Episode 189 - Get Your Phone Out of Your Bedroom!
Updated: Mar 18
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Have you heard the advice to have "no-phone zones?" One of the main places people point to is the bedroom.
And yet so many of us are still using our phones for an alarm clock, a bedtime novel, and a last-minute social or work check-in before drifting off to bed.
Instead of focusing on the WHY (which I do explain in the episode) I think we need to focus on the why NOT...
Why AREN'T people leaving their phones outside their bedroom?
I've found a few main culprits. 1. Literally not owning an alarm clock and not being sure where to get one. (Sometimes it's not complicated. Here's a link to buy a cool one on Amazon. You're welcome.) 2. Feeling a little lonely and needing that easy-access socialization 3. Not being comfortable with quiet, yourself, your thoughts... 4. Feeling disconnected or vulnerable with your husband
For #1 you have your link. For the rest, I want to offer one idea:
You need space to experience the problem before you can find a solution. We are in such a rush to avoid feeling the discomfort that we don't even know if it'll actually be there when we stop and are quiet. And if it is there, you'll figure out what to do! You'll be bothered by it. You'll want to solve for it. It didn't go away just because you avoided it.
Game to give it a try? Let me know where you'll be leaving your phone instead!
WHAT YOU'LL DISCOVER IN THIS EPISODE:
Take this advice!
Why take this advice?
Why is this so hard?
Beginning's are hard, but worth it
Creating space for discomfort
What if he's on his phone?
Maybe he isn't ready to tackle that now
How do we deal with it?
It can only ever help
FEATURED IN THIS EPISODE:
Want to take this work further? I would love to coach you inside my coaching program, How to Glow. It's a no-commitment monthly program where you can get coached every week and be part of an amazing community of women. Ready to give it a try? Join today at kaylalevin.com/coaching
Ep 189 - Get Your Phone Out of Your Bedroom ===
<00:00:00> Kayla Levin: hello ladies. Okay. We got some tough love for you today. And even if you've already managed to get your phone outta your bedroom, I think that this will be some music for you. So I wanna encourage you to listen anyway. And also moms, I love you. I just wanna say for a second, there's so many moms out there listening to this podcast and listening for yourselves, and also passing this on to your daughters.
<00:00:24> Kayla Levin: And I just, that's beautiful. I mean like, look, what an amazing, amazing thing that is for. Learning to have a stronger marriage, to be something that a mother and a daughter can be like growing in together. So that's a side point. I do really believe that there's no one size fits all marriage advice.
<00:00:45> Kayla Levin: There's no like, try my three tips and you'll have a connected and delightful marriage the rest of your life. Much more important is that a couple designs their own marriage, enjoys that, that creativity, that accountability, that freedom and power to create the marriage the way it works for them.
<00:01:07> Take this advice ---
<00:01:07> Kayla Levin: And this is one piece of advice that almost always is good. So while I'm very hesitant to say, you should always do this, I'm gonna say on this one, you should 95% of the time do this, which is. Get your phone out of your bedroom. It's a no phone zone. A lot of people are careful about this at the dinner table.
<00:01:31> Kayla Levin: A lot of you ladies that have children are so conscious about this around your kids, whether you're doing it or not. And then once the kids are asleep, the phone can come out. What. Is happening right now. Your husband's the one that's there when the kids go to sleep. I mean, maybe not, but like if that's the time where the two of you could connect, but now that they're asleep, the phone can come out.
<00:01:56> Kayla Levin: Shalom Bayis is a prerequisite for Chinuch. So how could it be that the phone has to be away the kids and then it can come out with the husband? Right? I'm not saying I'm always perfect with this by any stretch, but let's just be really honest with ourselves about what we're doing. Okay. So I'm giving me some mussar.
<00:02:14> Kayla Levin: I'm giving you some mussar. Let's just go there.
<00:02:18> Why to take this advice ---
<00:02:18> Kayla Levin: Why I, I'm sure you've seen this advice before. I'm probably not the first person, although sometimes I'm really surprised to see that like this. This really is news to some people, but why is it so important? So first of all, there's tons of mental health benefits for not having your phone in your bedroom looking at a screen.
<00:02:36> Kayla Levin: Uh, like 60 to 90 minutes before bed. I think we actually had Lauren Allen mention this recently on our podcast, can really disrupt your sleep even if you fall asleep quickly. Having constant socialization going on as we do whenever we're on our phone. There's a whole conversation that could be happening has been shown to have some impact on anxiety, social media for sure.
