To pass Justin McDaniel's "monk class," University of Pennsylvania students must ditch their phones — and voices — for 30 days.

The course, formally called Living Deliberately, requires its 14 students to "observe a code of silence, abstain from using all electronic communications and limit their spending to $50 a week" for one month, according to the university's website. The class often has 300 people on its waitlist, McDaniel says.

The class's stringent rules, modeled after actual monk practices, aren't meant to socially isolate the students. Instead, McDaniel says he wants 20-somethings to get used to uncomfortable emotions.

"We exercise to build muscle and endurance, but we don't practice emotions," McDaniel, a humanities professor who practiced as a monk for nearly a year at age 21, tells CNBC Make It. "Without [that exercise], when we feel jealously or inadequacy or depression or even joy, we don't know how to handle it."

The monk class is supposed to be like "shock therapy," a crash course to jolt students into mindfulness: Spending a month with fewer distractions helps students become more aware of their physical surroundings and emotions, he says.

But you don't have to quit Instagram or never speak again to become more resilient. Here are three practices you can try at home, McDaniel says.

Try a digital cleanse

Some monks believe that making fewer decisions means being more available for religious epiphanies, McDaniel says. By that logic, it's hard to be physically present for divine intervention if you're addicted to watching Instagram Reels of corgis.

There are other psychological benefits to taking a hiatus from social media, too: A seven-day break from Twitter and TikTok reduced levels of depression and anxiety in a small randomized trial, U.K.-based University of Bath researchers found last year.

And there's a correlation between less screen time and better sleep quality and reported well-being, according to a 2021 study published in the journal Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking.

Less time on your phone may also give you a better chance of meeting people in real life, as long as you can handle half a minute of initial awkwardness, McDaniel adds.

"I always tell my students that the difference in a lot of things in life is dealing with 30 seconds of discomfort," he says. "What if you got in an elevator or onto the subway with someone else and didn't immediately pull out your phone?"

Practice single-tasking

McDaniel's class has been described by a former student as "learning the art of single-tasking," he says.

In the class, McDaniel teaches that doing one thing at a time is the best way to stay present. "How often do we take walks without making a phone call, or eat a snack without watching TV, or exercise without listening to a podcast?" he says.

Allowing yourself to do one thing at a time helps you notice your surroundings and thoughts, McDaniel says.

It also helps you avoid the costs of multitasking. People who "media multitask," or regularly divide attention between mediums like Netflix and their work email, have shorter attention spans and memories than people who consistently single-task, a 2019 Stanford University study discovered.

"You have to learn how to be bored," McDaniel says. "Or sit with feelings of anger or sadness or loneliness without crowdsourcing your emotions to your friends."

Do nothing

McDaniel and his children try to sit or walk for 30 minutes — without music, television or calling a friend — every day.

"For that half hour, you can't read, you can't learn, you can't listen to music," he says. "You just have to sit with your thoughts and breathe and look at your surroundings."

In a sense, it's a type of meditation or mindfulness — similar to "niksen," a Dutch concept meaning "to do nothing" that's often used to combat burnout and stress.

To McDaniel, better mental health doesn't mean being happy all the time. Instead, his goal is to help students get less afraid of being sad and more confident in their ability to navigate complex emotions.

Often, students often start performing better in other classes after taking his course, he says.

"It's not about changing your life or changing religion or finding the right yoga teacher," says McDaniel. "The point is, if there is a point, listening to yourself rant or feeling your heartbeat and not judging it. You acknowledge a passing feeling of stress without answering why or how to solve it."

"It's like the Daoist conception of water," he adds. "If you throw dirt in the water, and you just wait, the dirt settles at the bottom and the water remains clear."

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