Are you Checking Out or Checking In?
One of the most important things in relationship is to act with intention rather than reactivity, but if we're so busy and distracted all the time, it's really hard to slow down enough to do anything but react when we're upset. Libby invites you to ask yourself this question, "Are you checking out or checking in?"
SHOW LINKS
Your Smartphone is Making you Stupid: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/08/a-sitting-phone-gathers-brain-dross/535476/
Proactive vs. Reactive: https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/307309
Smartphone addiction: https://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/flash/2018/dopamine-smartphones-battle-time/
Tara Brach and RAIN: https://www.tarabrach.com/rain/
Transcript
If you've been checking out all day, what you're doing is holding all of the things that you might need to be dealing with, or you might be feeling or thinking you're holding them aside, but they're not gone. They're just sitting, waiting. And at the end of the day, when you need to settle down, when you need to get quiet, they're gonna take that moment, that space to just rush in and suddenly they're grabbing a hold of you and they won't let go.
As a coach, helping people make major transformations in their relationships. One of my first orders of business is to help people get out of their reactivity. Now, why is that? Well, first I wanna tell you we're generally taught and even encouraged to be reactive in our relationships to show up and just react to whatever our partner does. And then if those reactions go well, we have a good relationship. And if those reactions don't go well, then that's a bad relationship and we should just find another partner. Now, what I believe is that truly awesome, incredible relationships are an act of creation and not a result of our reactions. And I think this is especially true. When we wanna go off the dominant scripts like monogamy and create a relationship that serves us and serves the and nuanced needs of the people who are in that relationship.
So many of us decide to leave behind relational paradigms that just don't serve us. And I think that's because we have big dreams to create extraordinary love in our lives. That is frankly revolutionary. And that requires intention and acting with intention often means moving past our knee jerk reactions because our reactions were forged in those old scripts that we are to move away from. Now, I've done a number of episodes on this podcast on different ways to get out of reactivity. I talk about taming, your woo. I talk about creating an intentional vision for your relationships. I talk about setting emotional boundaries and empowering your partner. Now, today, I wanna talk about a really basic way to get out of reactivity, which is to start checking in with yourself rather than checking out now, what do I mean by checking in, simply put, just being with yourself, just taking a quiet moment to tune into what's going on inside and listen intently to the state of your mind, body and soul.
This means like tuning into your physical sensations, listening to your internal dialogue, feeling your emotions that are bubbling around inside. I think this practice of checking in is so essential. And so many people just don't do it. Instead. Many of us habitually, perpetually checkout, I think checking out has become endemic to modern life. We're encouraged by our culture to just go, go, go and feel like every moment and be maximally productive, or constantly consuming some kind of content. All the freaking time. Smartphones are definitely the most powerful engine that keeps us checking out smartphones with their extreme portability and their constant notifications and apps that are literally designed to hack your brain so that you are repeatedly going back to them for that little squirt of dopamine. You know what I'm talking about? Right? Like smartphone apps operate like little slot machines and they are designed to do that by creating intermittent reinforcement that has been scientifically shown repeatedly to put our dopamine system, our pleasure seeking neurotransmitters on overdrive companies who make these apps want us glued to our phone.
They want us checked out, but it's not just the smartphone. I think we are also just a culture that fears, boredom and pushes this idea that our value as humans is derived by how much we consume or how much we produce or how much we accomplish or how much we perform. And there is just so much external pressure to always be doing something. And I say this because if you're someone who perpetually checks out, it's probably not your fault. The entire tide of the world we live in right now wants you to be checked out. And you may not be checking out by endlessly scrolling, social media or watching Netflix. You may be checked out by working constantly or by filling your calendar with activities and social engagements and dates with partners or texting people you care about and being perpetual checked in with them or other supposedly good things.
And again, none of these things that you might be doing to check out are inherently bad. Even the smartphone and checking out is sometimes really important. It's really good to be able to disconnect from being present. And I think check out has been part of the human experience probably as long as humans have been alive. I mean, it's funny, actually I was reading this article that was written like a hundred years ago by some, you know, hand ringing person who is saying like the mass production of books is dangerous to the youth, because now they're just gonna be reading all the time and, and checked out on life. It's it's funny. The problem though, is that if you are so habitually checking out that you are never checking in and just being still with yourself. And I think in the past, there was just more space sort of built into our lives and built are days to just frankly, be bored and have nothing else to do then to check in with yourself.
