I’ve been back and forth with social medial for the couple of years; deactivating, activating, deactivating and activating. It’s been a challenge to slowly find myself drifting away from social media, the people, the experiences and the mindless scrolling.
As it stands, I’m a month out of Instagram and YouTube — all accounts deleted. Gone. Kapish. Done. There is no going back until I am ready to start again (if that day ever comes). My phone usage has dropped tremendously but now I substitute my time on Reddit or Telegram. It seems like a never ending loop. From one platform to another.
I’ve decided to go on a doubt. I need to work on my health and my mindset. I need to surround myself with variables that are only promoting good health and prosperity. I keep getting sucked in.
This, I hope, will eventually evolve into a complete eradication of social media. I am hoping to remove my social foot print completely. Gone. Kapish. Done.
I have found myself negatively scrolling through peoples lives, seeing all the great things they are up to — documenting them all for everyone to see. I used to be like that. Instagram was my digital photo book. A little album of me. How narcissistic? I hate it.
I needed to take a break. I needed to reconfigure my life and my mind. Change only comes when you change. That’s the secret. I needed to be the change. Everything was in misalignment.
Although crawling out of what seems like a deep pit, it is still fair to say that I consume far too much. Instead of creating, I’m destroying. I agree, social media is a tool or a weapon — it depends on how you use it. I used it as a tool, but I felt like it had a hold on me. A deep hold that I needed to get out of.
The first 10 minutes are deleting Instagram, I would go onto my phone and tap where the Instagram icon used to be — it was like a loop. I was programmed to tap tap tap. Consume consume consume.
Our phones have literally become our hearts. It’s as if we just can’t function without it — the bloodline, the ‘beat’ of our lives; we are so hopelessly dependent on our phones for all forms of life that without it some people may resolve to extreme solutions to just have their fix.
All science shows that likes and followers are linked to dopamine receptors in the brain and every time we get a like our brain pumps our body with dopamine and serotonin — a reward hormone. We begin to program our brains and minds to feel good when receiving meaningless notifications and so we wire ourselves into a comatose state of mind. Literally.
I am still guilty. But it is because I am weak. I forget about what I can’t see and feel. What am I doing to my brain? What am I doing to my body? What am I doing to my life? Something has to change.
I even started wearing my Apple Watch and all it did was vibrate every time my phone got a notification. So now I had two points of distractions. I would check my watch and then check my phone. It’s just so bad how the world has evolved to this degree, in my opinion.
We have lost sight of what matters. We have lost sight of importance. We are driven by being the biggest and best social media influencer, or with how many likes our video can get. We also get trapped in the association that all of this means something. Like we are validated.
Not a chance. Validation is internal, not a like or a view. It’s about waking up and knowing you are it and you are all the love you need. It’s hard. Some days I wake up and I can’t feel it. It’s like a blockage. But I grind through it everyday. Instead of seeking seeking seeking, it will all find me.
Love is having the hard conversations without self. Eating consciously. Consuming consciously. Remembering you are it and always will be it. Everything outside of us doesn’t even matter.
