התמלול המלא של 431: Digital Fasting

talk a little bit about digital fasting and a little bit about food fasting because both are relevant for your mental well-being, your spiritual well-being, your physical well-being, your emotional well-being. And I have been a food faster for many years now, And there are a handful of episodes that I've included. I will include in the show notes, but I actually got proactive for today's episode and looked up the numbers of those episodes that are relevant as well. But my OG episode for digital fasting is, the four things I learned in my four day digital detox. That was episode 49. We are on 431. So that was back in 2018, 2019. And I remember that weekend so vividly because I had food fasted and digital fasted, and I was levitating, y'all. It was fantastic. And so I but I remember at that season of life, I was juicing. And so I was food fasting, but I was juicing. And that was a really amazing time because I was journaling. I had I was I knew I remember what I was working on in that season of life, but I would 10 out of 10 recommend listening to the four things I learned in my four day digital detox. Food fasting helps the body to detoxify, but it also helps, and I wanna make this point for both. But fasting is designed to clear the body and and detox, not necessarily deprive. It is a form of deprivation to deprive yourself of food or, digital intake, digital consumption. So any either form of consumption, let's say. I'll just stick to consumption for for a minute. But it's designed to create and create space through clearing and not constantly filling. Not constantly filling your belly and not constantly filling your mind and heart with consumption. Okay? This helps to create the space that wouldn't otherwise be created. And the feeling of lightness, the feeling of release without an instant and constant replacement causes a ventilation that starts to open up your physical vessel and your mental and emotional vessels. So I just wanna start with that point. And another point that I wanna make is consumption requires digestion. If to consume food, you have to give yourself that time to digest it, Going into the belly, through the intestines, absorbing what there is to absorb, and releasing what there is to release. With digital consumption, we are certainly consuming faster than we're digesting. And our bellies, like physical food, tell us when we're full. And if we were to overconsume, we would probably literally most likely and typically vomit or throw up or just, you know, get sick and, like, not be able to hold food down. Or if we're eating and digesting, but we're over consuming, that's where we start to accumulate fat. Right? At which then will lead to health issues, heart issues, all of that mobility issues. So over consumption digitally, we're not gonna vomit. We're not gonna gain weight. But I notice for me, my pain is typically in my heart, in my throat, and certainly in my brain, and then in my eyes. I I imagine that some of us who are

over consuming digitally might feel it in our gut. You might feel it in your hips, in certain joints, depending on what sort of pain digital over consumption is causing you to feel. And so you have to listen to your body, and it's very likely your body's talking to you about digital overconsumption. And it might be very likely that you're ignoring it. In fact, to be perfectly honest, I'm wearing glasses right now. You're seeing this, visually, but maybe not on audio is I'm wearing glasses right now because my eyes burn from overconsumption. I work on my computer. I have two screens for this. I'm talking to a screen. I'm posting on a screen. I'm responding to messages on a screen. My eyeballs be burning, y'all. And so to try to get outside digital fasting in the form of screen, like, my eyes is getting outside, sitting on the back porch, staring at earth, not at the sun directly. That doesn't help too much. But but the trees or going for a walk by the lake, that that will be a form of fasting. However, the problem is we're not doing anywhere near enough leveling out of how much we're consuming on devices and screens and balancing it out with how much we're not. I find it funny, but also not funny because it's serious, is there was a statement like, I work all day on a medium screen, I take mini breaks on a small screen, and I take a big break at night on a big screen. Right? So it's like we're taking a break from our emails by scrolling on the phone and maybe a little. I call social media the today's cigarette, like, cigarette break. Scrolling on social media is the twenty twenty six cigarette break. And so it's like all of that is consumption, consumption, consumption, consumption. And so, like, the twenty minute walk, even the hour long walk, or dinner with somebody where you're looking at the person and not watching a a screen while you're eating. I mean, how often of the day are you oh, driving, maybe, you're not looking at a screen, and, unfortunately, maybe you are. Right? So how many hours of your day at this point are you not looking at a screen compared to how much you are? It's not a healthy amount. I would venture to guess it's not a healthy amount, especially, basically, if you're millennial and under, for sure, for sure. And then I guess Gen Z and boomers can probably argue that they're not, but I think I think we're all on our screens, like, a little bit more than we admit. So consumption requires digestion, and information