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All healing begins with gratitude. That’s a fine thought for a Thanksgiving Monday or any day for that matter. Jeff Einstein has a lot of similar thoughts.
And he’s on a mission to to confront arrogance and dogma and put God first so you can last.
Digital Apostate
In the early 80’s Einstein was a bona fide media pioneer – referred to by The New York Times as “the Mick Jagger of the digital world.” Early in the 21st century, however, and well before the rise of social media, Youtube and smartphones, Einstein morphed from digital media pioneer to Digital Apostate.
He asserted that addiction to all things media and all things digital had already emerged as the default social condition, adversely affecting our businesses and lives.
Einstein says we are undone less by the things we hate and fear, and more by the things we love and trust and invite into our homes.
In Put God First Einstein shows how navigating the confluence of media, addiction, and God is the single most defining and compelling issue of our time.
37 Revolutionary Thoughts
1. The digital mantra to think globally and act locally is a sales pitch, pure and simple. Better to think and act locally. The family dinner table is the best place to start.
2. Our smartphones are smart only by comparison to the ones they enslave.
3. I spend all my time on all my time-saving devices.
4. Time is our most precious inventory.
5. The quality of life is a reflection of how and where and with whom you invest your time and faith.
6. We are first and foremost spiritual beings with occasional social, emotional and physical manifestations. Likewise, addiction is first and foremost a spiritual problem with occasional social, emotional and physical manifestations.
7. Addiction is a flight from spirituality, a flight and respite from personal accountability and responsibility.
8. All addictions, regardless of the narcotic, eventually steal our time and money and freedom.
9. In a society of default addiction and excess, the quality of life becomes a function of deliberate subtraction and disintermediation.
10. Facebook is a 21st-century opium den for social media addicts.
11. Facebook is where we go to socialize by ourselves.
12. The other day I found my daughter in her room alone, texting on her smartphone instead of doing her homework. As punishment I told her to go outside and play with her friends.
13. Begin each prayer with simple thanks.
14. Commercial media sell only four products: fear and envy and more fear and more envy.
15. Never base your decisions on fear and envy. Doing so will only incur more fear and more envy.
16. True freedom is the freedom not to participate. True freedom is the freedom to walk away.
17. Ignorance is a far better place to begin a journey than to end one.
18. Ignorance and wonderment are the wellsprings of innovation.
19. Boredom is a reflection on you, not the world around you.
20. Seek out deliberate ways to simplify your life.
21. Slow down. Speed kills.
22. Laugh often at yourself. Humor is the metric of proportion.
23. Darwin had it right but backwards: Instead of evolving from apes, we’re evolving into apes. With any luck we’ll wind up high atop a jungle canopy with a great view and a fruit platter.
24. 21st-century digital America is characterized by diversity of everything except thought.
25. Nowhere is our illusion of control more evident or powerful than in our smartphones.
26. We don’t own our smartphones. They own us.
27. Bring gratitude, passion and patience to every encounter. You’ll need them.
28. Let the people you love know just how much you love them. Life is fragile and uncertain.
29. Seek wisdom of the ages over knowledge of the moment.
30. Seek moderation over excess. Excess will always steal your time and freedom.
31. Seek simplicity over complexity.
32. Know when to let go.
33. Happiness is a choice you make each and every day.
34. All of your choices have consequences.
35. You can’t change others. You can only change yourself.
36. The people you love want and need to see and hear it from you.
37. You are always and forever loved.
APPLICATION: Please leave a comment below. Thank you.
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Sounds like a good book for Ironman. I relate and agree with many of Jeff’s thoughts.