I consider the fostering of interpersonal connections (aka friendships) to be an exercise in mindfulness, and a pretty important one.

It's usually about logging out of the digital distraction world to be with someone in the real world or about having someone who will be there with you when times get rough. Scanning my blog I found the friendship theme all over the place: in the ups and downs of life, the inadequacies of our "social" media, and the scourge of depression and suicide.

But a number of my friends have recently (and rightly) pointed out that this type of solution doesn't work for everyone. Many people don't have close friends they feel comfortable running to. Many have experienced shunning and even ridicule from friends when they do. 

I have some great friends who I love dearly and have been there for me in all sorts of situations. As I found those friends I also found out a lot about myself. But despite all of that, I have to keep reminding myself of one important fact: my well-being isn't up to my friends, it's up to me.

Fostering good relationships can help you be more mindful, but overreliance on them to solve all your problems is not. They will never be the solution. The solution is you.

It's you making a choice to react to the outside world in a constructive way. It's you building up your capacity to handle life's inevitable drama. It's you spending time to better yourself instead of procrastinating with useless distractions.

My advice still stands; there's an enormous benefit to building strong relationships, especially in this day and age where technology simultaneously brings us together and pulls us apart. Just don't get all codependent about it.

Take some me time. Be alone--at home, out in nature, on a run, during yoga, on a long drive, part of a meditation, wherever--be present with your thoughts. Write to yourself. Listen to yourself. Learn from yourself.

When all is said and done, you're all you got. And that's actually kind of awesome.

One of my favorite things is discovering a really great song from an artist I’ve listened to for decades and I thought I knew so well. I almost feel nostalgic, like I could have had so many special moments with that song if I had only heard it, and understood it, way back then.

But I wouldn't change a thing. This amazing little moment of discovery wouldn't be the same if I had heard it years ago.  It's only special now, because now is when it suddenly mattered.

When I hear this song again years into the future it will bring me back to this moment, late September 2014, when I played it on repeat and it spoke to me. That’ll be a moment to reflect on how far I've come since then. That'll be a moment to remind me of how much further I will go, of all the songs in life I will have the privilege of knowing.

It seems at least a few times a month I hear from someone who's considering a digital detox.

You look at the current world: notifications, apps, websites, emails, gmails, texts, tumblr, twitter, tinder, facebook, secret, instagram, hangouts, facetime, games, youtube, netflix, stream this, download that.

And then you look back to the days before all ^that^. Just 10 years ago we lived in a world that, for the most part, existed right in front of you instead of through the looking glass of the latest fad digital device.

There's a lot of problems to be found in today's digital world:

1. Addiction. That first "like" or "retweet" is like the first hit of a confidence boosting drug. It feels pretty good, so you want more. You start to think about every comment and every post, carefully crafting your online image to ensure maximum attention. You start to need those likes, and when you don't get them, you're depressed. 
   
2. Loneliness. When you first join Facebook it's exciting. You've found a way to stay in touch with old friends and learn about new friends. But somehow, that experience becomes alienating. Rather than encouraging the growth of friendships it seems to give people a pass to be passive and take friendships for granted.
3. Jealousy. The "grass is always greener" mentality has always existed, but on social media everyone is able to show off their grass so much more readily. They process it through a saturation, HDR-boost filter, making it seem extra green, extra shiny, extra perfect.

So you're stressed out, depressed, lonely, pissed off. Time to cut the digital cord, right? WRONG.

Long before the Internet existed, Buddha had this to say about it:

Deleting your Facebook account is like chopping off a huge limb of a tree. It immediately feels lighter, it lets the sunlight in, it's refreshing. But the roots, the problems you found in Facebook, they're all still there. The tree will grow back, you'll either reactivate your account or find another similar outlet. The addiction, loneliness, and jealousy continues.

Digital detox is a purge after years of binge. It's going from one extreme to another without dealing with the root of the problem.

Why not take a moderate approach? Take some small steps every day to prune the tree of our digital addiction:

• Turn off notifications. Stop the constant barrage of pings and vibrations that distract you from real life and tempt you to dive back into the digital world.
• Logout on your phone. This'll stop the notifications too, and place a small barrier between you and the lure of the digital distractions that await you on your device. 
• Turn off your phone for a few hours every day. Give yourself a break. Give yourself a chance to be present.
• Close the browser on your computer for a few hours every day. Only use your computer for soulful activities like writing.
  