<00:02:57> Kayla Levin: Right. Not giving yourself that quiet that space just for yourself. That's one piece. But why do we say this specifically here? Because this is an opportunity to turn towards, this is an opportunity to connect with your husband and bringing the phone in is like, you know, you're sitting at a cafe instead of alone, cozy by yourselves on the couch, right?
<00:03:18> Kayla Levin: There's so much going on. There's so much else available. There's so much else that can interrupt you.
<00:03:26> Why is this so hard? ---
<00:03:26> Kayla Levin: But I wanna talk today, not just about the concept, but about why it's hard. Why don't people just do that? The number one thing that I hear is it's my alarm clock. Okay. I, I'll give it to you. Phones make better alarm clocks than actual alarm clocks. I think so. Except that they're also phones, and so we're just gonna have to take the hit on this one. Look, the phone will beat anything else for convenience, every single time.
<00:03:50> Kayla Levin: So if convenience is for you, the end all be all, it beats everything else, it trumps every other value, then you're gonna have to have a phone for an alarm clock. But if you're willing to say, it's really convenient, it's harder for me to use a traditional alarm clock. I mean, maybe you can find a really great one.
<00:04:05> Kayla Levin: They have some crazy ones out there, but it's harder for you to use a traditional alarm clock. And I'm willing to do it anyway. That's a profound statement, even just to be making to yourself about your relationship and your marriage and your values. So we wanna just catch ourselves when we just automatically default to, but it's so much more convenient and works better for me.
<00:04:26> Kayla Levin: That's not the end all, be all. That's not the most important thing. So yeah, it might be less convenient to the traditional alarm clock. I think you should do it anyway.
<00:04:37> Kayla Levin: Another reason? It's hard, easy access, socialization, and I should put socialization into air quotes because it's not real social time.
<00:04:44> Kayla Levin: It's not really filling that bucket in a meaningful, like, you know, nutritious way. It's kind of like junk food, socialization. It's really easy to access. It's cheap and you know, it's not terribly filling, but it doesn't really require you putting yourself out there, you know, if you have. Social media on your phone, or even like WhatsApp, which technically social media, whatever.
<00:05:06> Kayla Levin: Then you can just have these little chats that don't really require any level of vulnerability. They don't require you putting yourself out there. They don't really require you feeling terribly awkward. It's just there. It's low hanging fruit, and maybe by the end of the day you just feel like you need that.
<00:05:22> Kayla Levin: Another one is just easy access. Mindlessness brain numbness that need to just unwind. At the end of the day. We talk about this a ton inside of my membership community, how to glow different people. Just like how do you deal with that overload. At the end of the day, all you wanna do is to just space out.
<00:05:41> Kayla Levin: I'm gonna talk about that piece a little bit more later, but I wanna acknowledge that that's real for a lot of people. This is related, but a little bit different, which is discomfort with quiet aloneness and your own thoughts. For a lot of people, that is an UN that's unfamiliar territory. And the way I want you to think about it is that we have to learn to live with our brains.
<00:06:03> Kayla Levin: Our brains are with us wherever we go. And the more healthy relationship I can develop with my own brain, my own way of thinking, my own way of, of talking to myself internally, the better my entire life is gonna be because that colors everything that I experience and everything that I'm able to do throughout my life.
<00:06:20> Beginnings are hard, but worth it ---
<00:06:20> Kayla Levin: So, Yes, it's uncomfortable in the beginning, but if the way you talk to yourself, let's just use that as an example, is really negative. And so you wanna be on your phone at night because you know you're just gonna be beating yourself up, or you're gonna be thinking negative thoughts about your life or whatever your version is.
<00:06:37> Kayla Levin: Being on your phone doesn't make them go away. It's just kicking the tire. Kicking, what is it? Kicking the tire down the road. I don't know what you call, no, those are two different things. Kicking the stone down the road, you're delaying dealing with the problem. You're not, you're not dealing with it.
<00:06:52> Kayla Levin: You're pushing off dealing with it. So those thoughts are still there when you allow yourself to have those thoughts and you can get to a place of awareness and learning to manage them. And please let me help you with that. That is all the work that we're doing inside of the How Tolo community.
<00:07:07> Kayla Levin: The last one, and most important to mention here is discomfort with your husband. And it might not feel like discomfort, like, oh, I don't know, like, like super obvious, but it might just be the little bit of vulnerability it requires for the two of you to just be there and to not know what's gonna come up and to not know how you're gonna discuss your day, to not know if you're gonna feel super connected or not. That level of vulnerability can be enough for somebody to just decide they'd rather just be on their phone.
