the Henny Flynn podcast

Rest, Reset, Recalibrate: Digital Dopamine Detox (S17E9)

• Henny Flynn • Season 17 • Episode 9

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In this final episode of Season 17, I share a gentle reflection before stepping into my August break – a time I’ve been honouring for many years now as a way of resetting and softening.

But this year, I’ve been particularly aware of one thing: dopamine. And more specifically, how our phones – and work, and even exercise – can give us such powerful hits that we risk missing the deeper nourishment that comes with stillness, rest and real presence.

So I’m exploring what happens when we don’t reach for the phone… when we rest, reset, and gently recalibrate our systems.

This episode is part musing, part intention-setting, part conversation with you. I talk about the Finding the More Abundant Way group coming to a close, the beautiful connection that forms in these small, deep spaces… and how rest – whether for a month or a moment – invites us to step out of our usual patterns and remember what truly feeds us.

If you’re wondering how to soften your own habits this summer, or simply want to share this pause with me, settle in and listen – and see where the episode takes you.

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Speaker 1:

Hey, my darlings, and here we are at the end of season 17, and I know that's only nine episodes and normally a season has 10, but I'm just about to enter into my August break and rather than pulling another episode together and making sure that we hit the 10, I thought it was better just to close this season where we are now Welcome to the Henny Flynn podcast, the space for deepening self-awareness with profound self-compassion. I'm Henny, I write, coach and speak about how exploring our inner world can transform how we experience our outer world, all founded on a bedrock of self-love. Settle in and listen and see where the episode takes you, and I'll be back again in September. So I thought today it was. I'd love to just share some reflections on what it is like to take this August break, and the angle that I wanted to think about was where do we get our dopamine hits when we take ourselves into a time of pausing? It was something that I was thinking about this morning.

Speaker 1:

I got up, I was waiting for Anton to come down to the kitchen. I sat in the chair in the kitchen and I looked at my phone and, if I'm really honest, I'd actually already looked at my phone when I was upstairs. You know this, um, this urgency, this urge that we have to um, check. You know, we're all very mindful, I think, these days about the ways that our phones impact, um, our behaviors, and I've definitely found myself um, in fact, I've really noticed it recently picking up my phone to do something and then finding myself lost in something else completely and having forgotten what I was thinking about. You know, this break, and I want to be really conscious to these dopamine receptors and feeling into when those urges come that I would ordinarily fulfill with a quick check of my phone, a quick look at my emails, instagram oh, the lure of Instagram and how to attend to that in a more mindful way. Now it's obviously, it is something that I do each time I take this August break, but it feels even more present this time and I just wondered, you know, know, what does that spark for you in terms of the way that your dopamine receptors respond to the triggers and the stimulus that you're exposed to? So you know, what is it that spikes your dopamine? Um, you know, and part of taking this time off is actually, uh, quite a robust discipline.

Speaker 1:

I've I've shared quite openly that, you know, work is definitely a drug of choice for me and it's something that I love. I love my work, it fulfills me in so many ways and I also recognize that there's a part of me that can become a little bit over activated around work. So I'm relatively careful about you know, if I notice that I'm starting to get into the stable where I work a little earlier kind of each day, and if that starts to become cumulative, then at some point in that process and I'm getting better at it I notice and then I'll pause and make a shift, make a conscious shift in how I'm working and the ways in which I'm working. And I just wonder whether that resonates with you at all, whether there are any habits or practices that you recognize, you know aren't bad in themselves and that at times can become a little bit over dominant. So you know, we've talked before here about, you know how anything can become an addiction. Exercise can become an addiction and nobody would say that exercise is bad for you, um, and yet you know it can become something that over dominates and then starts to obscure um other aspects of our lives which actually, um are also really necessary, like connection with other people, like, um rest, good sleep, good nutrition, you know all of these things. So I suppose sort of part of taking this break for me has become a way of rebalancing anything that I've noticed has got a little bit out of kilter and maybe that resonates with you.