requires digestion. You can't integrate information if you never take a break from consuming information. And I don't think psychologically, we are built to consume the amount of information we are consuming while scrolling on top of the variety, the vast variety of topics we are consuming and the intensity of those topics. We read headlines about death, disaster, gruesome despair, and then there's, like, a funny video and then a moving sad video, a heart wrenching story, a heroic story, like the emotional, energetic, spiritual roller coaster we on are on. And then let's add in the psychological warfare of attention harvesting, sympathy harvesting. There's another word I wanna use. But just ultimately siphoning your focus away from you and your passions and your projects and and your what you want to be up to and and maybe should be up to, to take and hypnotize you away from that for you to be on your phone or your computer or at work, like all of that for so long, And it gives us and and to not have appropriate breaks and intentional breaks from it is making integration of the information impossible and consumption of the information, impossible. So it's like it's really like eating, eating, eating, eating, eating, eating, eating, eating, eating, eating, eating, eating all day long. K? I think I've made my point. I don't mean to beat a dead horse. But this stuff is intense, and I'm trying to kinda talk about that. So another point that I want to make is that digital fasting reveals your relationship with stimulation. And I have a couple episodes about this four twenty two, cortisol addiction. I think that's a great episode for this. Another episode I want to talk about here is the spirituality of boredom. I believe that boredom, silence and boredom and stillness, spaciousness are absolutely essential for clarity and creativity. And I'm a go a layer deeper here, is that constantly being stimulated and seeking outside of you for answers and solutions, scrolling on your phone, googling AI chats is absolutely deteriorating our critical thinking skills, our deductive reasoning skills. And so it's basically atrophying your mental and emotional capacity to be consuming all the time, to be stimulated all the time, to just quickly look up answers, to quickly rely on AI feedback for answers, and, again, for your critical thinking skills or for just sitting with discomfort. That is a huge deal. Being able to be okay with not knowing something, with something feeling confronting for you and not needing to immediately fix it, but boredom and being with shows you how one, how long you can do it or how long you cannot do it. But your relationship with being stimulated constantly isn't necessarily healthy. We feel stuck in our lives because we're being constantly entertained and stimulated into stillness. It's a form of avoidance. It's a form of distraction. Instead of turning facing, looking directly at what's confronting you, look at what's challenging you, feeling a challenge, being challenged, challenging yourself to accomplish something. Right? Your long to do list or or the things you haven't gotten done or life admin, work admin, all those things, your health, your well-being, your finances, your budget, all of those things require your attention. And most of our attention is being siphoned through the phone, through the computer, through the TV. And I'm not even trying to sound like a conspiracy theorist. I'm not trying to say, like, they're all trying to

get you the boogeyman, you know, the the boogeyman behind the screen. It's like, it's not about that. It's about that that you have autonomy, that you have sovereignty, that you have option, that you have choice, that you're actually the one in the driver's seat of your life with your wheels on the hands, with your with your hands on the wheel, that's your job. And I understand that life can feel overwhelming, but my guess is that if you took on digital fasting, you'd start to remember who you are and what you're made of. If you're feeling stuck in life, if you're feeling overwhelmed, you have no idea. You might because maybe you look at your screen time on your phone, but you have way more time than you think you do. You have way more time, and you have way more capacity. Because the emotional tax of being on the phone for two to four hours is, like, ten hours of your mental load. That's how much you're consuming. And so you if you feel tired, exhausted, and burnt out after a few hours of scrolling, it's because you've consumed days worth of information in two hours. And your brain and heart are going, what the fuck? What is going on here? One other way I've described this if you're a frequent tuner inner is if your phone has reached its storage capacity or your computer, what happens to the device? It heats up. It slows down. It malfunctions. It lags. That's what's happening to you mentally, physically, emotionally. You have to your storage is at full capacity. You're likely not emptying it by digesting with fasting, by processing, perhaps through journaling or, meditation. I love mirror work. That's a mirror sitting behind me. Through therapy, counseling, coaching, there's plenty of hanging out with friends. How much of your time with your friends or family are you trading for phone time? If social media didn't exist, what would you do with your time? What would you do with all that time you spend on the phone? And, again, you guys, I'm a huge proponent for phones. You're