<00:07:37> Creating space for discomfort ---
<00:07:37> Kayla Levin: For most of these, it's the same answer, which is we have to create space first before we find the solution. What I think the distraction culture has created more than anything is a lack of space to experience the discomfort or the boredom or the, frustration that otherwise would lead to solutions that would lead to us getting creative solving for the problem.
<00:08:06> Kayla Levin: When we don't have the space, we don't truly experience what's going wrong for us, what we want to improve upon, and then of course we then don't solve for it because we're not really even experiencing it. It's like, you know, my husband and I, when we speak to seminaries all the time, and a lot of what we talk about is your mission in this world and.
<00:08:25> Kayla Levin: Most of these girls don't know what their mission in this world is, but they have to be bored first to figure it out. They have to be bothered first to figure it out. They have to look around the world and say, what needs fixing? What do I care about? What am I passionate about? And if the distraction, the constant distraction, is keeping them from being able to sit with that, they're not gonna get in the game in the first place.
<00:08:47> Kayla Levin: They're not gonna get down that path in the first place. Right. And it's the same for us in these, maybe not our great big life mission, but in these little micro journeys that we're on the micro journey of my relationship with my husband, my parenting, the way I, I'm dealing with work, how I'm running my home, my religious, you know, uh, spiritual experience.
<00:09:07> Kayla Levin: These little journeys, big journeys, but you know, these, these individual journeys that are going on for us, we have to be alone with some space to think and to experience where we are for us to ever move out of it. So I'm a huge proponent of space, even though it's uncomfortable, I think it's the biggest gift that we can give ourselves.
<00:09:25> Kayla Levin: And I want you to know that just taking tiny steps in this. Makes a huge impact. So if you're super addicted to being on your phone at night, but you say to yourself, I can totally be on my phone, but only after five minutes of space, five minutes of quiet, five minutes of just letting my head clear, that is a huge step.
<00:09:43> Kayla Levin: Do not minimize a step like that
<00:09:45> What if he's on his phone ---
<00:09:45> Kayla Levin: . the other thing that I wanna talk about today is, what about if he's the one that's on his phone, like you've tried to put away your phone. He didn't put away his phone, so probably you took back, back out your phone. Right? So he's the one on his phone and, and you're listening to this and you're like, I know.
<00:09:59> Kayla Levin: I know, I know, I know, I know. That's what I've been trying to tell my husband, or that's what I wish I could tell my husband. So here's what I want you to know to consider how you wanna deal with that. Number one, him being on his phone at bedtime is not an active rejection of you. It's so easy for us to see it that way.
<00:10:20> Kayla Levin: We don't feel like we're actively rejecting the other person when we're on our phone most of the time, maybe sometimes, but most of the time we're just on our phone. We're just spacing out. We're just overwhelmed. We're just taking some low hanging fruit of an easy way to relax and unwind. At the end of a day, he's probably doing something really similar, not actively rejecting you.
<00:10:40> Kayla Levin: So if he's on his phone and you're feeling hurt, I want you to step back and think like, Why am I making this hurtful? I don't have to like him being on his phone, but when I make it hurtful, then I'm going to become defensive, and then it's gonna be really hard to have a proactive conversation. Also, I. He likely has all the same human tendencies that you do.
<00:11:01> Kayla Levin: Maybe more, maybe less for short in sometimes other areas. So maybe you're not really the type to space out, zone out be on your phone. You don't play video games, whatever. But you've got your thing, you know? You have your thing. We all have our thing. So just remembering like that's not where I struggle, but I do struggle here, so you know what?
<00:11:21> Kayla Levin: I get it. When you are able to just drop the, like really, you play video games? I don't play video games, therefore we can't connect. We have to just broaden it a little bit and just realize like, wait, you're a human. You make some bad choices. Sometimes. I'm a human. I make my bad choices sometimes. Okay, I get it.
<00:11:38> Kayla Levin: Okay, we've got some common ground. Now we can begin that conversation. Not, not that we should start the conversation with, you're making bad choices, but to hear what I'm saying, it just loosens the whole thing up for us.
<00:11:48> Maybe he isn't ready to tackle that now ---
<00:11:48> Kayla Levin: The other thing I wanna say, just to be fair, is it's not necessarily something he wants to tackle.
<00:11:52> Kayla Levin: Now, if you're anything like me, you can get like a B in your bonnet and you get these ideas and you're like, I think today is, today we're gonna completely declutter and be minimalists. And then, you know, like my husband like might not be on the same page with that, right? So I have to remind myself anytime that I kind of wanna like start a new thing.