Speaker 1:

I saw a post recently from Jo Darling, who's a acupuncturist and a Chinese medicine expert, and she was talking about how this time of year, as we come into late summer, so many people have a sense of overextxtending themselves, over exertion, maybe even burnout, because during you know, that kind of peak summer period in in June, july, we're trying, you know it's like it's a very natural response to the longer days, it's like we're really looking to to get as much out of it as we can. You know our ancient selves would be making sure that we can plant and harvest as much food as possible to support us into the winter months. Our modern selves might be looking to spend as much social time as possible before everybody starts like hunkering down and battening down the hatches, you know, when it gets colder. So so there's a real sort of logic to why we do this, and in Chinese medicine apparently, um, you know, there's this uh, kind of this deep awareness of this and the realisation that, actually, as we come into this later period of summer, into August, it's really useful to take a pause to rest, to soften. Maybe that's the reason why so many of us take our family holidays at this time. It's not just because of school term times, maybe it's a kind of unconscious requisite, you know, an unconscious understanding that, oh my goodness me, we're going to really need that rest. So, rather than it being unconscious, if we can make it more of a conscious practice, then it, my sense, is that it will bring us even more value because we'll really know how to navigate it, rather than being in that kind of mindless place where, you know, I definitely used to see holidays as a time to kind of release the stresses of work and, you know, almost certainly drink way more than I would ordinarily drink, and by the time I got home I'd often be even more exhausted because my sleep patterns were disrupted, my body wasn't being nourished effectively and I was suffering from, you know, having too much alcohol in my system and when I smoked I would have smoked a lot more as well.

Speaker 1:

So, um, this kind of uh, recognizing the, the realities of what we need, um, and seeing, oh, okay, I've been putting this thing into place, but now I can put this thing into place more mindfully and maybe that will help me more. And it doesn't mean, you know, like I mean I don't drink anymore. But it's not because I see alcohol as being bad per se. It was just that for me, for lots of reasons, it was no longer something that really worked for me. And you know there's something about um, the kind of you know, everything in moderation, which is um such a lovely phrase and often so hard to do um, so, um, yeah.

Speaker 1:

So this sort of time of, of uh for me anyway, taking this this august uh break, it's also an opportunity for me to really practice what I um, what I preach, you know, to really practice what I believe is is um, really useful. And I'm incredibly mindful of the fact that this is a deep privilege that I have been able to create this way of working. That means that I can take this time, and I'm very grateful to all of my clients for really accommodating it in their own schedules too. And what I find really interesting is pretty much every single client I've worked with over the last five, six, no, much longer than that seven, eight years have been so supportive of this time and in fact, I now know a number of people who work for themselves who have started creating this kind of pause for themselves.

Speaker 1:

And of course, you know, for so many of us it's just not possible. We can't take a whole month and and the time that we do take is filled with other people's needs, and so I think then it becomes really important that we have these, these kind of micro moments for ourselves, these, um, mindful I keep using that word, um, I count how many times it comes up in the transcript um, but we take these kindful let's go with that pauses in our week, in our month, in our day, in our year, times when we can really come fully back into ourselves and going back to that whole idea of the dopamine hits, perhaps really attending to what is it that's pulling our attention and is that where we want to be paying attention. So you know, I said before about that kind of mindless. You know, just picking up the phone, like suddenly kind of finding myself on the phone, like looking and just saying, well, suddenly kind of finding myself on the phone like looking and just saying, well, hang on a minute, how did I get here. You know that, um, that doesn't feel great to me, and yet it's true and so I can. Now that I have clocked it, I can start doing something with it.

Speaker 1:

And of course, we can't change something unless we have already been able to bring it into our awareness. And then, once we have, then we can look at it with compassion rather than shame, because, considering the work that I do, it would be really easy for me to, um to obfuscate in some way the things that, um, I notice in my own behaviors and my, the own, my own way of responding to the world. Um, it would be really easy to to sort of try and kind of gloss over them a little bit, because I don't want people to think that I don't, you know, live by my own standards, for example. It's one of the reasons why, if you listen to the last week's episode and the piece I shared about Kirstie Gallagher, you know it's the reason why I kept in when I noticed that I'd sort of spoken like quite dismissively and then sort of caught myself and just realized, hang on a minute, that's actually not what I feel. If I was not being sort of really honest with myself, I could have edited that out. But this podcast, this place, I have set this? Um principle for myself that I show up as honestly as I can. I mean, obviously, you know there are limits, but I show up as honestly as I can here, and that's why I think it's important to share that.

