158 | Distraction is a Nervous System Issue and How to Reclaim Your Peace

Distraction is costing more than time. It is quietly draining your presence, stealing your peace, and weakening your connection to what matters most.

In this episode, we unpack the hidden emotional, neurological, and practical cost of constant digital noise and reveal a research supported strategy to help you reclaim your focus, clarity, and intentional living.

You will learn why traditional productivity tips often fail when your nervous system is overwhelmed and how one simple morning boundary can transform your energy, priorities, and attention for the entire day.

Inside this episode, we explore:

• How distraction erodes presence, intimacy, and inner peace
 • Why productivity hacks fall apart when your brain and nervous system are overstimulated
 • Eye opening distraction math and the lifetime cost of daily screen habits
 • What phone pickup patterns reveal about hidden attention leaks
 • How theta, alpha, and beta brain states shape your morning focus and decision making
 • The power of a one hour phone free morning as a keystone habit
 • Simple clarity anchors including journaling, prayer, reading, and intentional movement
 • Why systems, accountability, and community create lasting behavior change

If you are ready to reset your focus and take back control of your attention, I created a free resource to help you start strong.

Download the Free 28 Day Digital Detox Challenge:
 amyramsey.com/leadership

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Transcript

The Vortex Of Distraction

Amy Ramsey 0:46

Have you ever been in the middle of a project and you needed to grab someone's email address or their phone number? You go to your phone, to the contacts, and you stick your head up from your phone like 45 minutes later, after scrolling social media, and you have no idea what you are doing on your phone until you look back over at your task and it's like, oh my gosh. What in the world? Yeah, me too. And here's the funny thing is that I am a high performance coach. Like my superpower is systems and strategies. And yet I get stuck in the vortex too. And on this podcast series, we're gonna talk about how distractions are not just stealing our time, but we're gonna talk about the impact it's having on our health and our central nervous system. I recently asked the women inside the accelerate her a simple question. What is distractions costing you? And lots of answers came flooding through. It was on a Zoom call in the chats. It's costing my, it's costing me my time, it's costing productivity. Those are the obvious answers, right? But there was a second wave of responses that came in and it was more emotional. It's costing me my presence. It's costing me the ability to look into my children's eyes because I'm staring down at a phone. It's costing me more intimacy with my spouse because I'm distracted and I'm not really paying attention. It's costing me connection with my family, it's costing me my peace. And one woman even said, it's costing me my soul. If you are feeling mentally scattered, even when you're productive, or you're getting to the end of the day and you've been so busy, but you actually don't feel like you accomplished what you wanted to accomplish, or what frankly you needed to accomplish for that day. If you feel busy but not clear, if you're struggling to focus deeply and think clearly, even if you're feeling emotionally reactive and feeling overwhelmed, come on. Oh my goodness. I want to share with you some answers. And at the end of this podcast, I'm gonna give you one thing to implement. I'm not giving you a series of five or do this and do that. I'm gonna give you one thing that will be a game changer for you to start to move forward on your fight for your focus and clarity and your fight against distraction. This is gonna help you understand why you feel scattered and exhausted and give you some answers as to what to do about it. Because I believe this. When you understand the science behind distraction and how it's actually impacting your health and your central nervous system, it's also impacting your peace. And of course, your productivity, you'll be able to implement this one shift and immediately it'll start to restore your presence and create meaningful change. The mission of this podcast is to help you elevate your life and your leadership strategies so you can walk worthy of the calling inside of you. So you can walk with clarity, with confidence, and with purpose. My name is Amy Ramsey. I am a high performance coach and I still struggle with distraction. Yes, I'm raising my hand right over here. I teach high performance systems strategies, and I help women create clear paths. I help them understand their priorities, I help them create structure and momentum in their lives. And really, it's my superpower. And even with all of that, I get pulled into the vortex of screens and notifications. And the overstimulation is what gets me. I find that once I'm overstimulated and I'm in this like crazy manic cycle almost of this, this, that, this, that, this, that, this, that, and I have to just like stop. Just like everyone else. And so I think