Start small and trim the tree a little bit at a time. The more you do it, a little bit every day, the easier it gets. It becomes a pattern, a habit, the new norm. The craving for that digital hit becomes less and less. You replace it with a desire to experience real life.

My monthly challenge for August was to turn off notifications for non-essential apps. In September, I'm going to take this one step further: I'm logging out.

I'm not going to delete my Facebook account, I actually enjoy it and friendships and other connections I have there. But I also don't want it to be a distraction. I don't want it to feel consuming, to be the first thing I do when I'm bored and the last thing I do at night. I want trim the tree a little every day -- make my social media use smaller, more casual.

For at least 2 hours every day I'm logging out of Facebook and Instagram. Just a small pruning. Just a little a barrier between me and distraction. 

I challenge you all to do the same. Give it a try for one month, start with something small and easy. If at the end of the month it's made no difference in your life, then by all means log back in and let your phone buzz at you. Either way, you'll learn something about yourself. No harm no foul. 

#UNPLUG

I'm a nostalgic person. Good or bad, life is all about the experience, and an expired experience makes me feel a little wistful. I have to say goodbye to the moments I've enjoyed and to the people who joined me on the adventure. From boyhood through nowhood, it's always been the same for me.

But lamenting the end of a good time is incredibly unmindful act. It means you're consumed with the past rather than wallowing in the now.

It's especially bad when you feel nostalgic about something that isn't even over yet -- spending the last moments of an experience worrying about the end instead of relishing the remainder.

Nostalgia for the past, that's real. Sadness when you say goodbye to a loved one, that's honest and healthy. But dwelling on them, letting those feelings distract you from all the rest that life has to offer, that's not healthy.

When you choose to end a great experience with wistfulness, you do the experience an injustice. It may have been an awesome vacation/summer/holiday/party/dinner, but turning to sadness at the end takes you away from all the awesome feelings that made it so great.

Replacing the memory of joy with melancholy is no way to honor the past.

Instead, think back fondly. Remember the laughter, the lessons, the friendship. Plan a return trip if you want. But then come back to now. 

Right now is the best time because right now is when all the moments of the past join together. Every fragment of time has coalesced to make you the amazing person you are today and to set you up for all the possibilities of the future.

When you honor those moments, when you think of them fondly instead of wistfully, that's when they shine. 

Don't look back at past moments with a tear, look forward with a smile, and use every one of those moments to create awesome new ones.

Staying home is easy, it's familiar, it's what you know. Your bed, your pillow, your neighborhood, your friends. Go ahead and build that nest around you. It's the support and foundation you need to push yourself to new heights.

Travel is also important. It gets you out of your comfort zone. You meet new people, learn about new cultures, taste new cuisines. You see life from a different perspective, and hopefully it changes your own perspective as a result.

But like many things in the digital age, travel also creates a mindfulness dilemma. Everybody's carrying a device in their pocket that has the ability to take pictures and immediately share them with the world. Instead of telling your friends about your trip when you get home, you can tell them in real-time. 

It's truly groundbreaking, but it's also a burden. Constantly connecting to the digital world when you could be exploring the real world is like lugging around an extra heavy suitcase.

Every time you pause to post a status update about your experience, you're stopping that experience in its tracks. When you're physically in an exciting new locale - relaxing on a tropical beach, exploring a beautiful city, spending quality time with family and friends - why would you want to mentally be somewhere else?

Mindfulness isn't something you only practice at home or at work, it's a way of being. Travel is perhaps the most important place to find mindfulness. 

I'm not saying you should never post an update from your vacation. In fact, post as much and as freely as you want. Just avoid social media when it takes away from the experience itself.

I choose to travel light. I'll make a conscious effort to stay in the moment. Sure, I'll post a Facebook/Twitter/Instagram update from time to time, that's the age we live in, but never at the expense of my experience. 

If you really want to relax when you travel, then be there... live, in person, wherever you are with whomever you're with. Explore your new surroundings with all your heart. Soak up every moment. Make it count. You can always log on and share the moment with your friends later.

