email so that work doesn’t overflow into personal or family time. Even then, there’s always the temptation to be connected to work because you never know if leaving yourself out of the digital conversation will result in more work in the long run. In this case, it is not always possible to delete your email app.
However, for most of us, our email app can be relegated to a separate device — namely, our computers. That’s why I recommend deleting your email app from your phone and regulating its use primarily through your computer. As a secondary way to control email activity, schedule the time you allot to reading, replying, writing, and sending emails on a daily basis. Make sure the time you dedicate to email is effective and reasonable. Once you’ve intentionally blocked off time, zealously remain faithful to that amount of time. When you’re finished with email, promise yourself not to return to it until your scheduled time the next day. When you do this, you can live peacefully knowing you are not under the pressure to respond to incoming emails immediately; you are free to wait until the time you decide it is necessary.
Turn Off All Push Notifications for Necessary Apps
If you are absolutely certain that you need specific “necessary” apps for these twenty-one days, then do the next best thing and turn off push notifications. There is nothing worse for your spirit than random beeps that bear the burdens of anxiety and pressure. The instant they sound, you worry that if you don’t stop everything you are doing to check your email, respond to a text, or “like” that person’s comment on your social media post, your life will lose all meaning. Do yourself a favor and detach yourself from these perilous tones so that you, not your phone, can decide when to reply.
Keep Yourself Accountable
Aside from offering the sacrifices of this retreat for someone, it is highly recommended that you go forward with a partner as an added form of accountability. Granted, you are at liberty to complete the retreat by yourself, but your own willpower will help you only so far. You may need someone to hold you to your promises and help you make good on your goals.
That’s why I recommend sharing the experience with someone close to you. It can be your spouse, a family member, a friend, or even a small group at your parish. If you find someone to complete this retreat with, the odds of success rise significantly.
Prepare to Retreat
All of the aforementioned suggestions are a means through which you are physically detaching from your phone. Once detached, you will find that you have all sorts of free time. With this free time will come several temptations. You’ll want to grab your phone, check your email, scroll through your social media, etc.
Don’t do that.
Instead, take those moments to read one chapter from this book each day. Allow your naturally philosophical mind to reflect and put into practice the wisdom I want to share with you in the following pages. This will allow you to escape mindlessly dawdling on your phone, and instead pursue excellence in your life through prayer, contemplation, meditation, and acts of virtue. In the end you’ll discover your life is happier and holier for having persevered.
Congrats! You just finished day two.
Reflect
• What are the hardest app(s) to delete from your phone? Why?
• What are your secondary devices and how often do you use them?
• What steps will you take to make sure your email activity is regulated?
• What types of “good fruit” do you hope will come out of this retreat?
Pray
Dear Lord, the sound of your call to holiness has been quieted for some time now. May the sacrifice of my notifications illuminate my heart to a far greater degree than my screen, for in your light we see light. May your light shine in our souls and brighten the darkness that surrounds our attachment to worldly desires. Amen.
Day 3
The Goal: True Happiness
God wants you to be happy. The problem is, you’re not. Your life is filled with problems that need to be fixed, worries that keep you up at night, and responsibilities that call for your complete attention every waking hour of the day. Sometimes life becomes so overwhelming that you feel the need to escape.
So you do what millions of other people do at any given moment — you reach for your phone, tablet, or laptop, and you begin to scroll. Like a dive into a lake on a hot summer day, you eliminate the sights and sounds of the world and delve into the cool waters of the technological distraction.
I know. I’ve been there. I’ve escaped more than my fair share of times from the world in the same way. I’ve spent so many hours below the surface in this underwater retreat that I could have grown gills if I were biologically capable of doing so. The problem was, I’m not able to grow those gills, and as I spent more and more time in the abyss of technology, I began to drown.
The primary goal of this book is your happiness. Consider this retreat to be the life preserver that rescues you from the depths of technology overuse and guides you across the many rip currents of life toward a final destination of true, pure, and unfiltered joy. The journey will be long, difficult, and, at times, strenuous, but such is the way of living a truly Christian life. Imitating Christ demands we take up our cross and follow him regardless of the realities that exist in our lives. Good or bad, God beckons us to use these experiences to attain our potential for personal excellence.
You have been given a specific task to complete in this world, one that only you can complete. We are constantly changing — mind, soul, and body — in order to achieve this task. God grants us graces in every lesson we learn, every experience we have, and every relationship we make. Through these he forms us, always shaping us into a more perfect being. We become the best version of ourselves when we depart from this life and ultimately see God, for it is then that we achieve the fulfillment of all we have ever desired. This is what is meant by the potential of our personal excellence, that we will spend our lives seeking God and becoming more like him so that one day, according to Saint John, “we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is” (1 Jn 3:2).
However, many things in our lives do, indeed, make us weaker and less able to fulfill the potential of our personal excellence. I believe technology overuse to be one of them.
Our Longing for Happiness
The world is obsessed with happiness. We seek it in our daily actions in the people we meet, the food we eat, the music we listen to, and even in the screens we use to distract us from the pressures of the world. Happiness is sought across genders, ages, social classes, cultures, continents. We are spiritually, mentally, psychologically, and physically built for it.
So the question we must begin with is, What is happiness? How can we properly define it?
The World’s Definition of Happiness
According to the World Happiness Report, an annual index put out by the United Nations, happiness is measured by three subjective elements of well-being, which include:
1. Life Evaluation — a reflective assessment on a person’s life or some aspect of it.
2. Affect — a person’s feelings or emotional states, typically measured with reference to a particular point in time.
3. Eudaemonia — a sense of meaning and purpose in life, or a good psychological functioning.
The people who participate in this report are asked to answer the following question: “Please imagine a ladder, with steps numbered from zero at the bottom to ten at the top. The top of the ladder represents the best possible life for you and the bottom of the ladder represents the worst possible life for you. On which step of the ladder would you say you personally feel you stand at this time?”
The results are just what you might expect: richer countries fair better than poorer countries, and income, employment, education, family life, and both physical and mental health emerge as key factors when people determine which rung