Speaker 1:

You know, everybody is addicted to their phones. Everybody who's got a phone. They're addicted to it, and I think that's why it's so important that, uh, we collectively, um are able to really look at things like how do we manage our our dopamine spikes, what, what are the things that we can each do that can support ourselves and learn from each other? So, for me, one of the things I shall be doing is taking Instagram off my phone, my phone um, I'll um be sort of moving where the um, uh, the mail folder is on my phone, so that if I pick it up to phone somebody or to whatsapp a friend, I don't see it um, and there are various kind of simple things like that.

Speaker 1:

But I think really the most important thing for me is to maintain this conscious awareness of it, um, and so then the question is where do we get uh those, those sort of experiences of pleasure? Where do we get them from um, and I was reflecting on this before coming and, and you know, sort of sharing this, this musing, with you and, although it's terribly cliched, but cliches are there for the most natural place is the natural world, to really sort of focus in on seeing the beauty that is around, and whether that's um, the sky up above high-rise buildings, or it's a weed that's managed to grow its way through paving slabs, or it's a beautiful view, I think any one of those can become a place for really feeling into our connection with nature and therefore our connection with ourselves as a natural being. You know, and, and it sounds so gorgeous, it sounds so, you know, delicious, and it's not easy, because you know it's nice looking at stuff on your phone, isn't it? It just is. So I also.

Speaker 1:

I also recognise that I will still keep an eye on things like emails and stuff like that, because I am running a business and you know that is part of it, but it's about really really slowing it down and being much more mindful, and I was likening this you know these steps that we can take. You know, maybe it's not like I said, maybe it's not for as long as a month, but maybe there are periods in our day or our week or our month or our year where we can take ourselves on a sort of a digitally silent retreat and, you know, allow ourselves to sit in any discomfort that might come from that. Allow ourselves to sit in the discomfort of not being available. Um, you know, so many of us pride ourselves on our responsiveness. Uh, I'd be really interested if that resonates with you. I mean, I definitely recognize that is one of my little badges of honor, like I am responsive, and I'm deliberately less responsive these days than I ever used to be in my old world. So I don't tend to hit reply to emails the minute they come into my inbox anymore, even though I am a fast processor and I tend to have a response very quickly. I deliberately make myself pause before responding, whereas in the past, you know, it used to really frustrate me if people didn't reply quickly, because it was what I expected of myself and therefore it's what I expected of them. And recognising that was really interesting. That was a very useful part of my own journey of change was not having the same expectations of others that I might have of myself and also recognising that being quick isn't necessarily always a good thing and actually, on that point about going on a digitally silent retreat, I'm actually going to be going on a silent retreat, an actual silent retreat not until November, but I'm really looking forward to that and I'm very curious about what it's going to be like.

Speaker 1:

I know a number of friends who've um been on silent retreats and I think the thing that I'm going to most struggle with I'm going to use that word, um, potentially I might not, but I think the thing I'm most thoughtful about is not being able to write when I'm there, um, because during August, that is something that I will definitely be doing is doing a lot of writing, um, a lot of reading, a lot of writing, a lot of reflecting. Uh, I shall be drinking cacao, I shall be doing love, word readings, I shall be, you know, going for long walks and taking my journal with me. So that will be very different in a kind of silent retreat sort of space, because that really is coming like deep inside and being absolutely alone with yourself, with no distractions, and I think that will be very good for me and, yeah, if you've experienced that, I'd love to hear about it. So I think there's something about this experience of retraining our bodies away from this addiction of digital connection and moving toward a deeper connection. You know, moving our attention outwards and inwards simultaneously. You know, wider and deeper at the same time. And, um, and yes, I think that's that's really uh, something that I've been considering as I've been thinking about this, um, uh, this year-long group program that I'm going to be running in or beginning in October, this idea that, when we look deeper and wider across all the different aspects of change, how it can help us get in underneath the stuff that might have previously blocked us from making changes or felt like it blocked us, or getting in underneath the stories, the narratives, the habits, the beliefs that we hold and really and really sort of coming into this stance of the compassionate observer and being able to sit beside ourselves as we do the deep inner work. And this has really been on my mind because I've been creating the materials for it.