watching me on a screen on a phone talking about get off the phone. Because there is who you know yourself to be is very likely trapped under layers and layers and layers of overstimulation, burnout, clogged up energy from simply not taking an appropriate breather from digital consumption. And this may be a message about food consumption. Right? If that resonates for you, it's the time to take the message and look at fasting. Fasting can be intermittent. A great way to digital or food fast is nothing before noon. I do certain, you know, weeks on end where I am not getting on my phone before noon. I might take my calls with my clients, but I'm not I shut all the apps down. I used to completely uninstall the apps from my phones to do this, to digital detox. You guys know very well, I do disappearing December. I have done that for five, six, seven years now. And I'm so sad to say, this is the first time I'm announcing this, I will not be doing disappearing December in 2026 or 2027 because of my, self critical person's 365 guide to a slightly better life book coming out December 1. I did that to myself. Now it's by design because it's a 365 book that I will be promoting for 365, and that was part of why I got the brick. Instead of doing the 2026 and 2027 disappearing December, I am going to do one four day weekend a month for all of 2027 starting probably, by November 2026, but I'm gonna do a four day weekend a month totally off the socials. It's the best way I know how to adapt that so I can still get that digital fasting and that ventilation. However, I I love my disappearing December. It I work so hard all year, and it's this chance to just breathe and celebrate myself and have my annual year reflection, my year wrap up, my my next year launch off. And so I'm sure I'll be very intentional about my online time in December. However, it won't be a full disappearing December like I've become so used to and and really fond of. And so I've been looking this whole episode. Although I had, you know, like, a full seven minute ad at the start, it's truly from a place of personal development and professional development of me constantly auditing, is this working? What's working? What's not working? So I'm coming to you, yes, as an authority on the topic, but also as a mad scientist always always studying what works for me and what needs to change for it to continue to work for me and for me to feel my best. And there's been seasons of my business and and learning that I haven't felt my best, And I make the changes because I don't like to not feel good. That's for damn sure. And I'm trying to help you feel better too along the way. The last point that I'd like to make here is that reclaiming your attention improves productivity and intentionality. I've said that mostly throughout this episode, but I wanted to more explicitly say that is it is up to you to reclaim your attention. And I want to say that in the more mystical approaches like as within, so without. As above, so below. The manifestations in your life are a result of your focus and intention. What's the other law of attraction statement? What you focus on increases, where attention goes, energy flows. K? So when I notice I'm either not physically feeling good or I notice I'm having a bad luck streak, shit's not working out for me, or if I say, I need a break. Like, can't I catch a break? Like, if I feel like I'm stumbling from one obstacle to another, one barrier to another, I stub my toe and I spill my purse and I get a bill in the mail or whatever, something breaks, I have to stop and take a breather and look at the momentum my life is going in. And you can stop the momentum at any given time, back up, observe, evaluate, and decide what direction do I want my life to be going in. But when we are avoiding these things or we're numbing out because it's easy to have five inconveniences in one day and just wanna sit plop it down on the couch and just feel sorry for

yourself and scroll and zone out watching a TV show or a movie. I get it. Me too. And it's not highly effective in actually causing a transition in the momentum. And here's the fun part. It doesn't take too much to shift the momentum, but fasting, food, and digital is a great way to start shifting that momentum. Put a hard break on the junk. Stop consuming junk on the phone. Stop consuming junk food in life. Right? Start feeding yourself good food. If you put diesel fuel in, an unleaded tank, your car's gonna take a shit. If you never change the oil, your car's gonna Speaker 0: take a shit, and you're gonna be stuck on the side of Speaker 1: the road. If you're putting constantly processed sugar and salt and preservatives and into your body, your body's gonna take a shit. It's not gonna feel good. And even though digital is energetic, right, your mind and your heart, if you're constantly ruminating and thinking, oh, what did I do? What did I say? Why did I say it that way? What do they think of me? Everyone's laughing at me. Oh, my that one time when I was in sixth sixth grade. And then you're watching all these headlines and all this stuff and fights on the phone, and and your algorithm feeds you more of that that oh, I have another episode called the energetic algorithm episode three seventy four, the energetic algorithm. That's more of this kind of topic if it's resonating with you, but you can hard stop on those things. Because if you get quiet, yes, your mind and heart might be loud, but if you get quiet and