It was just unavoidable. Whereas now you actually have to intentionally cultivate time to check in, because if you want to check out all the time, you not only can, but again, like the tide is pushing you in that direction. And if you're wondering if I might be talking to you, if this sounds like maybe this is you. If you're asking yourself, am I checked out on myself most of the time, here's one possible sign. That that might be true. I want you to think about when you go to bed at night, when you're finally settling on for rest of the end of a day, do a million thoughts and feelings and sensations just start rushing in making it difficult to settle down is the end of the day. Suddenly when you feel that urgency to talk to a partner about something that happened or something that's bothering you, or some uneasy feeling that you may be having, are you getting in a lot of fights right?
At the end of the day before bed, is that when a lot of the disagreements come up and suddenly have a lot of urgency and you can't set them down, you have to talk about them right now. If you've been checking out all day, what you're doing is holding all of the things that might need to be dealing with, or you might be feeling or thinking you're holding them aside, but they're not gone. They're just sitting there waiting. And at the end of the day, when you need to settle down, when you need to get quiet, they're gonna take that moment, that space to just rush and suddenly they're grabbing a hold of you and they won't let go. So it's worth asking yourself when I am absolutely forced to get quiet, is that when my thoughts and feelings get really, really loud, that might be a sign that you are perpetually checking out.
This is what I'm talking about. When I am telling you that checking out keeps you in reactivity, because if you don't sit with your mind, body, and soul, and then something triggers you that someone you love does, guess what? Same thing, all of those undealt with thoughts and feelings just come rushing in that can lead you to get overwhelmed, shut down, or explode or whatever your knee jerk reaction might be. And you won't be able to respond with intention because you don't do anything to prepare for that. Checking out is a huge reason. People remain locked in these painful and damaging patterns. You just can't undo decades of programming on the fly when you haven't even taken any time to understand what the heck is going on inside of you. So what can you do? Well, the first order of business that I highly recommend is to contain that checking out again.
I think checking out is as essential to our wellbeing as checking in. Sometimes we just need a break from the world and checking out can give us that. But if at every moment that there is a lull in the action of your life, you're checking out. If you are looking at your phone in line at the grocery store, if you're constantly checking and immediately responding to work emails at every little gap in scheduled time, if your schedule is to the hilt, such that you never have any downtime, I would encourage you to begin to create more pockets in your days and weeks where you aren't doing anything. And if that feels overwhelming, let's just start with putting your phone somewhere else where you can't easily get to it all the time. And so maybe don't always have your phone in your pocket or on your person, but rather put it in another room sometimes, or put it away in a bag or purse with a zippered pocket or something like that.
So that you aren't just taking your phone out every second. And maybe don't take your phone to the bathroom. And yes, I'm guilty of this too. I totally have taken my phone to the bathroom in a habitual way, but listen, the bathroom is actually a fantastic place to have a moment to be quiet and check in with your body. And I'm gonna talk about that more in a minute, but really containing the checking out is so key. One thing I have been working on practicing is rather than checking out whenever there's a moment of downtime, I instead create very intentional time. Two checkout. My big thing is that I actually really like to zone out on TikTok for maybe an hour or so. Some nights after my kids go to bed, I also have nearly all of the notifications turned off on my phone so that it doesn't get to work.
ATS, dopamine hacking on me as easily. Really? I think whatever you can do to take more control of your checking out is gonna be beneficial here. Next, I encourage you to create some intentional times to check in with yourself. Now, there are so many tools for checking in. You know, you can journal, you can do some gentle movement. You can do a body scan meditation where you just tune into your body and its sensations. Or you can just get quiet, let your mind wander and practice observing your thoughts. You don't have to spend hours doing this though. That can be wonderful. You can just start with, like I said, just not taking your phone to the bathroom and instead intentionally use those brief moments to be with yourself. I mean, think about it. The bathroom is private. It's usually quiet and there's literally nothing else you need to do besides let your, do you do its thing.
Another time you can check in with yourself is in those moments where you might buy default, wanna check out like, you know, riding in the car or waiting in line when you're at a restaurant or waiting for your companion to come back from the bathroom, or just whenever you start to feel that itch to check out either because you're feeling overwhelmed or you're bored, or just for no reason at all, maybe instead use that moment to check in. And a lot of people I know really like to have an intentional time to check in with themselves at the beginning of the day, like first thing in the morning and I do this and I think it can be really great because you spend a moment just tuning into yourself before your day begins before you actually have anything to react to, which can give you that opportunity to be intentional and proactive.