<00:12:09> Kayla Levin: He might have his own plan for kind of how he's doing things and what he wants to do. So it might be that right now you really do want to get your phone outta your bedroom. I think you should. I think the fact that this episode came out and you just listened to it right now is a sign that you should get your phone outta your bedroom.
<00:12:24> Kayla Levin: Unless you're like hatzala. Okay, but that doesn't mean that it is for him. Okay. That doesn't mean that you don't say anything. That doesn't mean that you can't have a conversation about it, but just remembering like he's an adult, right? And he gets to kind of decide what he is gonna tackle and when.
<00:12:41> How do we deal with it? ---
<00:12:41> Kayla Levin: So how do we deal with this?
<00:12:42> Kayla Levin: How do we deal with it if, let's say he's not interested, but you are really, you know, interested in this idea of being, getting the phone outta the bedroom. One of my favorite principles for anything to do with marriage is go first. Anytime you see your husband, he should be doing more of this. He should be making minion.
<00:12:59> Kayla Levin: He should be working harder at work. He should be more present with the kids. Go first. I'm telling you, this has been life changing for me. Just those two words go first. I want my husband to work harder on his davening, so I will up-level my da. I will do what's in my, I'm not gonna start going to minion, right?
<00:13:16> Kayla Levin: But I will make sure that I'm taking more time. Maybe I'll add something to my ding. Worst case scenario, I'm ding better now. But what I am doing is I'm saying, what's the real value? Davening is a value for me in my relationship, so let me live that. Let me make that happen. Presence with the children is a value, so now I'm living it.
<00:13:35> Kayla Levin: There's no, there is nothing to lose, right? I'm only creating more of what I value in my relationship. Where people really get stuck is that they'll do the thing so that he'll change, let me starting more, and now he's gonna start going to minion. Magically let me be more conscious with the kids. Then he's gonna suddenly be be the kind of parent that I want him to be.
<00:13:54> Kayla Levin: Let me get my phone outta the bedroom now. He's for sure gonna do it. That is setting yourself up for so much frustration. So I wanna say, if this is speaking to you, go first, but do it for you. Do it for you. Don't do it because you're trying to treat your husband like a little marionette. Like, I'm gonna push this button, then he'll do this.
<00:14:12> Kayla Levin: We don't work that way. He's a human, right? But also because each of these things, every time we take a step, every time we go first or we grow, we shift the dynamic. And I think that that will only ever help if we're shifting the dynamic in a bid for the relationship, in a bid, for showing up as a better version of ourselves.
<00:14:31> Kayla Levin: It can only only ever help.
<00:14:34> Kayla Levin: And finally, of course you can ask, you can have that conversation. I just suggest that you make sure you work through the other stuff first. Having the conversation when you feel personally offended that he is on his phone is not going to be the same as when you're coming at it as like, here's his thing.
<00:14:49> Kayla Levin: I don't know if he's interested, but I'd love to offer this opportunity for us to try to connect more.
<00:14:55> Email me ---
<00:14:55> Kayla Levin: All right, so that is my rant for you about getting your phone outta your bedroom if you find that you have other challenges. With this, I wanna hear from you. Okay? So email me, kayla kayla eleven.com. I wanna hear what else is hard for you about getting your phone outta your bedroom.
<00:15:08> Kayla Levin: Atala you still have permission and all you other, you know, urgent care workers, doulas and stuff. And if you're really struggling with this being alone time or the discomfort, I wanna tell you that this is what I do day in, day out. This is what I help people with. So come into kaylalevin.com/coaching.
<00:15:24> Kayla Levin: I'll link it in the show notes, come in and get coaching with me so I can help you with this. And we can just get to the other side because this isn't something to sit with. This is something that will have an impact on every part of your life. All right, have an amazing week everyone. Bye-bye.
<00:15:37> Kayla Levin: Hey there, Kayla here. If you've been loving the podcast, I wanna invite you into my monthly coaching program, How to Glow. We take all the work here and go much deeper into our expectations of our husbands, our understanding of our husbands ourselves, by the way our intimate lives. We even extended out to anything else you want.
<00:15:53> Kayla Levin: Coaching on your parenting, your finances, your health. Get ongoing support. Live weekly coaching, and access to my best courses for only $49 a month. I would love to coach you inside. Registration is open now. Sign up at kaylalevin.com/coaching. Isn't this the best time to start?
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