you get some good sleep and you take a long shower and you rest and you go outside and you take a walkabout or you sit down with a journal and you start dumping all the stuff that's in your head and your heart. And if you're fasting and you're going to the bathroom and you're letting all of that stuff out and you're consuming water and you're flushing your body and you open a journal and you start writing and you're flushing your mind and your heart. And I just did an episode last four twenty nine, how journaling heals. So that's another one. But if you're emptying and emptying and emptying and emptying and emptying, I am very confident you're gonna start feeling better. And then you're gonna start hearing your mind and heart give you some better directions. Hey. We've when's the last time you called your mom, dad, sister, friend, mentor, buddy? When's the last time you hung out with them? Oh, you never paid that bill or sent that email or renewed that registration. Oh, I, you know, I've never picked my guitar back up. It's collecting dust in the corner. I wanna paint again. I wanna write something. The spirituality of boredom, I wanna just remind you of that episode three eighty one. Creating spaciousness, silence, stillness, digesting all that you've consumed, or simply detoxing it, dumping it out is gonna clear you in ways that I know you want. It's so nice to have a mental and physical break from from pain, from suffering, from ruminating, from ailments, from worry, from anxiety, from stress, from demand. And the last thing I'll say, I wonder if I wrote this one down, maybe emotional recovery. But to redevelop that's an episode, by the way. Emotional recovery. To develop the emotional stamina, to rest appropriately. It's like your immune system. If your immune system is weak, you get sick faster or easier. If your mental load and physical load are weak, if you're atrophying your critical thinking skills, if you're flooding your brain with overwhelming information, your immunity to BS and inconveniences becomes weaker. When you are clear, detoxed, strong, focused, intent, you hit a minor inconvenience. You hit a roadblock. You hit a barrier. You're fine. So what? Onward. Get over it. We're moving on. That's not stopping us. If I am scrolling for too long, overwhelmed, burnt out, and I get one tech issue, I am in tears. I question my business. I question my existence. I I'm doing this right well. And none of that's necessary. None of that's necessary. And you can take great care of yourself simply by taking the day off the phone or by not getting on it till noon or by shutting it down by 6PM. There are all sorts of ways to do it. So before we depart, I just wanna say, I'm not gonna act like a guru about, you have to wake up by 5PM to be productive and successful. That is not it. You have to do it the way that I do it to be productive and successful. That is not it. You can get this flip phone I mentioned and put the smartphone away. You can get this brick device and break your phone and operate the way you need to. You can throw your whole phone in the trash, but I'm not gonna advise you to do that because it'll cost you some money. You can go I used before I did any of these things, I would go put my phone in my glove compartment, lock my car, and come back in and do my work. There's a million ways to do it. You gotta test some. Some will work. Some will fail. You will adapt them, but try them. And the last piece I want to offer is that doing it alone is hardly effective. I don't have the willpower to not scroll. The thing that's preventing me from scrolling right now, one is the break, but two is the fact that I'm recording on the phone. I'm pretty good at not scrolling while recording. I I don't do that. But this is something that I couldn't do if I were addicted to scrolling. I'm doing a podcast because I am clear and intent. I have created enough boredom in my life to have a hit of inspiration to sit here and record for 431 episodes for a decade. I have been creating content for a decade. So no, I don't want to villainize social media. I rely on it. I love it. I enjoy it. I learn so much from it. I share so much with it. But being intent around it is what facilitates my joy around it. Taking appropriate breaks makes me love when I'm here. And I want you to love your life, and I want you to feel like you're expressed. And, in fact, last point, which I didn't even have

in my notes, is the create more than you consume. Those are pretty one or the other. I am creating right now by recording. I can literally not consume right now. I cannot do those two things at once. Right? So if I'm consuming, I am not I cannot create. Even if, like, I want to write something, write a post or even take notes for something, I can't be having a video going on in the background. That's me. Have I had, like, lo fi music on? Yeah. I love that. But I can't even have music with lyrics in it or it's gonna a word, a banger, a line. I'm gonna be like, oh, yeah. Damn. And then it's gonna take me off somewhere. Right? So the create and consume are pretty mutually exclusive. K? So create more than you consume. Please, I beg of you. I implore you. Because here at Hearts Unleashed, we're committed to you living your heart unleashed. We're committed to you expressing yourself. We're committed to this expansion coming from your chest, coming from your throat, coming from your from your throat chakra, from your third eye, from your crown, just