Maintaining health & well-being in the digital era

We all dream of living happy, productive lives and trying our best to be productive members of society. We work hard to achieve significant results measuring our life-satisfaction through status, an appreciation from others and the possession of materialistic belongings. Happiness, though, isn’t always externalized easily, we need it to emerge from our internal selves. Sometimes we need to search for it.

In order to be happy we have to pay close attention to two components within ourselves: our physical and mental health. Being physically healthy means being selective of what we eat, exercising regularly, getting enough sleep and protecting ourselves from the negative impacts of our surroundings, if necessary.

For a healthy mind we should work on improving our intellectual capabilities and emotional skills through reading, emotional control, mindfulness, meditation, etc.

However, how many of you pay close attention to both of those components of wellbeing? Although we've observed a growing trend to keep up physical exercise, pay close attention to what we eat and to invest time in developing mental health, it isn’t commonplace. Few of us realize that minds and bodies are intertwined and both require the same amount of attention to keep us healthy and happy.

What stops us from being the person we want to be?

One of the major reasons we might consider ourselves to be less than our true selves is the ‘outside buzz’. We live in a world of information overload, so most of us experience constant distractions. We cannot find peace of mind and make room for new or revolutionary thoughts.

Ask yourself when the last time you simply appreciated a stroll outside was, when did you last enjoy the weather without having to rush somewhere or get distracted by your devices? With the rapid development of the technology we’ve begun to lose the ability to enjoy our offline life and take control of our mind and body. Scrolling through screens for our dopamine fix has become a bad habit, one we need to break. We aren’t aware of the possible implications of what we’re doing so we rarely try to deal with it.

Addictive behaviors can lead to the breakdown of body and mind. From a mental health perspective, a constant online presence can lead to anxiety and stress. We are under pressure to respond ASAP as we have to constantly feel as though we are important.

Our minds are being filled with junk, rather than memories, irrelevant information piles up and we’re unable to control it. We lower our own self-esteem by checking social media, comparing our lives with the lives of others instead of living as ourselves and enjoying what we have. We might act out of character to prove something to someone else. 

Sometimes, we care too much about people who don’t care about us. We should do things we enjoy and invest time on developing our own intellectual and emotional skills instead of empty-headed screen scrolling.

What about our physical health level implications? As we became more used to modern technology and devices our body struggles to stay fit. You might have noticed some of the symptoms caused by devices overuse as digital eye strain which includes blurry vision, difficulty focusing, dry and irritated eyes or headaches.

You might have also noticed having restless sleep due to the exposure to blue light in the evening. Hand muscle injuries are becoming more common due to repetitive motions of gripping, tapping and swiping. A 2016 study in The Journal of Physical Therapy Science^[1] stated prolonged smartphone usage may result in chronic pain and can even influence your posture.

There are also concerns related to our exposure to radiation. For thousands of years, there were no artificial sources of radiation of such strength. Those emitted by mobile phones haven’t been thoroughly studied yet, but initial results make us cautious about the possible dangers. The best protection is to remain as close as possible to the natural level in order to limit your exposure.

We are here to help you to protect yourself from possible implications of technology overuse and life in a fast-paced environment. To facilitate a dialogue on how to fight distractions, find deeper focus, build authentic relationships, improve physical fitness and use technology in a responsible way we created the Healthy Body & Mind section in our forum. 

Enhance your knowledge and reach the stage where your body synchronizes with your mind.

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Is there anything you’d like to add, have we missed anything? If you’re interested in sharing your experiences with us, join the conversation below, or send us an email via hello@mudita.com!