5 Ways To Improve Mental Wellness and Create a Healthy Relationship With Technology, With Kimberly Friedmutter
Just like a Lamborghini zero to 60 mph without a few warm up minutes of an engine, you can misfire when you’re not warmed up properly. Early stimulation before your internal mechanism is shored up can and often does cause issues. Emailing the wrong information to the wrong recipient or knee jerk reactions can take time to rectify. A slow build to the morning is like hanging an ‘now open’ sign in your office window. Allow a buffer between you and the eager world to get-to-you so that you are prepared. There is reverence in receiving others even if it’s just a quick text. You can create something special around your private time with yourself.
I had the pleasure of interviewing Kimberly Friedmutter CH.t, Hollywood’s hypnotherapist to A-listers! Kimberly is the author of Subconscious Power- Use Your Inner Mind to Create the Life You’ve Always Wanted! (Atria Books/Simon&Schuster) When Hollywood has a problem, she solves it. Politicos, CEO’s and titans of industry know the importance of their intuition and Kimberly leads them to health, wealth and prosperity. Connecting to your subconscious is fine-tuning your internal GPS to get what you want from life.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! What is your backstory?
I am a former talk radio show host on a top rated FM radio station (KLSX 97.1 FM, Howard Stern station) in Los Angeles. I am a Board-certified hypnotherapist to high performing clientele around the globe. UCLA Health System Board Member, International Hypnosis Federation.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you started your career?
My private practice in Malibu, kept me working with addicts and traveling for their work in the entertainment business. That’s always fascinating. No two cases are alike! Everyone is individual so fine-tuning the minds of high performers takes an art/science essence that is very rewarding.
Are you working on any new or exciting projects now?
Atria Books (Simon & Schuster) is publishing my book Subconscious Power- Use Your Inner Mind to Create the Life You’ve Always Wanted, on April 9, 2019 This book brings to readers the Six Principles I use in my practice to bring clients to their full potential.
Between work and personal life, the average adult spends nearly 11 hours looking at a screen per day. How does our increasing screen time affect our mental, physical, and emotional health?
Mental: From the subconscious perspective, we are sponges for intake. Our senses are alive with the information available to us, taking in millions of bits of information through just our eyes alone. This system overload results in desensitization. The result of a constant barrage of stimulus causes fatigue, irritability, envy. . . studies show. Screens, Technicolor, rapid imaging are more entrancing than sex, scientific data says.
Physical: Simply being aware of your mind and body can cue you into whether or not you are spending too much time with your device. How do you feel afterward? Good or bad? Flexible or stiff? Calm or agitated? Balanced or lacking? Comfortable or distressed? Happy or depressed? Hopeful or jealous? Energetic or fatigued? We are nomadic creatures, designed to move well and adjust often to the circumstances and stresses around us. When we sit for long periods of time, we miss the opportunity to capture our best nature. Walking does wonders for our neural connectivity. This function is missed when we sit. Eye focus, decision making, flexibility, balance and many more functions sit idle when we sit for hours at a time. Metabolism suffers, the simple function of touch and our olfactory senses atrophy.
Emotional: We tend to create to the negative when we are around negativity. I termed this ‘awfulizing’. The deflating of any positive experience with the premise that what is not bad is getting bad and every situation has a more potentially negative possibility. Science tells us that envy and jealousy, anger, frustration, sadness and suicide is tech related unintended consequences caused by our obsession with tech. Emotional outbursts and fits of rage are part of the desensitizing process. We are creating an action (social media interaction) without equal reactions having to personally deal with the people we are interacting with. If you liken tech to driving your car and getting in an altercation through the windshield protected by the veil until you see that person in line behind you at the ATM. The encounters are one layer removed from real. You can act out without the accountability factor. Rarely having to assess consequence.
Can you share your top five ways people can improve mental wellness and create a healthy relationship with technology?
1) Get out! Our eyes are meant to detect movement both far and near. The intricate formation of eye health means continual association and orientation to other moving 3-D objects. Simple tasks like agility wane when we opt to sit. Trees, animals, vehicles, weather, air, etc . . . all an integral part of our associative skills.
2) Connect! Relatedness with a human you love creates animal magnetism. This natural feeling of attraction between you and a mate or best friend releases serotonin and dopamine both creating a sense of community, survival and camaraderie.