sharing it all with the world, from your heart chakra, from your solar plexus, from your sacral chakra. Just boom, bitches. I'm here. I'm clear. I'm ready to make a difference, even if that's just with yourself. Okay. Y'all, I can't remember the last time I recorded a thirty plus minute solo cast, but damn, this was good. I hope you enjoyed this. I hope it was helpful. I hope you share it with someone who might just be scrolling a little too much, might feel a little bit of social burnout, a little screen burnout, a little eyeball burnage because your girl's over here feeling it too. I'm just like you. I'm just like you, I promise. But I really appreciate being here with you. I appreciate that if you've made it to the end of this podcast episode of this video that you got what you needed, that you heard. You know, even if it's just that one message, like, oh, damn. Oh, damn. She talking to me. That's me. And I'm ready to make a change. And I will always say that if you need support making a change, please reach out. You can always email me, abigail@heartsunleashed.com. You can comment on the video. You can send me a DM. There's lots of ways to contact me. But I feel that it's important to remind people that just because you see me on all this content doesn't mean I'm not still a life coach, a business consultant, an author, and a publisher working with clients weekly. And so don't, count yourself out thinking, oh my gosh. She's so busy. She doesn't have time for me. If you truly want support in navigating what you're navigating and saying, I gotta get serious about this scrolling addiction. I gotta get serious about becoming more productive. I got goals in mind. I'm not living my heart unleashed. I feel clogged up. I feel stuck. I feel overwhelmed. I feel overstimulated, and I don't know what to do about it, and I don't know how to sort it out. I literally spent thirty minutes on a call with a woman today saying, when are you gonna do this project by? When are you gonna do that project by? How important is this to you? So whatever your goal is, whatever your focus is, let's talk about it. And if I'm not the coach for you, then I will refer you to the coach for you. I have plenty of colleagues who are doing amazing work in the world and a podcast full of amazing people doing amazing work in the world. And so I seriously love having you here. I love showing up. I've been craving an episode like this because sometimes I just wanna get on the mic and be like, yo, I miss y'all. How's it going? Here's what's up with me. Here's what's up with my life. And this is what's up with my life. I've been digital fasting. I've been struggling with scrolling. I've been overstimulated. I have been overwhelmed by my three sixty five project because it's videos, it's audios, it's it's the book, it's the layout. I wanna do it in Spanish. The Spanish version isn't gonna be ready in time. Oh my god. I'm making a calendar for it, a three sixty five pull away calendar. So, like, I'm navigating it all too, and I just love getting to talk to you about all this stuff that I'm just so excited about, so passionate about, and wanna see other people be able to do the things that they're passionate about and live a life by design. Because although I'm driving myself crazy with this project, it is absolutely a life by my design. I am loving the challenge, and I am really looking forward to it being over with, done, and hold the products in my hand. And so last little note about that is that the book, The Self Critical Persons 365 Guide to a Slightly Better Life, will be out December 1 digitally. You can pre order it from me at abigail gazza dot com /books. And I will be sending out the pre orders a little earlier than the virtual launch. So, I mean, if you wanna be part of the the cool gang that gets the book a little early, go ahead and do that at abigailgasset.com/books. The digital calendar is not ready yet, but it will be by the time the book comes out. And I am recording all three hundred and sixty five days on video, and I will be releasing every one of those videos every day of 2027 at slightly self critical on Instagram and TikTok and YouTube. So there are the slightly self critical profiles will all be up and running, and you can watch that book digitally all year long in 2027, and then you could just keep tuning into it. I am also releasing it as a virtual, as a podcast, audio only. So listen, I am so serious about this material, and I believe so wholeheartedly in it that I am producing it every which way that I can for consumption so that you can clear and create. The readings are a page or less each day, a minute or two video or audio each day. Hope that will hopefully encourage you to digitally fast, to step away from the world, to step inward towards yourself, and unleash that beautiful heart of yours. Oh my god. I'm so passionate about it. I'm so passionate. I love you. I love you deeply, and I love you sincerely, and I thank you from the bottom of my unleashed heart. Thank you for tuning in to the Hearts Unleashed podcast where we are turning dreamers into doers. Speaker 0: Thanks for tuning in to the Hearts Unleashed podcast. We hope you found all the inspiration that you needed and that you use it to take inspired action on your dreams. If you love the show, share it with a friend. We love spreading the love. For more information, to listen to more episodes, and shop Hearts Unleashed, visit heartsunleashed.com. See you next time, hearts.