Social Media Cleanse Week 1: Observation & Patience

For all my “do-er” personality types out there, anxiously ready to delete your Facebook account and dive into your cleanse head first.

Hats off to your enthusiasm, but I am sadly about to disappoint.

Your first challenge for the week is to essentially…

Change Nothing. Just Observe.

That’s right. Continue your social media habits as normal, but add a new perspective. Step back and observe your behavior. Pretend you are now a scientist studying your own behavior. Perhaps you will start to see habits that you have unknowingly formed.

Do you check your Facebook as soon as you press snooze to your alarm?

When you are waiting for an appointment, or waiting for anything for that matter… do you have the urge to pull out your phone?

Observe the details.

Don’t just look for the most obvious of patterns… really investigate. You are now on the “outside” looking in. For those of you who already practice meditation and mindfulness, you already have a great foundation for this. Instead of just observing your thoughts, add in observation of your behaviors in relation to your thoughts.

If you aren’t quite sure what to look for here are some questions you can ask yourself throughout this week:

How does your mood or interactions change after you are on your phone?

How many times a day do you check your phone.. for anything.

After you see something online that frustrates you, do you treat people differently?

After you see something online that is inspiring, are you motivated or less motivated? Do actually physically do anything or do you keep scrolling?

Stop. Look up. What is going on around you that you are missing?

If you use your phone for work, what hours of the day are you actually “working”?

Grab a Journal. Reflect.

Yes, dust off your journal. No, opening a note on your phone does not work in this case. You want to create a physical separation. Pull out the old journal. Write down some of your observations. Are you surprised by anything?

As your days of observation go by start thinking about an answer to this question:

What role do you want social media to play in your daily life?

This is going to establish your goal for this “cleanse”. This is the reason why you committed to this challenge. This may develop out of your observations or maybe you knew what you wanted to change the day you committed it this crazy cleanse thing.

Is there something you are longing to change?

Why are you here?

Set Your Goal:

Some examples of some goals within this cleanse maybe:

• Be more productive during my day by limiting the amount of time I spend online.
• Become less dependent on the number of “likes” or comments I get on things I share online.
• Only work within the hours of 8-5.
• Spend more time interacting with people in person instead of online.
• Surround myself with more positivity and less negativity.
• Break an addiction
• Be present for the people I am physically with.
• Stop comparing my life to individual’s online pages.
• Stop checking in on certain individuals’s online pages (ex’s, old friends, ect.)
• Avoid engaging in online debates.

 

Perhaps your goal is a combination of the above. Remember the more specific of the goal, the easier it will be to work towards achieving it.

Take a nice deep breath. Change will happen, but it happens slowly.

Let’s make sure we understand what change needs to happen before we dive in and make changes.

Just like a seed growing. Big things are happening under the surface before you ever see a that bright green sprout break the surface.

We are all doing this together. If you are bold enough or comfortable, share your goal below. It maybe just the encouragement that someone else needs.

Happy waiting!