3) Be alone! Being alone with your thoughts, creations, ideas, aha-moments and inspirations, waiting to express themselves, gives you depth. You hold a myriad of wonders when given the ‘quiet’ to explore your own opinions, desires and aptitudes. Alone with your thoughts isn’t alone at all. All of your magnificence is waitng to emerge when your psyche isn’t bombarded with images, whines and whirrrrs, bells and whistles of tech and online living. Unplug so you can enjoy the universe at large. Upload your ideas and download the courage to enjoy you, for a positive change.
4) It’s time! Use your device for it’s time saving and organizational abilities rather than continual entertainment. Think of it as a taskmaster as opposed to your distraction device with the idea that it is working for you as opposed to occupying you. If you approach your device with time savings in mind, it can be your best ally for getting out of the door on a busy day.
5) Say goodnight! It’s one thing to develop a healthy relationship with tech during the daytime but there is no healthy tech at night. Sleep pattern interruption is high when your phone is left buzzing or lighting up leaving you tired, cranky or worse . . . without proper alignment of dream patterns and restorative sleep, repair of your immune system, cellular repair, problem solving. All of these functions need uninterrupted sleep to align proper subconscious functions.
51% of Americans say they primarily use their smartphone for calls. With the number of robocalls increasing, what are ways people can limit interruptions from spam calls?
From the user end, simply check your phone on the hour OR choose a limited amount of time that your ringer is on. The danger of what I call ‘high signaling’ is a jumpy subconscious due to pings of adrenaline. Adrenaline is meant as a ‘call to action’ to run from the bear, not your smart phone. However, the constant alert of a device puts our biological system on call to run! (according to your research about 80 times per day) Adrenaline is toxic to us in often or prolonged doses; called stress. Stress kills us slowly through a myriad of physical malfunctions.
Between social media distractions, messaging apps, and the fact that Americans receive 45.9 push notifications each day, Americans check their phones 80 times per day. How can people, especially younger generations, create a healthier relationship with social media?
1) Check list. What are your top 5 sites or functions of your device? These are what keep you in trance; they are your hypnotists, your priorities. Our comparison of ourselves to others is at an all-time high. I coined the term ‘NARSIE’ (to take a photo of yourself — a selfie, to post that photo of yourself — a narsie. (which has social significance fyi) https://www.prweb.com/releases/2015/01/prweb12468570.htm
Focus your attention on what you have vs what others have. The continual obsession with others has blurred our path. Stay in your lane, you’ll get there faster.
2) Boundaries. Something we don’t encourage with smart phones because we broke through them to bring the world into the palm of our hand. No longer is water or time a boundary. Boundaries are not fashionable in the world and political climate of today. However, if we do not set them for our devices, we never fully give our subconscious a chance to hit the reset button. The subconscious is our powerful ally and its prime directive is your successful survival. Housing emotions, immunity, memory, anxiety, habits and overall sense of well-being. Protecting this important part of ourselves is part who we are and who we hope to be.
80% of smartphone users check their phones before they brush their teeth in the morning. What effect does starting the day this way have on people? Is there a better morning routine you suggest?
Just like a Lamborghini zero to 60 mph without a few warm up minutes of an engine, you can misfire when you’re not warmed up properly. Early stimulation before your internal mechanism is shored up can and often does cause issues. Emailing the wrong information to the wrong recipient or knee jerk reactions can take time to rectify. A slow build to the morning is like hanging an ‘now open’ sign in your office window. Allow a buffer between you and the eager world to get-to-you so that you are prepared. There is reverence in receiving others even if it’s just a quick text. You can create something special around your private time with yourself.
Can you please give us your favorite life lesson quote?
“Give yourself permission, no one else will”- Kimberly Friedmutter CHt
If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of wellness to the most amount of people, what would that be?
Definitely the Six Principles!!!! They literally reconnect you to YOUR super computer. Our subconscious is out of balance with our conscious and when brought into alignment, life gets easy. Want to find the best parking spaces? Lost items in your home or office? Want to know when you meet someone if they are good for you or not? Connect to your subconscious with Subconscious Power.
What is the best way our readers can follow you on social media?
Twitter and instagram @kimfriedmutter and www.kimberlyfriedmutter.com, Facebook!