Writing this blog is an incredibly uncomfortable exercise for me... and that's actually a good thing.

I've kept a journal and had countless conversations about these topics for years. But that was all behind closed doors. Publishing my thoughts on this website is a whole new ballgame.

Before I started this blog I knew two things would happen:

1. Posting these ideas for public consumption (and scrutiny) would make me uncomfortable.
   
2. Getting out of my comfort zone is really the best way for me to grow in life.

We all gravitate towards comfort. We follow patterns in our daily lives because they're familiar--we keep morning and evening rituals, we shop at the same stores, eat the same types of food, stick to a certain brand, visit our favorite websites, watch the same TV shows year after year, repeat the same types of exercise.

When something is familiar it's just easier--you know what to expect.

The unfamiliar on the other hand, is risky. You might hate it, or fail, or make a bad decision. When you do something unfamiliar you make yourself vulnerable.

But with the risk of the unknown also comes a lesson. What if it turns out the other store is more your style, a different news website is more balanced, or that other workout is more your speed? What if you do fail, but through that experience you learn how to avoid that failure in the future?

I got out of my comfort zone by starting this blog and sharing a piece of myself with you on a weekly basis. It's made me nervous, but I know that as I overcome those nerves it's making me stronger.

What new possibilities are you avoiding right now to stay comfortable? What are you going to do right now to get out of your comfort zone so you can finally move forward?

I like to call worry, guilt, doubt and regret my "no-no's." They're all the ways we let the world around us take us out of the present. 

Worry is an especially bad violator, as I know all too well from personal experience. It's a trap even those with the best of intentions fall into. 

There are two ways to quickly and easily distract yourself from being mindful: 

1. regretting the past
2. worrying about the future

In both cases your mind is living in another time zone, away from the reality of now, away from the potential joys of today. 

I am a worrier. My mother tells me that when I was very young I would stand at the bottom of the slide at the playground, debating whether it was all worth it - was the fun of coming down the slide worth the risk of possibly falling off that tall ladder? My worry of (potential) danger stopped me from getting on the slide. 

Later in life, I started to encounter regrets from these decisions. Was I missing out on all the fun?

That regret, or rather the worry of future regret, eventually caused me to start facing my fears. A little later in life when I was too old for slides, I remember climbing up the ladder to the terrifyingly high high-dive at the high school pool, plugging my nose, and taking the plunge. Way back then I recognized the folly of worry, because as much as I can think through all sorts of horrible scenarios, I also love to create opportunities for happiness. Worry would prevent me from being happy, so I had to fight to be mindful, stop worrying, and take the plunge.

At its basic level, worry is the fear of the unknown. It's something we all think about on some level: Is it safe for me to go on that carnival ride? What do I want to be when I grow up? Now that I'm a grown up, why can't I figure out what I want to be? What if I sleep too late and miss my flight? What is my spouse doing when I'm not around? What will people think of me if I post this on Facebook? 


Worrying is putting your focus on what might happen, not what is happening. 

It causes you to lose focus, to forget your trust in others, to forget your hope that the world really is a good place and justice will prevail, to forget how to live in the present and be mindful. It's a slippery slope that leads to doubt, anxiety, frustration, distraction, procrastination, and eventually regret that you wasted so much time worrying about something that may never happen. 

Sometimes it's OK to worry - it's OK to be skeptical of dangerous things, to a point. Wen you care about someone, it also makes sense to have some concern for their well-being. Observe that worry as a sign that of love for yourself and others, give friendly advice and lead by example, but don't let that concern consume you. They have to figure out their life on their own, just like you.

Worrying is a fool’s errand because the only thing you can control is what's happening right now. The better you are at being mindful and taking care of yourself in the present, the better your chances of avoiding the very things you're worrying about for the future.

So ya know, like no worries, man.

"That's your responsibility as a person, as a human being - to constantly be updating your positions on as many things as possible. And if you don't contradict yourself on a regular basis, then you're not thinking."  ~Malcolm Gladwell

"I realized that very young - that a life where you don't live to your full potential, or you don't experiment, or you're afraid, or you hesitate, or there are things you know you should do but you just don't get around to them, is a life I'd be miserable living. The only way to feel that I'm on the right path is just to be true to myself, whatever that may be." ~Angelina Jolie