Instead, the last thing I wanna offer you is one of my favorite tools for checking in, which is an emotional mindfulness tool created by Tara Brock called rain. Now Tara Brock is a meditation spirituality teacher, and she also has written several books. One of the most recent ones is about radical self-compasion and you know, this is one of my less listened to podcast episodes, but I think it's worth a go back and listen, I think self-compassion and having an intentional practice of self-compassion can be hugely transformative and rain is a little bit infused with self-compassion practice, but I also think gets just a really good checking in technique. And so rain stands for recognize, allow, investigate, and nurture. So the first thing you do is just, again, it's sitting down with yourself and it, this doesn't have to take very long, but you might do a body scan and you might recognize, oh, I'm feeling some tension inside of me.
Or you might not even do a body scan. You might just close your eyes and feel into whatever emotions are swirling about. And you might recognize, oh, I'm actually feeling tired or sad or are lonely. And then the next step is to allow to just say, oh, I see those feelings they're allowed to be here. I'm noticing these sensations. I'm noticing these thoughts coming up for me. All of that is welcome. All of that can be here right now in this moment. I'm not gonna run away from it. I'm not gonna distract from it. I'm just go to welcome it and see what it all has to offer me. And then the next step is the I, which is investigate. And this is just your chance to try to dig a little deeper and understand what those feelings, what those thoughts, what those body sensations have to tell you.
And some questions are I like to ask are, you know, what is causing this feeling? Or is there something that is happening right now that reminds me of something that's happened before? Is there some deep insecurity or fear within me that's getting triggered right now? Or maybe even not triggered, but like just tweaked, just like a little bit of friction is happening within myself that I'm noticing. Is there anything that I am trying to control in this moment? Or is there anything I am resisting or is there anything that I am feeling hurt around? You know? And so just sort of giving it a little bit of time to like dig into those thoughts and feelings and body sensations to see what's really there. And the last step is nurture. So once you've recognized, whatever might be up for you in the moment allowed it to be there, which golly guys, I just gotta tell you the allowing is so important.
Cuz a lot of times when we notice stuff, we're like, oh, I gotta get rid of bit. I gotta fix it. I gotta clear it. And that is not what this process is about. This process is just about being with what is, so you have to do that. Allow step, all this is allowed to be here. It's totally okay. And then after you've done the investigating and gained a deeper understanding of whatever might be there, then you give it a chance to be nurtured. So what that can look like is just speaking very gently to yourself about whatever you've uncovered. Oh wow. I can totally understand why I'm feeling that right now. I'm so glad that I have taken this moment to feel into this. And I'm so glad that my body's made me aware of this and I'm so grateful to these parts of me for speaking up and telling me what they're feeling.
So having some gratitude for whatever you've discovered can be a part of it. Also, you know, thinking about what kind of care and comfort might, the things you've uncovered need. And again, not to fix them, but just to soothe, just to be compassionate with yourself. And again, sometimes that's about the self talk that you have just speaking gently to yourself, being compassionate at being caring. I can really understand why I'm feeling this right now. I, I don't deserve to feel this way right now. This isn't my fault. I'm so sorry. Another thing you could do though is notice, Hey, you know, what I could really use right now is some comfort or some support or, oh wow. I am noticing the, this is a persistent issue that I really wanna try to address. And so I wanna think proactively and compassionately and collaboratively about how I might be able to address this and discuss it with my partner or my friend or my parent or whomever.
And then after you have gone through that process of recognizing, allowing, investigating, and nurturing, then there might be a next step, which is to figure out proactively how to bring this up to other people that you love. Sometimes when we do this practice, we don't find anything other than just a deeper understanding of ourselves. Sometimes when we go through this practice, we have an understanding of what we need to be moving towards in a proactive collaborative, and again, creative rather than reactive way. So here is my challenge to you. If you find yourself habitually checking out on yourself, I invite you to create an intentional practice of checking in and perhaps trying to unwind the habitual checking out so that the checking out is intentional too. Again, I want everyone to have times where they check out where they decompress, where they unwind, where they're not doing so much work all the time on themselves. It's really important. And I do it too. I need it too. Everyone needs to decompress to disconnect to let go. But it's so important to also not have that be something that you can't also disconnect from so that you can reconnect to yourself and to what's going on with you. And by doing that, you will have a greater capacity to get out of that reactivity and into the place where you truly can be in a place of creation for your life and your relationships.
