My Relationship with Social Media

 My coach challenged me to write about my relationship with social media, how I feel about it, how it serves me and how it limits me. I was not excited about this homework, but it ended up being incredible enlightening.

I feel pretty damn good about social media these days but that’s because social media and I have come a very long way.

 In the beginning, I first started on social media as a teenager with the old myspace. I remember having some mixed feelings about it. Eventually, falling out and not being on it at all. 

My freshman year of college, I was young and dumb and partying way too much. I didn't have Facebook at the time, but somebody else posted a picture of me out at party which landed me in hot water with the school and caused all sorts of drama and was total pain in my ass to say the least.

After that experience, I had this huge grudge against Facebook. 

It felt like no matter what, anybody could find out anything you were doing, and because I was up to no good at that point in my life, I was just partying, lost and feeling not good enough to create any success in my life, I didn’t want any attention on me. I didn’t feel worthy of anybody's attention. 

Fast forward to when I finally caved and signed up for Facebook, it was because I wanted to stay in contact with people I had met on an extraordinary back country course. We had spent 80 days in the backcountry of the Yukon together and once we were back in the front country, fb was the easiest way for everyone to stay in contact. 

From there, I had an okay relationship with social media. I was able to stay in contact with people I knew from around the country and globe.  I wasn't doing the dumb shit that I had been doing, at least not as much dumb shit, so I wasn't quite as worried about anybody finding out about what I was doing.

I developed this on and off relationship with social media where for a while it would make me feel bad and I would kind of just quit and not be on there until I got sucked back in, just endlessly scrolling. Until ultimately, I just quit social media altogether.

I just didn’t go on fb for over two years.

Eventually, I started creeping back on social media, little by little, but very irregularly. Until the great 2020 hit, and everything went to online. 

I started some online trainings and there were extra trainings on Facebook, so I started getting back on Facebook more and more with different trainings that I was doing. 

Through these different trainings I realize there is a whole world on social media that I didn't know existed. This world where people are authentically and genuinely connecting with others, trying to help other people and trying to help themselves and being true and authentic on social media. 

 And so I started exploring this world where people were being true, authentic and showing the good, the bad ,the ugly, the real life, the real shit.

I was so impressed and inspired! For a long time social media made me feel really bad about myself, I would get stuck in negative comparison, I was struggling to get out of depression and being on social media comparing myself just made me feel worse and that's why ultimately I had stopped social media altogether.

 So when I discovered this world of real authentic people who are just being true to themselves and being authentic to themselves, I was just totally blown away.

 I was inspired, I was inspired by how people could be so brave and vulnerable, how they could let the world see the good, the bad, the ugly, the inconvenient, the mishaps, the failures, and still be able to feel good about themselves.

For a long time, I had an overwhelming fear of judgment, fear of ridicule, fear of rejection, and that's what held me from being on social media. I didn't want to feel that rejection I didn't want to feel that judgment from people on social media.  

As I came to a crossroads in my life last year, I started to explore my new possibilities, new possibilities of working online, and I was so impressed and inspired by these other new people I was meeting on fb who were being authentically themselves and helping others through using social media!

I love that social media allows me to connect with people from around the world, that I would have never connected with if it weren’t for fb.  I have loved connecting with women in South Africa, in Australia, in Jakarta Indonesia, Germany, London, I mean all over the world! 

And at the same time I hate that I can connect with everybody. Some people in particular, I just don't really want them to know the true me. I don't want them to know the real me because I'm still scared of their judgement, deep down I care what they think of me, and I care because I care about them. 

I don't give a fuck about what strangers think of me, because I don’t already have an existing connection with them.

Social media serves me because it connects me with people around the world. I allows me to stay connected with those I love in my life and to meet new amazing people every day! I get to share lives adventures, failures, successes and inspire others to create what they really want in their life!

 Social media limits me because I get stuck in this place of fear of judgment still, fear of criticism, fear of rejection from those who I care about.

My current relationship with social media is getting better and better and healthier and healthier every single day.

I have a lighthearted attachment to it. I am showing up each day, sharing my story, inspiring others to believe in themselves. I'm serving my clients, by showing up on social media I get to create my clientele, for free, I get to market my services on social media for free, which allows me to connect with my clients inspire them to believe that they can create the change they want in their lives, which allows me to connect with them and help them believe in themselves enough to change their life, so they can create the impact they want in their business and life and continue the growth ripple outward into their circles.

My relationship with social media has limited me with feelings of resistance to showing up and getting back on fb. The resistance was there to hold myself back for just a little while so I could take some time for myself.

I needed that time to recharge, I needed that time to reboot, to be with myself and in my own energy, because for a long time I was taking action, action, action, action, action, without filling up, without fully refilling and it depleted me and burnt me out. Between businesses, life and everything I needed to take that time to for myself to recharge and reconnect.

I allow myself to still be drained sometimes by social media, this limits me by not moving the needle in my business in the way I want, and it services me because it does remind me to take breaks from social media, occasionally, so that I can stay filled up and connected to myself.

Diving in and looking at my relationship with social media and facebook has been incredibly enlighten! 

 Looking at the patterns from when I first started my journey on myspace up until today, I have always been worried in one way or another about how people are going to judge me, what they would think about me, what they would say to me.  

 As I wrote out my history with social media and then gave it a little time and space to sink in, I realized that all along I was really just judging myself. 

I didn’t love how I was living my life.  I didn’t really like myself.  I didn’t want to put myself out there to the world to be rejected because I was already rejecting myself.  I couldn’t handle more judgement, I was already judging myself so much.  

Looking back on my relationship with social media I can see a direct correlation with my social media use to where my mental health was at that point in my life.  

I can see how in my comparison to others on social media was at its core me judging myself and being unhappy with were I was in life.

When I took breaks and was off social media was when I was able to make some of the most progress in my own mental health.

Time off social media allowed me to get to know myself without looking at others lives and comparing what they shared with my shit.

I am finally to a point in my self awareness to know when I get to that state of self comparison.  Now when I notice myself in the loop of comparing myself to others, I recognize it and then tune into myself and ask myself “what is this really about”.     

I gave myself a break from social media and take time to reconnect with my own energy. 

This has been a very enlightening process of diving into my relationship with social media, it has rehashed some things I had been ignoring for a long time.  It has allowed me to look at those experiences with new eyes and new understandings.  

I feel empowered by these new understands of where all the insecurities and uncertainties I have had about putting myself out there on social media particularly on my personal fb page.

I feel like a mf badass for diving into these feelings that used to be so overwhelming, scary, and big that I ignored them for years.  

I am proud of myself for my continued commitment to growing and loving myself and my life.  I am so grateful I have the awareness and recognition to notice when I am in a comparison or judgement of myself and knowing when I need a break to recharge!