Table Manners, Text Less and Connect More

Table Manners, Text Less and Connect More: How to make texting wait until you finish eating with family or friends without getting an anxiety attack or ruining a good lunch, dinner, friendship and/or connection.

Why do we get together to celebrate special occasions and to eat with family and friends or network with colleagues during a meal?

“Food is more than survival. With it we make friends, court lovers, and count our blessings. The sharing of food has always

been part of the human story. From Qesem Cave near Tel Aviv comes evidence of ancient meals prepared at a 300,000-year-old hearth, the oldest ever found, where diners gathered to eat together. Retrieved from the ashes of Vesuvius: a circular loaf of bread with scoring marks, baked to be divided. ‘To break bread together,’ a phrase as old as the Bible, captures the power of a meal to forge relationships, bury anger, provoke laughter. Children make mud pies, have tea parties, trade snacks to make friends, and mimic the rituals of adults. They celebrate with sweets from the time of their first birthday, and the association of food with love will continue throughout life—and in some belief systems, into the afterlife.”

National Geographic, The Joy of Food

However with quantum leaps in technology, we now have the capacity to meet, eat, text and engage online at the same time. Hence we may feel obliged to divide our attention between breaking bread and attempting to forge stronger connections with family and friends in our presence, while engaging with others via texting and social media. This creates the problem of absenteeism or inattentiveness at the dining table today. As we meet to eat and celebrate or connect, only to spend time texting others miles away or absent from the gathering. Subsequently, neglecting the people right next to us. As well as, risking our food getting cold or losing its appeal.

How do we handle this addiction to technology and social media that has come to affect our social etiquette and table manners, plus the way we relate to food?

Find out how with these four (4) simple steps:

1.  Connect with touch:

If at this times you ever feel like reaching for your phone, instead reach over and squeeze someone’s hand or shoulder that is next to you. According to your brain you are still reaching, so this will give you some kind of satisfaction, while helping you to connect with touch. Engaging in this everyday form of touch can bring us emotional balance and better health, says Dacher Keltner, that reports on Hands On Research: The Science of Touch. He is also the founding faculty director of the Greater Good Science Center and a professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley. This is because there is healing in the power of touch, so do it often and respectfully with family, friends and connections, to remind them that you care, because you reap the benefits too.

     2.  Pay attention to what is in front of you at your designated gathering:

Spend time looking at the person or people you are with. Making eye contact when you are talking with them, not only help you to connect on a deeper level, it also sends the message that their presence is important to you. If you are making consistent eye contact while interacting, it will make it almost impossible to be texting and surfing the web at the same time. It also will help you to drum up additional conversation, because it is easier to come up with new ideas to talk about when you are paying attention. The food will also taste better, as you take more time to eat and get to savor each bite.

     3.  Put your cellphone on Busy or Turn it off during meal time:

Develop the habit of giving yourself some downtime during meal time by turning off your cell phone and zoning out the thought of using it during this special break. Breaking an old habit and developing a new one is not easy. Many people who try the 21-30 day habit breaking rule usually becomes disillusioned when it does not work. But according to Jeremy Dean, PhD, psychologist and writer of Making Habits, Breaking Habits, it is much easier to slightly change a mental pattern than to reconstruct it entirely. Therefore, turning off your phone completely may be too much for your mind to process at first and may give you a panic attack in the process. So to prevent this anxiety, slightly change the practice of always having and texting on your phone, by putting it on busy. This may be a tiny step you can take initially, before the big step. This also tells your brain that you are still available, but chose not to be available during this time.

4.  Take time for Togetherness:

As people, we take the time to do what interests us. So start considering meal time with others as an interesting way to catch up and take the time to do just that.

It is a natural progression of communication after you have touched base. Additionally, it can bring out the laughter in you too, as you observe each other’s quirks, start listening to what each other have to say, while being thankful for the moment.

You can also get more involved by offering to help with dinner or take turns telling stories while the other person listens to you. This is a great way to build on the communication and increase the engagement, while making it more enjoyable.

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Credits: All Images courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net

About the Author:

Kaylaa T. Blackwell is an IT Professional working @ Itron, Inc. and a student @ Southern New Hampshire University with a penchant for writing, researching and helping others resolve real world issues. She has a great interest in technology, business and psychology and how they impact each other. Learn more about Kaylaa here.