- Community: We can connect and find a tribe.
- Communication: Ease and ability to communicate especially with long distance relationships.
- Self-Improvement: We use technology for motivation and inspiration along with education. You can learn how to practice yoga, cook, speak a different language or learn a new skill.
- Awareness: We now have world events at our fingertips in an instant.
- Exposure: We can discover new items and enrich our lives.
However, with all these wonderful items come the following losses:
- Time: We get online to check email, social media and we lose valuable time.
- Empathy: We lose our lose human aspects to see people as people with real feelings.
- Action: We click on "like" but do we really ever do anything about issues anymore.
- Downtime: We are always "on" and do we ever feel that we have downtime or time to discern.
- Confidence: Social media is exhausting and leaves us comparing ourselves to others. Are we ever good enough anymore?
- Focus: We use the internet to distract us instead of focusing when we don't want to do something.
So, I asked myself some questions:
- Is this making life better or worse?
- Am I avoiding something or learning something?
- Is it making me feel better or worse?
In being honest with myself, being online was making me feel worse. I felt as thought I was in a time warp and couldn't escape. I felt overwhelmed, lonely, depressed and lacking in being a person. So, time for a digital sabbatical. I needed to reset my circuit breakers!
Taking time off was the best possible thing for me. It's all about self love!
I learned to relax, not compare myself to others and enjoy life. I learned to listen-the birds singing, the quietness of water falling, the beautiful sounds of outside instead of always being connected. I learned to actively listen to others instead of always looking at a screen. But most of important, I learned how to connect with myself again. Running has always been my outlet in my life but with my social media ambassadorships, I felt as though I was failing. I started to compare myself with others and could never compete. I would never have enough time to train, enough money to attend races and events, even being an older runner felt awful. So time off social media gave me a new perspective. It gave me a chance to discover why I needed to step back and take time off.
I learned to listen again to God and rejoice in His wisdom, strength and appreciate His love for me. I realized that I'm worth it everyday of my life and even in my depression that there is no one like me in the whole world!
I needed to feel good again about myself and my running. And I do! I will never be a fast runner again, have friends to attend races, have enough money to do more than a couple of race vacations a year but now I'm okay with all of that. Taking time off and listening instead of constantly being connected allowed me to focus on me!
In rejoining our digital world, I have made a commitment to disengage every day. I want to enjoy the simple things in life-reading a good book for hours, petting my cat, sitting outside with a good cup of coffee and enjoying the warmth of the sun while remembering you am I and what I am capable of doing good in this world.
Do you ever take time off social media? How do you manage your social media?