that this conversation matters because productivity tools don't work when your central nervous system is freaking out and overwhelmed. And I have certainly lived that firsthand. And I have a feeling you have two. So my mission with this podcast, actually, it's going to be a series, two podcasts, is to help you have a tangible, practical way to stop living distracted and actually move forward. I want you to create the impact that you're here to create. And when I share with you some of the science and some of the recent data, I've been digging into like the most recent data, it will blow you away. Like, not just in a way that you're like, oh my gosh, but I believe it'll blow you in a way that will help you feel maybe a fresh level of fire in your belly to really stay on task to overcome the war against the distractions. I know you don't want to look up one day and realize you've spent 23 years staring at a scream, 23 years of your life. Did you catch that? We're gonna talk about that. We are fighting this battle on our phones with our distractions. Think about it. The world's most brilliant engineers have used gaming devices and techniques that keep people addicted to gambling in casinos, the same exact technology they use to keep people addicted. That's what they're using inside of our cell phones to keep us on, to keep us in the app, to keep us touching it. The fight is real. You're not alone. And let's remove the shame around this and learn the science and like take back our time. So this podcast is to help you move from awareness to action so you can reclaim your peace and increase your productivity, but more importantly, so you can be more present in your life and you can spend your time where you want to spend it. So I'm so glad you're here. And let me tell you really quickly, I teach high performance, like I said. And with my 90-day Accelerate Her group coaching program, I knew that addressing the digital screens is something that was a needle mover for all of us. And for the ladies inside of my program, I created a challenge for them. It's a 28-day challenge that will help you take a look at your cell phone usage and screens and help you to reevaluate that relationship. I think it's important that we take this time and do this. We're doing it collectively as a group, but I went ahead and made this as a freebie for you. You can download it. It's a little two-page download, and it'll tell you four things, four ways for you to really win the war. I know that you are called for more. I know since you're listening to this, you don't want to be stuck in front of your screen. And I also am living this out with you. I completely understand the frustration, but I also understand like the shame around coulda, woulda, shoulda. And I don't want to live with regret. How about you? I do not want to live with regret in my life, and I don't want you to live with regret in your life. So go, you can go to amiramsey.com slash leadership and grab that freebie, or you can check the show notes here in this episode. And let's get to this very important topic. Are you ready? Awareness is the first step to change. And just bringing more attention to your pattern of behavior is gonna help you make more change. Now, I'm gonna share with you some really alarming math. And what I want you to do is just think through for yourself how am I doing in this area? I'm gonna ask you to take it a step further and let's talk data. Okay. Psalm 9012 says, Teach us to number our days that we may gain a heart of wisdom. And awareness leads to wisdom. And now let's talk about the average cell phone usage currently. And there's two places, two bits of data that I want you to keep in mind. Number one, how many times a day you're picking up your phone. Number two, how long you're on your device. Now, some of you may be binge watchers with TV. This is talking about total screen time. So if I say device or phone, it also includes watching TV. The average person picks up their phone 144 to 186 times a day, which is honestly, I thought that number, I could I would have thought it may have been a little bit higher than that, but that's the average. Can you relate to you don't operate very far without having your phone right there with you? I touch my phone a lot. And in your phone settings, you're able to see, actually go and grab the data for how many times you're touching your phone. So the way you do that is you go to settings, you go to screen time. This is for an iPhone. If you've got an Android, I'm not quite sure what you need to do. You're able to see from this your daily average time and how often you're picking up your phone. And here's the goal: our goal is to decrease those numbers. Like I said, I've got a free detox, digital detox challenge that you can grab at amiramsey.com/slash leadership. And this will walk you through it and give you a little bit more structure around it. All right, so I'm looking at it and it tells me how many times total I've picked up my phone today since I woke up early this morning. And right now, I'm recording this podcast at three something in the afternoon. I've picked up my phone 35 times. So that's not bad. It's below average. It'll even show