Give yourself some quality alternatives to social media, and take back control of your life!
Photo by Laurencia Soesanto on Unsplash
Want to take back control of your mind and life?
One of the difficulties with eliminating addictive “social media” is that even with the best intentions, when someone switches off the gadget (computer or smartphone), or simply use “willpower” not to check it, there is a sudden vacuum created and the black hole and boredom which inevitably results has to be taken care of skillfully.
It’s important to have a ready emotional story to buy into first.
It is important to build new habits that clearly rationally and emotionally make the new habits of not using social media much more rewarding than using it. Just “willpower” is not going to be sustainable. There must be an overwhelming reward and habits and rituals to solidify the practice.
In the long run, one has to be truly grateful and glad that one has stayed off social media either completely or at the times scheduled to stay off, ruthlessly.
Since social media is the number one killer of solid blocks of personal undistracted time for anything that requires full attention, so it is most effective to bring back and schedule blocks of fractured time to replace the distracted time. Such as blocking a fixed amount of time ruthlessly, with the smart phone/internet off while doing something deep, such as:
Spending deep connection time with a member of the family;
Doing some deep learning which requires total focus, reading or working without distraction;
Deciding in advance to do a continuous period of time something really well and focusses.
Etc etc
All with the sole purpose of focussing deeply with one thing and deciding to ruthlessly NOT to use social media.
If one has decided to close all the social media accounts, that’s great. Rewards will come immediately in the form of regained focus in everything one does.
If the accounts are not closed, then at least the act of scheduling solid blocks of time of no social media, on paper on every single day, and doing it ruthlessly without any compromise and new stories to “just this once”……..will reap serious rewards immediately.
I am curious, when will you start ruthlessly take back your life?