Exercise caution in activities that dissociate your thoughts, feelings, and actions

We were designed as creatures that can think, feel, and act. When we attempt to live in a way that separates these influences from each other or when we choose to act in ways that deviate from how we truly think and feel, we remove some of the most important regulation mechanisms available to us. In these cases, we remove ourselves from the path of greater awareness, greater outcomes, and greater joy, refusing to see limits to them that would have been revealed if we had kept our feelings, thoughts, and actions aligned.¹ Think of the many situations in modern life that separate the mental, emotional, and physical aspects of your being. For example, social media and video games are mental and emotional experiences devoid of the physical. Pornography is a mental and emotional experience separated from the physical world.

One of the main problems with dissociative activities is that they can powerfully inhibit our ability to appraise value. While some good and useful practices, such as reading, are necessarily dissociative, you should exercise caution in ensuring that any such activity is actually the most valuable thing you could be doing with your time.