Gallup did a study recently that showed that two-thirds of the American workforce is either not engaged or actively disengaged at work.
Through my coaching practice, I can tell you that at least that many people are also disengaged in their personal lives, their home lives and their marriages causing divorce rates between 41% – 73% (https://www.mckinleyirvin.com/Family-Law-Blog/2012/October/32-Shocking-Divorce-Statistics.aspx).
According to Nielson, the average adult spends more than ten hours every day in front of a screen, and the consumption of alcohol continues to rise. We’ve reached a level of disengagement that is permeating virtually every aspect of our lives.
Three drivers brought us to this place:
- More Connected than Ever. Technology has indeed been a contributing factor to the disengagement we feel from one another. It’s now the exception, rather than the rule, to have your phone next to you at dinner and to have more than one screen active at any given time, such as being on your phone while watching television or on your phone while also on your computer. Being hyper-connected through technology very clearly keeps us from being either focused or present, which of course leads to disconnection over time.
- In the Midst of a Fog. We have hundreds of thousands of messages coming to us throughout the day. We cannot absorb it all, and it is impossible for our brains to filter through all that and make conscious decisions about what to take in and what to ignore. This leaves us the only other option, which is to shut down to virtually all of it. We no longer notice the color of the sky or the budding of the trees. We don’t pay attention when our wife seems sad. We don’t engage when there’s a customer issue at the office. We move through our days in a bit of a fog, not realizing the disconnection that’s occurring in our own lives, in our jobs and even in our most important relationships.
- Numbing as an Escape. We’re not very good at managing or feeling our emotions, so we run from them. And we do that by numbing those sharp edges of the negative emotions such as sadness, grief, disempowerment, anger, worry, overwhelm or guilt. Couple that with living in a time where there are more ways to numb ourselves than ever before: alcohol, processed or sugary junk food, hours on social media or in front of the TV, gambling, porn, overspending, and the list goes on. Those activities allow us a reprieve from feeling, which disconnects us from both ourselves and others.
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What’s the Impact?
The impact of all this disconnection and numbness is that we’re going through the motions of our lives, detached, unengaged and feeling powerless. We’re disconnected from those we love. We aren’t present in the big moments of our lives and don’t even realize what we’re missing. We’re feeling unfulfilled in our professions and without real purpose. Life feels like a grind, and in order to get through it, we numb ourselves so that we don’t have to feel it or do the difficult work to fix it.
How We Do It Differently
Many of the causes of this disconnection are a result of the culture in which we exist; it’s not as though we asked for this result. Even though it is not our faults, we get the choice about whether or not it serves us and if we want a different experience for ourselves. If we continue to live in a numb state, we can expect increasingly less engagement and connection. However, we can change the dial and make the choice to awaken to our own lives by:
- Dialing up presence and dialing down distractions.
- Dialing up passion and purpose and dialing down boredom and monotony.
- Dialing up connection and meaningful conversations and dialing down escaping emotions.
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That’s how we can create lives that emerge from the fog feeling awake and engaged, alive and connected.
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This post is republished on Medium.
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