Breaking your scrolling behavior might provide help to really feel calmer, happier, and extra energized. NPR’s Life Package explains tips on how to get there.
SACHA PFEIFFER, HOST:
When was the final time you picked up your cellphone? Are you holding it proper now? Are you scrolling when you take heed to this? An excessive amount of display screen time can mess with our sleep. It is also related to melancholy, anxiousness and stress signs in adolescence. What may also help with that and provide help to really feel higher and fewer careworn is motion. NPR Life Package host Marielle Segarra has suggestions to assist us begin craving motion the best way we crave our smartphones.
MARIELLE SEGARRA, HOST:
Y’all, we’re approach too connected to our telephones. I imply, I combat in opposition to it. I do not maintain numerous apps on there, however it’s nonetheless the very first thing I take a look at each morning. I assume it is partly a behavior I shaped and partly a yearning for no matter flashy new content material the apps I do have will supply me at present.
KATY BOWMAN: You by no means know what you are going to see once you go on there, and that’s perhaps a part of what makes it so engaging.
SEGARRA: Katy Bowman is a biomechanist, which suggests she research how forces have an effect on the physique, and she or he’s a motion trainer. She and Diana Hill, a medical psychologist, are coauthors of the guide, “I Know I Ought to Train, However…: 44 Causes We Do not Transfer And How To Get Over Them.” They are saying it is potential to retrain our brains to crave motion as an alternative of our telephones. Diana says the primary tip is to surf the urge to scroll. Urge browsing is a way that may provide help to say no to one thing that you simply’re craving, however you need to keep away from.
DIANA HILL: What we learn about urges is that they are so much like waves. They stand up. They get greater and greater and greater, they usually come again down once more. And the aim with urge browsing is to discover ways to get on the board of the urge, journey it, discover that it will increase over time and keep on it with out giving in.
SEGARRA: So once you’re on the gymnasium or on the prepare or strolling down the road and you’ve got the urge to tug your cellphone out of your pocket, pause. Maintain off. Attempt some motion as an alternative.
BOWMAN: Since you’ve already determined that you simply worth motion and also you need to follow it extra, the urge can then develop into kind of a cue to assist remind you, oh, yeah, I wished to maneuver. And it actually helps to determine a couple of methods forward of time.
SEGARRA: Do a couple of stretches or calf raises, leaping jacks or squats. Do some dance – no matter you need, actually. One other method is to savor your favourite bodily actions as a result of we all know that by deliberately savoring issues that we worth, we will prepare our brains to need them extra.
HILL: A lot of our thoughts goes proper to the damaging. We bear in mind all of the issues that we do not like about train or shifting. So we really should counter that tendency of our thoughts to seize onto the optimistic experiences and maintain them round, and that is what we’re doing by savoring.
SEGARRA: So, for example, I play softball, and I really like the sensation of the ball touchdown in my mitt and in addition the sensation of hitting the ball with the bat. And for Katy…
BOWMAN: I used to be rowing this morning and simply listening to the blade of the oar skim throughout the water and simply – I am like, that is my favourite half proper now. I am savoring. I’m relishing. It is like train wants a hype man.
SEGARRA: She says yet one more method is so as to add novelty to your exercises and motion breaks.
BOWMAN: In the event you take a 10-minute stroll, can you’re taking a barely totally different stroll? Can you’re taking a unique route? Are you able to say, for this stroll, I will stroll on all the cracks. I will attempt to add this factor of steadiness or problem. Can I add some music? You realize, can I invite a pal with me? Or can I ditch the stroll altogether and perhaps do some vigorous stretching or energy coaching below a tree?
SEGARRA: In the event you do not combine it up, it is onerous for train to win out in opposition to your consistently refreshing information feed. For NPR Information, I am Marielle Segarra.
(SOUNDBITE OF BEQUEM’S “FEELING GOOD”)
Copyright © 2025 NPR. All rights reserved. Go to our web site phrases of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for additional info.
Accuracy and availability of NPR transcripts might fluctuate. Transcript textual content could also be revised to appropriate errors or match updates to audio. Audio on npr.org could also be edited after its authentic broadcast or publication. The authoritative document of NPR’s programming is the audio document.