I laugh whenever I hear someone talk about ‘screen time’ for kids because I silently ask myself how much screen time they are getting as an adult. As parents we sometimes totally forget about ourselves, this included.
What are YOU watching?
A few years ago I was feeling bursts of sadness and anger whenever I opened up social media and in a fury with myself over these feelings I decided I would delete the apps. But I didn’t want to cut off the good connections with my friends and family out of state, it was a dilemma.
Why do you think they call it a feed? I laughed when I thought this, but we literally ARE ingesting the words and thoughts of other people when we are scrolling, right? Our brains are taking in this energy and metabolizing it, then we are having feelings up or down because of it.
What I did instead of start unfriending people and posts that gave me these negative feelings. If someone was constantly angry or gave depressive vibes that triggered me, I didn’t think twice before clicking ‘unfollow.’
Oh the joy of getting negative energy away from you! I can’t recommend it enough, honestly.
Over the last few years, I’ve been tailoring my social media feed to positive and inspiring content. You totally have the control here, which is something I think we forget a lot. With so many thing in life that we don’t have control over, it’s hard to remember, and sometimes a shocking realization, that we actually do have control over what we see, hear and believe.
We don’t need or deserve to listen to someone’s political view all the time or complaints about every little thing when we are doing our best to just make it through the day on our own Stress-Less journey. This is a time when we are learning more and caring more about self-care to cut off that negative energy anywhere that it arises.
And guess what? It doesn’t matter where it comes from. YOU deserve peace. You deserve peace in your home, your work and your own mind.
Taking control of your mind is part of the practice of meditation and in today’s world, it’s so important that you take control of what you are seeing and hearing.
If the news gets you in a mood where you feel hopeless? Unfollow.
If an influencer makes you feel like your home isn’t clean enough and you need to spend $300 on Amazon products you can’t afford and causes you feelings of low self-esteem or like you are a cleaning failure, unfollow.
If there is a person you know who is always complaining about something or looking for an argument and never posts anything positive, unfollow.
Then take control by adding what you do love. I love to see funny animal videos, I love to follow my favorite authors and bookstagrammers, I love to get new recipes ideas and have someone pass me along a quote about something positive that uplifts my spirit.
There are a few reasons that I can think of for why we are so scroll addicted:
- We are bored
- A cry for help
- We are lonely
When we are bored (i.e. sitting in a doctor’s office, in the lunch room at work, at home alone) we want a distraction.
When we cry for help, we are looking in the world somewhere for someone to give us something we need like some positivity on a particularly hard day.
When we are lonely, we need someone, anyone, at all to feel a human connection with.
I am deeply familiar with all of these feelings. Taking control over them really helped my to spend my days more productively and even more importantly, stressing far less.
My stress struggle spawned from many things, but negative people was definitely a big one. Once I revamped my social media feed and saw more positive and uplifting content, I immediately saw a difference in how I felt throughout the day. With all three of these reasons why we go down the scrolling rabbit hole, having content that brings light to your life is so important because these are all feelings that we have at some point but being remined that there is goodness and positivity in the world helps.
Destressing is something that we need to tackle from every aspect of our lives, it’s not just about one thing. Taking control of our minds and what we allow to affect us is a big step in learning to live without constant, chronic stress and something that really empowered me on my journey when I took charge of it.
I hope this helps you in your journey because you have the power to put something positive into your days. Believe in yourself and push forward, knowing that you deserve a good day and a good life filled with peace and love and contentment.
Namaste friends <3
