6 Ways to Make Your Smartphone a Source of Calm

When I found myself in a harrowing bout with illness, staying calm became essential for managing my pain and exhaustion. I became acutely aware of any sources of stress. It turned out that my smartphone habits were a major culprit. My phone had likely brought me stress for years, but I hadn’t noticed till now.

Listed below are several changes I made, and apps I found, to help my phone foster calm instead of stress. I should note that as much as possible, calm can best be found by ditching my phone and other screens altogether! By becoming more connected to each other through the virtual world, we’ve sacrificed many connections to the real world, to ourselves, and to the present moment.

That said, these tips are for the times when you can’t do without your phone.

1. Set a calm wallpaper.

Visuals have a powerful influence on my frame of mind, and I look at my phone countless times each day. It helps to set my phone’s wallpaper (background image) to something soothing or inspiring. Here’s how to set the wallpaper for iPhone and for Android.

2. Tidy your apps.

Is your home screen full of chaos? I like to keep only the apps I frequently use on my home screen, place my “entertainment” apps on the next screen, and keep all my other apps hidden. (Hiding apps is only an option for Android, but on iPhones you can at least put them on more-remote screens.) This leaves only eight apps on my home screen. Just as making my bed lends a sense of calm to the bedroom, blank space on my phone’s home screen feels much more peaceful each time I pick it up.

Here’s how to organize your apps for iPhone and for Android. Mashable also has more great ideas here.

3. Use a mindfulness chime app.

Mindfulness chimes are based on a Buddhist practice described by Vietnamese monk Thich Nhat Hanh: the village temple’s bell rings at various times throughout the day, and each time it rings, the monks pause and take mindful breaths. By breathing intentionally, he says, we return to our “true home”—the present moment.

Mindfulness apps like MindBell (Android) and Mindfulness Bell (iOS) can be programmed to sound a bell or a chime in much the same way. For instance, I program MindBell to go off approximately once every half hour (at random times), between 9 am and 5 pm, when I’m most likely to be stressed.

If I need to bring my phone to a meeting or appointment, I turn the phone’s sound off so the bell won’t interrupt those around me. A few times I’ve forgotten to turn it off, but when I sheepishly explained the sound to others, they were more intrigued than judgmental.

Each time the chime sounds when I’m alone, I try to stand and stretch and/or take a few deep, calming breaths. These reminders greatly help my body and mind stay relaxed throughout the day.

4. Use apps to help meditate: Headspace.

Before my health crisis I wasn’t good at meditating on my own, but I found a meditation app called Headspace that comes with free, guided ten-minute meditations. (Most meditations on the app require a paid subscription, but there are ten free ones.) This app helped me start meditating for the first time in years.

5. Browse calming websites: Mindful.org and others.

The pull of a smartphone can be very powerful, compelling me to check email or Facebook or the latest headlines compulsively. When sick, I noticed that my usual websites made me feel scattered and stressed—even Facebook, which was full of people I loved.

I began seeking out calming websites to replace the ones I usually visited. There’s a great list here; my favorite is mindful.org. When I find myself itching for Facebook, I often feel much happier and calmer when I remind myself to go to these sites instead.

6. Leave work at work (if possible).

Even though I wasn’t expected to check my work email at home, I used to do so all the time. My work email account was linked on my phone’s email app, which meant I could easily see whenever I had a new work message, which prompted me to wonder what that message was. Even if it was something benign, the very act of clicking on it would give me a little spike of stress as my mind shifted into work mode.

So I completely removed my work email account from my phone. While I was at it, I also removed my work calendar. When work-related events did occasionally occur after hours, I just added them to my personal calendar so I’d remember to plan for them. Out of sight, out of mind. These changes helped me to just leave work at work.