When stress, sleep, focus or energy start shifting and the strategies you used to rely on stop working, this podcast helps you understand why and shows you what to do next without spinning your wheels.
Untamed and Unfiltered Wellness is a grounded, no-nonsense podcast for people who want to live well in the real world, busy schedules, demanding jobs, aging bodies and all.
This is practical, integrative wellness for real life, not trends, not hacks and not one-size-fits-all advice.
You’ll walk away with clear insights, usable tools and realistic shifts you can apply immediately so your body and mind feel steadier, more supported and easier to live in.
Hosted by Jo Swensson, Herbalist and Founder of Olivia Bell.
Olivia Bell Co. - Where Modern Life Meets Ancient Roots.
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
0:00
|
10:32
Technology promised more freedom, more efficiency and more time. So why do so many people feel distracted, overstimulated and disconnected from their own lives?
In the final episode of the Living Well series, we explore whether technology is truly helping us live better or simply making it easier to stay on autopilot. This episode ties together the lessons from the previous five episodes and shows you how to use technology intentionally to support your health, focus, relationships, and overall quality of life.
You’ll learn how to create healthier boundaries with screens, protect your attention, reconnect with real life, and use modern tools in ways that actually serve you. Because living well in today’s world isn’t about rejecting technology, it’s about using it wisely.
If you’re tired of feeling mentally scattered and ready to feel more present, this episode is for you.
If you’d love to keep the conversation going, I’ve written a companion piece over on my Substack where we’ll explore this idea a little further and continue the discussion about what living well actually looks like in modern life.
And if you want to sit with the questions we talked about today, that’s also where you’ll find the journal prompts from this episode.
I hope you find some time today for some peace, some plants and some paws!
☮️🌿🐾
Jo
SPEAKER_00
Welcome to Untamed and Unfiltered Wellness, the podcast where we're tearing up the rule book of conventional wellness because one size fits all never fits anyone. I'm your host, Joe Swenson, herbalist and founder of Olivia Bell. Let's be honest for a second. Technology has made our lives easier in a lot of ways. We can work from anywhere, learn anything at any time of day, stay connected to people we care about no matter where they live, and build businesses from our kitchen tables. And that's just the beginning. But at the same time, a lot of people feel scattered, distracted, like their brain never fully shuts off, fatigued and stressed. So the question isn't whether or not technology is good or bad for us. The question is, how are you using it to help you live well? This is the final episode of our six-part series on living well. I started this podcast series after I read this quote from the Dalai Lama. When asked what surprised him about humanity, he replied, Man. Because he sacrifices his health to make money, then he sacrifices his money to recuperate his health. He lives as though he is never going to die, and dies having never really lived. I've been thinking about this quote a lot. What does it actually mean to live well? Throughout the series, every episode has pointed toward the same thing. Living well isn't just something that happens, it's something that we build through awareness, choices, and how we choose to move through our day. Technology has become a big part of our lives now, whether we like it or not. And it can absolutely run our lives if we're not paying attention. That's where a lot of us get tripped up. Because it's really how we're using it productively and with purpose that makes technology help us live better. Let's connect this back to everything we've already covered in this series. In the first two episodes, we focused on living on autopilot. Now, technology's played a big role in that for a lot of people. Because if we're not paying attention, technology decides what we see, think, and focus on throughout the day. So instead of living our lives, we're just reacting to it. And to combat that, we have to start choosing what we consume instead of letting it choose us. That means we stop the amount of doom scrolling that we're doing and just mindlessly doing nothing. Our third episode, we talked about how easy it is to hand your health over to somebody else. Technology, well, that's just made it a lot more convenient because if we're feeling off, we Google our symptoms, right? Or we use apps or tracking devices, and all of that is helpful. We can take that to our doctors and say, here, fix us. But the bottom line is none of that replaces actually knowing our bodies. Instead of using technology to notice the patterns or give us a diagnosis, let's stop overriding our intuition and turning into our bodies and actually listening to what it's telling. In episode four, we talked about how our bodies are designed to live. It needs movement, sunlight, and real human connection. Technology didn't remove those needs, but it did make it easier for us to ignore them. If we're going to use technology as a reminder to live, that's awesome. But we can't use it to replace the real necessities that we have. And in our last episode, episode five, we talked about convenience versus resilience. And this is a big one because technology is convenience at its core. That's why it was created. And that's great, but for a lot of people, it has start, it has started to replace effort, effort to move, effort to do hard things. And in all honesty, the good things take effort, the good things take time. That's where resilience is built. That's how we become better and stronger and capable of living well. My question to you is how do you actually use technology in a way that supports your life? There's some practical ways that we can do that. The first one is to become aware of our habits. Start paying attention to how often we reach for our phones or what we're actually doing when we're holding it in our hands. And then how do we feel afterwards? Are we beating ourselves up because we spent too much time scrolling? Or oh my gosh, I lost an entire 45 minutes doing absolutely nothing, that alone is going to tell you a lot about your own personal behaviors. The second thing is to clean up what we're letting in. If technology or apps or devices are making us feel like we're always behind, or it's constantly pulling our attention away from the people in front of us and does not bring us any value, then we don't need it. Now, a lot of people go, well, I don't have the discipline for that. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about protecting your space, protecting your brain, protecting your life. The third thing is to create some small boundaries that, well, actually work. I'm not a proponent for a full digital detox. Now, I will tell you that I spend my Sunday mornings without my phone. I have my phone set up to automatically shut off the ringer and shut off all notifications until noon. So no matter what time I wake up on Sunday, I call it sleep in Sunday, I let my body wake up naturally. And then I don't use my phone. Or at least I try not to. And for me, I need that mental break. I need to spend that time reconnecting to myself, spending times with the dogs or the people that I love. And that's one simple thing that you could do. But if going that long without your phone makes you go crazy, then try not using it during meals or put it down when someone's talking to you. I know a lot of people find that absolutely annoying because the question is, are you listening to me? Do you actually hear what I'm saying when the other person is face into the phone? So give yourself maybe 10 or 15 minutes a day and don't use any technology. Just sit for a moment. Or put your phone down when someone's talking to you. Try something simple like that. The last thing I want to talk about is using technology to support you. Technology is fantastic. There's people are getting degrees online. It's a great opportunity for us to learn. It also allows us to build something meaningful, whether that's a community or connecting with people we haven't seen in a long time because we live far away. Technology can help support our routines, our sleep, our movement, our mindfulness, because it can actually help us live well if we tell it to help us. I'm not asking you to remove all effort from life. This is where a lot of people do the all or nothing thing. That's not what I'm saying here. Not everything needs to be faster, easier, or automated. There are things that should take time, that should require attention and connection. That's where depth comes from. And that's where we grow as human beings. And that's the importance of living well. Because it's not about doing everything right or waiting until retirement to do the things that you've always wanted to do. Living well is individual. It's about being aware enough to ask does this support the way I actually want to live? And then adjusting our lives from there. Technology has given us options, but it also takes away our responsibilities if we let it. So you need to decide what you're paying attention to, how you're spending your time, and how present you are in your own life. And that's the whole point of this series. Living well is a choice that we can make over and over again because it lives in the small decisions that we make every single day. If this series has shifted what you're thinking about your life, even just a little, share it with a friend or listen to it over again. And don't forget to join me on Substack. That's where we take these conversations deeper and actually start applying them in real life. The link is in the show notes. I hope you make some time today and every day for some peace, some plants, and some paws. Thank you so much for listening to Untamed and Unfiltered Wellness.
