I've noticed a recurrent and perplexing behavioral pattern of mine. I'll be minding my business: reading, cleaning the house, playing with the kids, you know…doing stuff - and the next thing I know I find myself neck deep in some drama on my phone (news, X, email, AIs, etc.). It’s like a phantom is controlling my mind and hands.

Sometimes the catalyst will be a phone notification, though I silence most of those anyway. 99% of the time, nothing external is provoking me. Yet, I'm reacting like Pavlov's pet. It’s a perverse form of autopilot.

Case in point: I ventured over to a coffee shop on Monday and took my light roast "to-go" so I could read at a nearby park in idyllic quiet and calm along the shores of one of the ubiquitous lakes here in Minnesota (as seen in the image attached to this post). You couldn't imagine a better setting to joyfully read. To keep my reactivity at bay, I turned off my phone and set it down on a park bench.

Less than five minutes elapsed before I sneakily grabbed my phone. Caught myself red-handed! I stared at the blank screen (good thing I turned it off), set it down like it was radioactive, and continued to read. The waves of temptation kept coming, minute by minute. I counted no fewer than a dozen of these waves over the next half-hour.

You can try the experiment for yourself. Turn your phone off, but keep it within reach. Notice how many times you yearn to grab it. Perhaps you actually do!

Finally, beyond the grip of conscious control, I found myself staring at the phone ready to unlock it. Surprise, it was turned on! How? I had turned it off? I am convinced that a ghost mysteriously turned itself back on though I’m sure I did it myself. Luckily, the lock screen was a strong barricade. I didn't break through it.

The phone scenario is just one example, but a common one, of how much of life is on autopilot. Autopilot can be great, but what happens when you don't want to go where it is taking you? Some people think that we are destined to become our habits. That autopilot is as inescapable as light beams from a black hole. I don't think that's quite right.

After all, you have this unique capacity called awareness. You can be aware of what is happening, and even if the stream of events and actions appear to cascade forward like a runaway train, by seeing clearly you have a chance to change. 

If you use your phone a lot, your body and mind are habituated to it, and reactively engage even when you know it's not the right time to do so. It helps to see this unconscious pattern clearly, thereby weakening its hold. It will give you a split-second chance to intervene and gain sovereignty back from the phantom hands that steer the ship of your life.

At this point you might be wondering how to break this (or any) bad habit and build a better one. My experience is that you don't need to know right away exactly what to do to change a bad pattern. What is more important is that you see crystal clearly what is happening and have a deep desire to change. Yes, desire in this case is not only nice but essential. Insights and transformation are usually not far behind.

Speaking personally, I have a deep desire to spend less unconscious time on my devices, and strive to see ever more clearly how I’m doing with that. From there, it will be interesting to see what comes to mind to do about it, or perhaps, the pattern will magically change on its own. That last point might seem too good to be true, but it happens all the time. Bad habits have a tendency to go poof (disappear like a cloud vaporizing) under the bright light of clarity. I will find out in time.