There’s An App For That

By October 4, 2016Mindy

There is an app for everything these days. How to do anything and/or everything? Where to go to get anything and everything? How do you think about anything and everything? How to cook anything and everything. You name it and there is an app for that.

So, of course, when Bruce and I started to create our One Day to Wellness program, we looked into apps to assist in our program. We could create an app to Spread our Seeds of Change concept. We could use an app to calculate if you are drinking the right amount of water a day or stepping the right amount of steps. We could create an E-book and online manual, instead of providing a paper manual and recipe book at our trainings. We sure would be following the current trend and being doing what everyone else is. Status quo.

Hell no, I say! Our new program is about MINDFULNESS and living in the moment. Every bit of information we will be providing is covered with this mindfulness message and instead of following the current tech trend, we are steering quite clear. Let me give you my reasoning.

I have a cookbook that was passed down to me by my mom. This cookbook is a mess. Anyone who opens this cookbook immediately can guess which recipes were my mom’s favorites because there are ingredients of the recipes smeared on each page. My grandmother’s famous chocolate cake recipe is on one of the pages and you can bearly see the type underneath all of the spilled chocolate, floor, and vanilla splatterings. Now someone else would think this cookbook is kind of gross. I love this cookbook because every time I open a page, I see mom stirring ingredients into the bowl, just close enough to the cookbook to receive a splatter or two of the uncooked cake.

I could never experience this on an app.

I am currently sourcing a supplier for my “water bracelets.” These will be an intricate part of One Day to Wellness to help remind us to drink 8 or more glasses of water a day. I know that there are many apps that do this as well. I actually have one on my phone. Every time you drink a glass of water you go to your phone and record that accomplishment. YAWN !! How about instead we do something disruptive. We put 8 bracelets on our left wrist when we wake up in the morning. Every time we drink a glass of water, we move one of the bracelets from the left wrist to the right wrist, because we have done the right thing! Now, that is disruptive and look how stylish I am!

I could never get that constant reminder from an APP.

We thought that it would be much less expensive for us to provide our manual for One Day to Wellness as a download only and not to print them for the trainers. This would save us money in printing and in shipping. I thought about this a lot. Yes, save a tree but then the trainers couldn’t have this manual, with all their hand written notes as an easy reference. Also with their laptops open at the training, facebook, internet news, amazon prime, and all other sorts of distractions are only a click away. One Day to Wellness is an IMMERSION into being mindful, present, and available. An open laptops opens the door for the exact opposite. I could never get the connection from the trainers from an app.

I use a paper day timer, and I carry it with me everywhere. When everyone else is checking their availability on their phones I am opening my day timer to the month, then day, and pencil in my appointments. I get some funny “what is that thing that old lady is writing in” looks but I don’t care. I love my day timer as it has a personality and life to it that an app can never have.

So when you see me on the road at a conference or a training, I will ask you to put away your cell phone. I will ask you to connect with the person next to you by looking in their eyes and talking with them and perhaps listening slightly more then talking. I will make food for you with fresh ingredients that I purchased that day and that has near-to-no shelf life. I will engage you to use your body to stretch further, your mind to think deeper and your heart to feel stronger. We are who we are not because of what we can distract ourselves with but what we can be unencumbered by. Mindfulness is stripping away what is in our way. Freeing ourselves from the apps, bells, and whistles. Remember that just picking up a pencil and piece of paper can yield great things.

Leave a Reply