Romantic Reflections is dedicated to thoughts and musings of Living your life in a romantic fairytale
Creating Your Memories
“Live in the moment of your life and enjoy every second … enjoying not cataloging your adventures”
When we look back at history, we often categorize human evolution into blocks of time when certain transitions occurred. We think of the industrial revolution and how it has affected our lives and break it into three subsections; the Age of Mechanical Production, Age of Science and Mass Production, and our current iteration the Digital Revolution.
Each block of time has seen tremendous advances in technology that for better or worse make our modern lives the easiest and healthiest of known humankind. Each technology has had pitfalls, but if we use the vast advancements that the past and present provide us wisely, we can live happy and healthy lives filled with an abundance of love and romance.
The secret to ensuring that you do not become overwhelmed in this modern digital world, you must make sure that you always put the lives of yourself your loving partner at the forefront of your life. Always remember to use technology to embellish your loving lives, while carefully avoiding the trap of becoming overwhelmed in a world of seemingly increasing pressures to catalog and post your every movement.
In our current digital age, that means taking a long hard look at your life and analyzing how much time you are spending in the moment, truly enjoying each and every loving moment that you are spending with your partner, and contrast that reality with the amount of time you are looking at a screen to see what your “friends” are doing, while you frantically try to capture everything you are experiencing so that you can post your every moment on social media.
Social Media Break Time
Yes, this is going to seem like an attack on social media and in a way it is, but it is also an exercise for you to reflect on your life and decide if perhaps you have become somewhat addicted to your social media apps, and if beginning to wean yourself off of your social screen time might in fact lead to a happier life more filled with love and romance.
We are not saying that smartphones and social media are a curse on humanity, just the opposite, but social media has truly changed the way we live the moments of our lives, and the way that we enjoy our time during romantic adventures experiencing life.
There was a time not many years ago when “cell phones” at the dinner table were considered poor etiquette, and now it is very common for us to have a phone on the table beside our dinner plate that we look at each time it rings, beeps or vibrates, alerting us that there is a notification awaiting our attention.
Have you ever been with your partner enjoying a romantic dinner and taken a photo (or six) of the food you have just been served and immediately posted the pictures on your social media? During your dinner have you ever swiped on your screen when a notification chimed that your BFF just posted a new photo on their timeline? If the answer is yes, and be honest with yourself, you need to sit back for a moment and consider how this interaction prevented you from truly enjoying a special magical experience and a romantic intimate moment with the one you love.
The most important goal in your life is to be happy. Without happiness nothing else in life matters, and happiness involves creating an exciting life for yourself that you enjoy every minute of each and every day. The act of trying to capture your every moment on a screen detracts from actually allowing yourself to be “in the moment”, and causes you instead to become an observer of your experiences rather than the excited active participant.
Take a break from your phone when you are sharing special time with the one you love and truly immerse yourself in experiencing your adventure. Instead or taking a picture or video of everything you are doing, absorb the details and savour them while saving the special moment as a snapshot in your mind to relive with your partner in conversations in the future, as together, you remember your special experiences that make your lives so memorable and filled with love.
When you put away your phone, disconnect your social media, and actually live your life rather than being a mere archivist, you will become lost in the pleasures of the moment, and feel all the pressures and stresses of the world fade around you as you are living the life you dream of … your own very special very exciting life.
The Stresses of Social Conditioning
You have a very stressful life trying to navigate work, family, relationships, and extra curricular activities, and sometimes feel overwhelmed by the demands placed on your life. Unfortunately, social media has also added to the burden of stress with constant notifications of posts, comments, and DM’s sent to your phone on a continual basis encouraging you to stop everything and reply NOW.
We have unwittingly allowed ourselves to be conditioned by social media to instantly reply to everything that involves our sphere of “friends”. How often do you post on your page and within minutes have notifications of dozens of interactions from people you know? Have you ever taken a moment to sit back and think that for that interaction to have happened, all your friends who interacted with your post saw a notification on their phone, opened their app, and posted a reply or emoji to your post … all within moments of their phone beeping.
Do you really want that to be your life? Stopping everything you are doing and experiencing in your life to look down at your phone and provide an immediate reply to what someone else is doing in their life? As human beings, we should be the highest evolved species on the planet and fill our lives with experiences that we enjoy and are important to us, rather than responding in a “Pavlovian Response” to the chime of our smartphone.
This need to constantly reply with immediacy adds tremendous stress to your all ready overburdened life. You may not think that the few seconds it takes to reply to a post detracts from your day and adds to your lack of attainment of daily goals, but when you add up the time over the course of a day, and realize the number of times throughout a day that your focus has been removed from the activities you are involved in, you will understand why you seem to never be able to achieve your goals and are always burdened by stress.
Make a conscience effort to limit the immediacy of your social media responses, and condition yourself to set aside a schedule throughout the day to visit your social media, rather than reacting to prompts. Make your social media reactions conform to your schedule and your day instead of your day revolving around your social media notifications.
When you take control of your interactions rather than responding to the prompts from your phone, you will find that you have a much happier, healthier, and more productive life removed from the stress of constant unrelenting pressures of immediate communication.
Your Happy Romantic Life
It sounds as if we have been bashing social media and not giving the wonderful connectivity of the world the credit it deserves. That is not the case. Social media has changed the world and done many incredible things to connect us with friends and family, allowing us to stay in touch and share snapshots of our loves with the ones we love despite the miles that separate us.
As with everything in life however, we need to maintain a healthy balance, and not become overly addicted to the negative pressures of over communication that create stress in our life, and disconnects us from actually living and enjoying each moment and experience we are having in our lives.
We want to encourage you to analyze your social media usage, and honestly assess whether you spend too much time cataloging the special and unique experiences in your life, or whether you are truly immersing yourself completely in each and every lovely moment and enjoying it to its’ full potential.
You should be forever experiencing life and creating new adventures for yourself and your partner that lead to happy and healthy fulfilment in both your individual life and the shared life you have as a couple.
Your romantic escapades are definitely something to brag about with your friends as you regale them with tales of the loving and romantic life you share with your partner, but you must always ensure that you are taking full advantage of each precious moment you are spending with the one you love. Allow yourself to always become lost in the here in now of “doing”, rather than the “posting” of what you are doing.
This is your life, and the romantic happiness you share with your partner is for the two of you to enjoy together. Take a few pictures of special moments now and then for your own memories, and share them during times when you are not actively having an adventure, and you will find that the FairyTale you dream of is your very own happy, healthy, romantic life.
Romantic Reflections is a collection of thoughts and musings intended to add little touches of love and romance to our relationships creating a fairytale that will last forever.