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Hi, I'm Jasmine Nicole. Welcome to the Motivational Mystic, a space for authentic higher conscious conversations to motivate, inspire, and empower. Thanks for listening. Each week I'll drop a new conscious raising episode. Let's dive in. For today's episode, I want to talk about the importance of unplugging from the matrix and connecting with yourself. What I mean by unplugging from the matrix is disconnecting from all the external stimuli vying for your attention. External stimuli such as social media, news, celebrity shenanigans, your cell phone, your job, and most importantly, other people's opinions. We have so many things vying for our attention at each moment of the day, that it's important to take the time to focus your attention on the most important person in your life, which is yourself. It's important to check in with yourself, to know thyself. We have so many external vices vying for our stimulation that if you really think about it, for a lot of people, myself included, your attention is captured by some type of external device instantly when you wake up in the morning. A lot of people may use their cell phone as an alarm clock. So when you go to grab it to turn off the alarm, the next thing you're likely to do before getting out of bed is either use the phone, go on social media, or maybe look something up on your phone, all before you even start your day. So your attention is instantly captured by an external device as soon as you wake up. It's time for people to learn how to unplug and get back to self. Because if you're constantly consumed by external stimuli, it's easy to become disconnected from yourself. To be in a reactionary space of living life because you're experiencing so much information overload that some people become overwhelmed with their thoughts, lost in their emotions, where they're experiencing polar extremes of these things and don't know their left from their right and become depleted. It's important to schedule time for prioritizing self-care, getting back to self, especially if someone uses social media frequently. Staying grounded in reality is very important. Getting back to our values and practicing them because it seemed like those have gone out the window, along with principles, respect, and honor. It also seems like there's an agenda to get everyone to subscribe, to a hive mindset, to participate in this groupthink mentality. We saw a lot of this happening during the pandemic, when there was a lot of self-righteous opinions being thrown out there, and anyone who didn't fall in line was dubbed a conspiracy theorist. Having your own thoughts on a matter beyond anyone's control was seriously considered a conspiracy. If you didn't fall in line with the consensus, the matrix, or authoritarian view of things, you were essentially canceled. I believe the birthplace of cancel culture is social media, to be completely honest. Because prior to social media, we didn't have the ability to call someone out in real time. It goes viral, and within minutes, people all around the globe know about it. So, cancel culture and social media, in my opinion, go hand in hand. But it's just another platform for accessing information, just like mainstream or corporate news media stations. Prior to social media, newspapers, mainstream, or corporate media news, we'll call them legacy media for sake of this conversation, were the number one source for information to be broadcast to a large group of people, the public, at one period of time. Social media just kicked the access of information people have up to the next level. Because not only can you get your information out quickly on a global scale, verify the information you are receiving, especially international news, simply by asking someone directly who is in the country being talked about. Social media is also interactive. You can communicate back in real time, unlike with legacy media. So, legacy media for a long time had the ability to control the narrative, to implement agendas on the public, unchecked. It was easier to get people to subscribe to a groupthink mentality, keeping their attention fully locked into the agendas of the Matrix, when that was the only source of information we had. Luckily, we're no longer living in the 90s anymore, so legacy media doesn't really have a stronghold on the people's attention and shaping their perception of reality as it once did. I'll talk a bit more about the pros and cons of social media in a future episode, but for the purpose of this episode, I did want to bring attention to the fact that social media is one tool of many that can capture your attention and keep you plugged into the matrix and take away from focusing on yourself. Taking the time to unplug from external devices, television, social media, etc., and taking the opportunity to check in with yourself, indulge in self-care, is important. How you choose to do that will look different for everyone. Whether that's just taking a walk in nature or just going outside. Disconnect with all electronics and take time to recalibrate your system, where you don't have anything distracting your attention and sucking you into hours of doom scrolling. Just release all of that and check in with yourself. That's when really cool thoughts, ideas, and inspiration kick in when you're undistracted. I feel like it's also easier to check the tone or temperature of your thoughts when you do unplug from all the distractions of the