The technology overload in our personal lives is pretty bad now. Account for how technology advancement has an exponential curve in relation to time and it’s scary to imagine how it’ll be like in 10 years.

Youtube, twitter, rss, facebook, tv, stocks, news, videos, podcasts, texting,. There’s way too many ways to consume and receive info out there.

The kicker is once you’re in all of it, you fear if you don’t keep up, you’ll miss out so you always plug in.

It’s very easy to let this get out of control.

The biggest drawback to technology in my opinion is that it’s very easy to let it detract you from your life. It’s easy for technology to divert attention away from what you want to do in your life.

The usual fix is the complete detox but that’s hard to do and it’s not practical as well. You can’t really take your cell phone and put it in the freezer and use it only for emergencies.

So what’s a great counter to all this technology running our lives?

We could abandon it all together and live a rural lifestyle but technology does have its benefits so it wouldn’t be practical. So that being said, what’s a great counter to it so we don’t fall too much on the side of technology?

You intuitively know what the answer is already.

Nature.

I suspect there’s going to be a HUGE trend back to nature. Businesses revolving around nature retreats, parks, gardens, trails, hikes, trips etc., will probably see a big uptick in business as the years go by.

It’s inevitable.

You go too far on one side of the pendulum, you want to go back some.

People are craving it without even realizing it.

So why the appeal? Why do we yearn for the great outdoors?

Apart from the idea that we intuitively feel a connection to nature in the very primitive primordial sense, we crave nature because we’re so sick of people.

Not sick of people in the sense that we hate them. Sick of people in the sense that we are surrounded way too much by them. Not in real life per se, although that can contribute to it, but surrounded in the sense they seem all over the place due to technology. On the radio, on the podcasts, on youtube, on twitter, blogs, facebook, TV, cable, DVD, too much.

Too much.

And all those people have something to say, something to pitch, try to get you to do one thing, do another, you feel compelled to follow them but it kind of distracts you from what you want, you feel like you’re being pulled in a hundred different directions.

Nature is the antidote.

Nature is still, present, focused on nothing but the present, has no worries, no facebook updates, it just IS.

It’s very refreshing to see it in this day and age.

A mallard duck just floating around in the pond. Occasionally dipping its beak into the water. Preening itself.

Content.

Still.

Just being.

And it’s not just the mallard duck.

It’s the trees. The grass. The insects. The ants.

All just being.

And when you’re surrounded by that, you can’t help but just BE there as well.

It’s very therapeutic. It all has a tendency to lift the burdens of the future off your shoulder and leave you feeling more centered, refreshed, still, content.

How often?

Once a week with nature and no tech is a good place to start. For some, that might even be enough to counter it all.

Try it.

Give into your natural instinct to go into nature.

The second thing you can do is to reduce your intake. Limit the amount of content you consume online because if you think about it, there’s a lot of noise out there. The Internet has given everybody a voice but not everybody delivers great value with that voice. As such, there’s a ton of noise that has no benefit for you whatsoever and only serves to distract you.

Does the content you consume serve you in getting what YOU want out of your life? Take back control. Let technology serve you. Don’t be enslaved by it.

The third thing you can do is start DOING. Get to work on creating your life in the real world. Once you start doing, you start understanding, and then you really start learning and all that just creates momentum. The noise in the digital world doesn’t seem all that appealing anymore. You no longer feel the need to “content binge” online. You no longer feel an urge to check a celebrity’s tweet to see what they had for lunch or what they’re doing on 2 P.M on Tuesday.

All that seems meaningless to you.

You begin to kick yourself in the head for wasting all that time online.

It’s tragic to see how people have become “noise junkies”. Ever so pressed with the desire to see what everyone is up to with their lives and having no desire to do anything with their own.

Your real life trumps your virtual life every single time. Everyone in this world would rather have 2 true friends in real life that they can go out and eat dinner with, talk deeply to, play games with than 300 virtual friends who post on their Facebook wall every day.

You can’t compare the two and you can’t substitute the two.

That’s another thing about technology. It’s an easy way for you to have superficial connections with everything and everyone.

Nothing’s deep anymore. Nothing of real substance, of real worth is valued. Everyone is vying for attention online so there’s so much noise and because there’s so much noise, in order to get attention, you have to be “louder” which just makes more noise.

Technology was supposed to make our lives easier.

Now it just helps us become more superficial and distracts us from the important things in our real lives, making it easier for us to chase what’s not important. It makes it easier to help us chase “the noise”.

Let that never happen to you.

Take note of the more important things in life, the things in real life that are in front of you right now.

Make technology your slave.

Let it help you improve your real life, not detract from it.