you a little number and a chart of what's average. And I think that's average for you. And you can work on making that number less. That's the goal, is make that number less. Whatever it is right now, make it less. The second bit of data that we want to take a look at now that we're in the settings in our phone is how many hours a day you're on your phone. I, in full disclaimer, I have limits on my social media and I have time limits on my phone already. I've done some of this work because I became very serious about beating my distractions back a couple of years ago. No matter if you are, if you're like, but wait, I don't pick up my phone nearly 144 times, or I'm on my phone a lot less than the average right now per day is by the way, seven hours a day, which is crazy. But before we even get into the distraction math, I want to share some things with you. I want you to think about what reevaluating your relationship with your phone. Are you okay with your relationship right now? Are you living a balanced life? If the average is seven hours a day and one works eight hours a day, and we need to sleep eight hours a day. What the heck? Where's the other eight hours? And if it's spent scrolling away on a phone, that's not okay, right? And let's talk about distraction math now. And these numbers to me are staggering because they're going up very quickly. I've got the latest numbers. So the average screen time is seven hours a day. Young people in teens are longer. If you do seven times seven, that's 49 hours a week, which is crazy. That is more than a full-time job. All right, if we take that same math and take it out for a month, that's approximately 210 hours a month. And that is, my friend, nine full days out of a month is spent on screens. That is not okay. Oh my goodness. If you take those nine full days, if you divide that up to like an eight-hour work day, the 210 hours, do you know that equals 26 work days? All right, let's take it out to a year. If we take these numbers out to a year, it actually ends up to 106 days out of a 365-day year are spent on headphones, screens. Crazy. It's absolutely crazy. Now, if you take that up over an average 80-year lifespan right now, that would be 23 years of a life is spent on in front of screens. That is one quarter of an average life. I mean, that is staggering. I found this scripture in Psalms, it's Psalms 119, 37. It says, Turn my eyes away from worthless things and preserve my life according to your word. And I want to ask you right now, the things that you're looking at on your phone and where you're wasting time and you've got time leaks like crazy. And maybe right now, even just hearing this podcast, you're like, oh, ouch, girlfriend, you're talking to me. I know I'm stepping all over my toes, too. And we can do something about it. Andy Dillard says this how we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. And Peter Drucker, I love this. He says, until we can manage time, we can manage nothing else. The reason why I wanted to share that distraction math with you is that knowing that this is important and having a fresh awareness around, hey, yes, let me actually get better at this. So know that starting point for yourself, how many times you're picking up your phone and how long you're on your phone per day. And your goal is to decrease that. What if you decreased it by an hour a day? And that was like the goal. I'm not asking you to do away with your devices, but what if you made some gains on it? That would give you seven hours back in your week. All right, here's the one thing that is a needle mover for you. And I want you to really think about this, taking me up on this challenge. This challenge is, I believe if you do this, this will be so huge for you. Don't look at your phone for the first hour of the day. And I mean it for real. Don't get on your phone. If you do your Bible study on your phone, take it off of your phone, do it somewhere else. It's too easy to get distracted. I believe if you do that, that is going to be such a game changer for your day. And I want to share a little bit of science. I just heard recently, and this is just, I think this is so fascinating. It's a little bit, you'll have to pardon me as I geek out on this a little bit, but I shared this actually with my 90-day accelerate her coaching program the other day. We're all doing this digital detox challenge together. I told you on this one, this is just one tip. If you could just not look at your phone the first hour of the day, you will have a more peaceful, purposeful day if you practice this. All right. I heard this podcast, and Addison Bevere was talking about your states that brain states. He calls them brain states. He was talking about the science that he had done around this and has a new devotional uh words with God, I think is what it's called. I don't have it here with me, but I ordered it. I really like it. But I heard him on Susie Larson's podcast talking about theta, alpha, and beta states. I am certainly no scientist, but I did do a little research around what are these states and why do we want to honor them so much? Basically, your brain naturally moves through different states every day. And the