matrix. Just taking the time to really unplug from all the external distractions by taking a walk, observe nature, look at the trees, observe the scenery. Really soak it all in and be present. I feel like that's how we recharge our battery, how we recharge our system and connect back with our soul. Let the soul connect back to the elements by getting back to basics, no distractions. If people truly understood the power of their attention, they would be more selective of where they placed it. When you're watching the news, it's so rare you hear a positive news story that they actually have to announce it before telling you about it. They call it a feel-good story. They're fully aware they're pushing fear-based information because people who are in fear are easier to control. The first half of the 2020s is proof of that. A lot of people gave into fear during the first half of the decade, became a slave to the agendas being pushed, and feeding their ego under self-righteous principles. That's a combo people don't seem ready to have yet, but it's a combo for another day. In addition to that, there is a social media algorithm for a reason, to keep you engaged, to capture your attention, to keep you doom scrolling for hours on end, or your thoughts and even your buying habits are being influenced. So, it's important not to get so easily sucked into the madness and unplug from all of these external energy siphoning mechanisms trying to capture your attention. Where attention goes, energy flows, so people should really be more selective of what they give their attention to. I'll share a few methods that I use to unplug from the matrix that some people may find useful. Spending time in nature, going for hikes, helps me to really unplug and to be present. Sometimes when I'm hiking, I like to practice what some people call earthing or grounding myself. I'll just find some grass, take my shoes off, take a few deep breaths in and out, and really connect with Mother Earth. It's almost a similar feeling for me as going to the beach. I read a few studies on this recently that said going to the beach relaxes people because they're by the water, of course, but it's also the fact that they're barefoot on the sand as well. When we are barefooted on the beach or grass, our bodies absorb millions of free electrons or negative ions from the earth in a way that nature intended. The direct skin contact with Earth helps to neutralize positively charged free radicals in the body. I also have a cousin that used to work at a mental health facility, and she would tell me that they would implement earthing or grounding for a lot of the patients as a part of their regimen to get them outside, get them in the sun, and you know, get them to connect with nature. So they would use earthing and grounding as a way for treatment as well. So it looks like there might be a little something to it. I know I feel more relaxed after doing it, especially after a long day of work. If I've had a stressful day of work, sometimes I'll take my hike after work and go to ground myself, and I just feel like an immense release, like a lot of I don't know, just like being able to decompress from my day. So it's definitely worked wonders for me. Meditation is another method that helped me unplug from the matrix. It taught me how to quiet my mind and focus my awareness to the point that I could observe my thoughts, but not be absorbed by them. When I was able to start observing my thoughts, I noticed I could pinpoint a lot of this continuous chatter, oftentimes stemming from something I saw on TV, social media, or a discussion I had with someone earlier that day. I noticed they weren't even my thoughts. It was almost like bad elevator music just streaming in the background that would hijack my attention, but weren't really anything of significance. Meditation has been the most life-changing and profound way I connect with myself. Journaling is another method I use to unplug and connect with myself. I have a gratitude journal where I like to write about something I'm grateful for each day. I also journal about my dreams, goals, and sometimes how my day went and other things as well. Journaling is a great way to really focus your attention on yourself. Especially because it's a physical representation on paper of you focusing on yourself because you can see it in real time as you're writing, and you can always go back to your journal and read it for inspiration, or as a marker of your growth for a later date. The last method I use is called internal check-ins. I spoke about this in episode 3, Cultivating and Preserving Inner Peace, where you ask yourself a series of questions, checking in with different aspects of yourself, and writing down the first thing that comes to mind. Check that episode out to do the exercise, and here are the questions that I use to check in with myself. Internal check-ins, along with meditation and journaling, have been instrumental in me being able to connect with myself, learn about myself, and to get to know thyself. Unplugging from the matrix, unplugging from the stress, the societal pressure of this world, and focusing your attention on the things that are in your control, which ultimately means just putting the focus back on yourself. How you see and feel about yourself, and how you choose to navigate this world. So be kind to yourself and take time to unplug. Take the time to get to know thyself. Well, that's all I had for today, everyone. Until next time, goodbye.