. Second, by silencing our inner critics, playfulness helps us become more authentic and vulnerable. In so doing, it enables us to identify our true values and priorities, and—thanks to the fact that our inner critic has been silenced—it helps us be kind to ourselves (which in turn makes it much more likely that we’ll have the energy and motivation to take action).

As you may have noticed, writing a breakup letter to your phone is objectively a playful, silly, even weird thing to do. It might even have felt like a waste of time. But take a second to read through these excerpts from people’s letters. Sure, they’re playful—for example, this one made me laugh out loud:

You’re constantly begging me to look at you. If you were a person, you would have been ghosted for such creepy behavior a long time ago.

But they are also often poignant and vulnerable:

There are a lot of things I would rather be touching than your silly keyboard: my granddaughter’s hand. . . .

Nothing, no-one, makes me feel as insecure as you do. No single thing. Not even the people in my life who have *actively tried* to make me feel insecure.

I don’t know how to be apart from you. The thought of living without you is terrifying to me.

People used the “breakup” letter as a way to define what a healthy relationship would look like — in other words, through playfulness, they began to create visions of relationships that feel positive and meaningful, and that would be worth the effort to create.

Let's grow into a distant relative-type relationship. You are there in case of an emergency. Maybe even to share some fun stories from the past or goings on of the weather. . . . If we hang out less, maybe we can enjoy each other more.

Perhaps there's a path to a healthier version of us. I know when I've tried to give you up in the past, the sky has been bluer, my children's laughter more delightful, my body calmer, my eyes and ears . . . all my senses more alive to the world and its wonders.

And as people got into the exercise, as they started to really play around with it, they started to tap into something real. Something deep.

I don't regret meeting you. I'm genuinely happy you came into my life. You transformed it. But the transformation has gone too far and, somewhere in my addiction to your intoxicating, captivating charms, I lost sight of my own. I lost sight of myself.

Thank you for everything. I'm so grateful for your help getting through the hardest time in my life. And I'm so ready to blossom and become who I've always known I can be.

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Do you see what I mean? People aren’t beating themselves up for their perceived failures in these letters; rather, something about the playfulness of the letter-writing is making it possible for them to recognize their current reality without judging themselves for it, and to affirmatively declare that they deserve something better.

And that’s ultimately the point: we all deserve something better. So here’s what I’d lke you to do today:

What to do today:

• If you haven’t already, consider writing a breakup letter to your phone

• Get or find a standalone alarm clock (and once you have it, start using it instead of your phone)

• Mark your calendar for March 1-2: it’s the Global Day of Unplugging and I’m going to invite you to join me for it. The idea is to unplug from technology from sundown on Friday to sundown on Saturday. If that sounds terrifying and completely unrealistic to you right now, don’t worry: we’re going to prepare together and it may well end up being one of your favorite things that we do together. Just mark it in your calendar for now and stop thinking about it. Instead . . .

• Start noticing the contexts and emotional states that cause you to reach for your phone. (For example, riding the elevator. Feeling awkward at dinner. Feeling bored at work. Waiting for the train. Et cetera.) Write down your observations in a notebook, or share them in the comments. Don’t necessarily try to change anything; just notice what you’re doing and what seems to spark the craving. If it’s helpful, you might want to put a rubber band around your phone as a physical reminder to pause and pay attention.

• Start thinking ahead to this weekend and identify something you would like to do or try. (Stumped? Maybe look back on your own comments on my last post where I asked you to identify something you say want to do but supposedly don’t have time for.)

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Fun Squad members:

Introduce yourselves in the Phone Breakup Forum, share your experiences, and ask me (and each other) questions. I read every single comment in there and will respond to you personally!

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As always, don’t forget to share your delights in our delight chat (I consider that to be a positive use of technology).

That’s it — and I’ll see you Friday!

To scrolling less and living more,

Catherine

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