Speaker 1:

And also, today had the final session of the finding the Abundant Way Finding the More Abundant Way sorry program that I've been running, and what an incredible experience that has been, and today was the last session. It was one of those moments where you have a group of people all on a call and nobody wants to end it because we all really fell in love with each other. That's the way I'm describing it. I don't know if everyone else would agree, but that's certainly how it felt to me, like this very, very powerful supportive thread of connection that ran through the whole group, and how deep we went. Um, yeah, that was really really beautiful. Anyway, um, I'm not sure what point I was making there, except just to say gosh, you know what a lovely piece of work that was and it's nice to share it with you. You know it's nice to share that with somebody, because I'm here on my own, there's no one else to tell. Anyway, all right, my loves. Um, I hope there was something in there that sparked some thoughts for you.

Speaker 1:

Um, and I think also, you know there are lots of people who have got um answers about uh, you know how to wean ourselves off our phones, and there are lots of apps I've seen that you know limit our phone use, and there are bits of hardware that I've seen that you know designed to change the way that we relate to our phones, and you know all of that is good and useful, I'm sure, and and I feel that one of the most useful things is, is simply this, this awareness and the willingness to change. It's the question that I'll often ask my one-to-one clients. I'm either asking it out loud or I'm I'm asking it as we're talking. I'm asking, you know, energetically. I'm asking it, you know, are we willing to change? Are you willing to change? Is this habit with the phone something that I am willing to change? And right now, sitting here with you, the answer is a resounding yes.

Speaker 1:

So the other thing that I am going to do and I'm going to commit to this you are my witnesses, um is I normally do have my phone in the bedroom at night, and I can almost hear the shock from the people who don't do that. But the reason I do it is because I like to listen to a piece, you know, some music as I go to sleep. It's something that I find really calming and helpful. So I'm going to find a, an alternative to how to do that. That means that I don't have to have my phone in the bedroom and that means that the temptation to pick it up when I wake and, you know, having that sort of half hour in bed before I get out of bed, because I also do that. Oh, another half, um, then, uh, yeah, so I'm going to not have my phone in the bedroom, and I think that will be really, really useful. I mean, gosh, what a basic thing, you know, but sometimes these basic things are really the things that we need to return to. Well, certainly, that's what I find anyway.

Speaker 1:

So, as ever, I'm sending you so much love and I just want to say, if you haven't yet signed up for a piece of quiet, if you don't know what it is, um, it is basically a, an email that you receive once a week on a Wednesday lunchtime. It's got a short audio in it. I've made it sound the most bland, unexciting thing imaginable there, but it is so beautiful when we receive this pause, this sacred pause in the middle of the week, and even though it's my voice that that does it, I've been doing them. I've, when I get the email, I've been pausing and I am seeing the value of it and I think, really, this goes back to everything that I've just been saying. It's an opportunity in the middle of the week just to put things down for a few minutes and not be picking up our phone and scrolling, not be watching something on Netflix, not be sitting in a bar having a drink. You know it's a sacred pause that is just for you, with this delicious relaxation, a moment to settle and soften, and then that's followed by a beautiful piece of music and a flow journaling prompt. So even if you don't enjoy journaling, even if that's not something that has ever captured your attention, you can simply use the music to extend the relaxation practice, and you can do it sitting at your desk at and you can do it sitting at your desk at work, you can do it sitting at your kitchen table, you can do it out walking the dog, you can do it in the bath, you know whatever feels useful for you. But I really recommend it and it's just a few pounds a month to give yourself that beautiful gift, and I would be so delighted to pause with you.

Speaker 1:

So if it's something you're curious about, have a look in the show notes and I'll include. If you get my emails with these new episodes, then there'll be a link in there as well, and it will continue running during August while I'm away. I've been recording a couple of episodes today and, you know, even just doing the recordings feels like such a an honor, um. So maybe you'll love it too, and, um, I've been receiving some beautiful reflections from people who are using it and, yeah, I'd really love to share it more widely. So I am going to leave it there and I will be back with you in September.

Speaker 1:

I send you so much love and I am sending out a hope for peace across the world, and I know so many of us are filled with the stories that we see unfolding on the news and the media and, oh gosh, I just want to um, hold all of that with love and let's hope for peace for everybody, for peace for everybody. May you be happy, may you be safe, may you be well, may you live with ease. May we all be happy. May we all be safe. May we all be well. May we all live with ease. Sending you a hug and a wave, thank you.