states aren't random, they follow a rhythm. And the problem is that screens 100% disrupt this rhythm. And if we think about how we are fearfully and wonderfully made, and God made our brains the way that He did, let's honor these rhythms. Okay, when you wake up, right when you wake up, you are in theta state. Theta state is you're halfway asleep, halfway awake. And it is a very short, fragile time. It's only last for about five to 15 minutes. But it is over if you get on your phone. But listen to what it and it also, this theta state is available right as you're going to sleep. So listen to the cool things that happen in this particular state. It supports emotional processing, memory integration, intuition and insight, and learning and imagination. Isn't that so cool? This is where your brain actually starts to connect the dots. And what the research said is theta helps the brain integrate emotion, thought, and meaning. They're calling it a doorway state, but you cannot stay there for long. It sets the tone for what follows. Now, what follows after this is alpha state. Alpha state is a calm clarity state. Alpha is where you're allowing, you want to naturally flow from theta to alpha in the morning, but it's quietness. This think about this. If you think about just a beautiful morning routine of getting up in solitude and quietness with the Lord, your creator, and then taking that time to listen and hear from him. And so we've got to get our bodies, we have to learn how to be still enough, be still and know that I am God, right? Well, this next theta state happens. And what's beautiful if you think about that is like hearing from God, journaling, Bible reading, prayer, even walking. These are perfect for theta states. And it also happens in the evening time as well as your nervous system starts to slow down. All right. This alpha, the alpha state can last longer, it can last up to an hour, but it's highly dependent on your behavior and the environment. And it's easily disrupted, but you can also extend it. So again, back to that no phones for an hour. This is so important because when you disrupt it, listen to what the alpha supports. It supports calm focus, learning and receptivity, and emotional regulation. Hello? And presence and clarity. So alpha is where intentional thinking lives. What disrupts alpha? You bet screens, but also urgency, urgency disruption. It as well. Now, the next state is beta state. That's the state that we stay in most of the time during the day. Beta state is during work. This is where we have problem solving. This is what we use when we're making decisions. We're here most of the day. It's that action and execution stage. So beta state can last hours at a time, but it also becomes exhausting if it's the only state that you're staying in during the day. I wanted to share the theta, alpha, beta states with you. I want you to understand how important not having that screen, that first hour of the day, and protect that so you can have that true intimacy with your creator. So you can go and really enter into the presence of the Lord. I love, I love Lamentations 3.23 that says, Because of the Lord's great love, we are not consumed. And for his compassion, compassions never fail. They are new every morning. Morning is a time for a renewal and a reset. Do you know that you get new neurons every single day? The brain generates about 700 new neurons. That's over 250,000 neurons per year. Most of those new neurons do not survive unless conditions support them. And here's some key factors to help them survive and integrate. Number one, quality sleep, reduce stress, calm focus, learning and reflection, nervous system regulation. This is so incredible. So your brain creates hundreds of new neurons every single day. And how you treat your nervous system, especially in the morning, determines whether these neurons will strengthen your clarity or disappear under stress. It is so important that in the morning you allow yourself. In fact, there's so much science around the power of journaling and reading first thing in the morning. It helps your brain to create organization. If you want to feel less scattered, if you want to feel more clear, if you want to feel less chaotic, take that phone away from yourself for the first hour of the day. Remove it. I don't even keep mine near my spot, my little quiet spot. And I'm telling you, this is a needle mover. And when you're looking for habits to start in your life, things that are important, this one to me is so important. We are doing this together. I mentioned earlier in the 90-day accelerate her. And I want to tell you that the ladies in that group, they are coming alive and they are motoring through their goals and their growth because they're creating systems. It's one thing to say, ah, I need to get off my phone more. I feel, you know, and then not even to verbalize, you feel bad about it. But the reality is, is you feel we feel like crap when we're on our phone all the time and wasting time. But then there's another thing, it's the next level when you say, I am going to get off of my phone and this is how I'm going to do it. And that's when you really start to make more change in your life, is getting away from the vague wishes and wants that you have, and then putting a system and a strategy in its place. And that's what we're doing together as a group. And I want to go ahead and extend an invitation to this group, if you would like to come. I had a lady that is coming to the Worthy Woman Summit, and we were connecting in the DMs. And I mentioned to her, I said, Yeah, yeah, I've got this coaching group. I'm looking forward to meeting her. She's coming in from Charlotte, and I'm looking forward to meeting her in March 19th through the 21st. Little plug there for the Wortywoman Summit. If you don't have your ticket, go to worthywoman.com, worthywoman summit.com and grab that ticket. They are starting to sell out. I'm so excited. It's going to be the event of the year, transformation event, so you can really level up your life and unleash your potential, faith-driven. Okay. But what I was saying was I'm in the DMs getting to know. Her name is Melissa. She's coming so excited, and she was just telling me a little bit about her goals. I'm like, well, you do know I've got this other coaching community over here. She's like, no, I didn't. Send her the information. And she said, this is exactly what I have been needing and what I've been looking for. And she jumped right in. You get a one-on-one coaching call with me. You also get early access to my planner, the worthy woman planner. It is still not available for the public, but you get a whole system to go along with it and coaching with me. She, in a few days, it's amazing when you get the right system and structure accountability. And then you'll get my daily private podcast. Every morning you'll get a message from me, my voice, sent directly to your phone. You don't have to go to another app. Again, we're trying to get off of our phones so much, right? You're not going to get lost in the vortex of social media. You get it sent straight to your phone. And she's like, I cannot believe the difference that just a few days have made. And then to get the structure and get that higher level coaching from me as well. So that 90-day accelerate her, if you're looking for your people, women that love Jesus, women that are looking to move forward and to level up, and you're wanting that next level in your life, whether it's professional goals, whether it is life-related goals, we have a lot of women in there. It's really interesting. We've got some go-getters in their business. We've got a lot of entrepreneurs. And even some of them are like their biggest goal is to declutter their house because that will create more calm in their space and in their life. So whatever your goal is, you can achieve it, but you need a system and a strategy behind you to achieve it. And that's exactly what I teach with a rinse and repeatable system. This has changed the trajectory of that my capacity and how I'm able to move forward and to do the things that I've been able to do is this very system. And so this is what I'm teaching. So anyway, if you are looking for that, you can go to amyramsey.com slash 90 days and jump in with us for three months. I'll coach you along. And a lot of the ladies, I gotta say, they stay a lot longer after that because they have so much progress. Okay, let's recap this week. We talked about distraction math. Awareness is the reason why I wanted you to have that. Know the numbers that know the data of how much you're picking up your phone per day and how many, how much time you're on your phone per day. Know the data, and then the goal is to reduce it. And it actually feels really good. There's a little arrow that comes up and it's and it goes down and it shows you that you're the first week I did this, I reduced my screen time by gosh, it was between 70 and 80 percent. And it felt so good. It was rewarding to feel like I'm getting a handle on it. You can do this, you can you can do this. And again, if you want that free digital download, go check the show notes and you can get my free challenge to help you. We're gonna win the war only if we're intentional. You're not gonna win the war by kind of hoping for it or thinking about it or saying, yeah, I'm just distracted. I want to do better. Probably not gonna happen. I want to give you a little more structure around this. All right, join me next week. We're gonna, I'm gonna break down. I'm gonna go through this a little bit quicker next week, but I'm gonna give you four things that I would like to see you do and implement so you can really win the war on your distraction. But this week, hit me back. No screens one hour after you wake up. No screens. Did you hear that? No screens. You can do that. All right. I appreciate you being here. Thank you for listening. If you found value in this, oh my goodness, if you could go and leave a review, hit subscribe. It's like so incredible to help me get the word out to more this podcast out to more people. And also, if you share it in your stories, tag me and I will definitely repost you. All right, my friend, go make it an amazing day. Go walk worthy of that calling that's inside of you. Let's turn our eyes away from worthless things, as Psalms 119 says, and let's walk with wisdom. All right.