Take a Break From Social Media This Week
Simple Instructions:
- Every day this week — one day at a time — stay off of your personal social media.
- This includes Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, and any other app that you know connects you impersonally and/or anonymously to the lives and opinions of the people around you.
- If your professional work includes managing social media, you may still continue to do that without penalty, but you’ll need to be able to draw a clear line between business and personal activity.
Watch this video for an explanation of this Well-Being Practice from Whole Life Challenge co-founders Andy Petranek and Michael Stanwyck.
Why Is This Practice Important?
We call it “social,” but have you ever stopped to examine whether your time online is an actual benefit to your social life? Or life in general, even?
This week’s Lifestyle Practice is not going to be an easy one for many of us. You may use social media to connect with friends, family, and other people whose opinions and experiences you value. But social media can also become a wormhole where we lose time and energy.
Consider this week’s practice to be a temporary test. Use it as an experiment to determine if social media is a positive input (or outlet) in your life. You may discover by day three that you feel a sense of relief or are generally less pressed for time. You may feel less anxious because you’re no longer reading some of the negative or stressful stories that get shared.
Or, you may indeed find you’re missing certain connections in your life. But by taking a break you’ll become more aware of the positive and negative influences of social media and decide for yourself how you want to spend your time online and how much of your time you want to spend online. Consider this week a “detox” and then decide the elements you want to reintroduce into your life in a healthy way.
And remember, as with all the 7 Daily Habits — you can choose to give up a point. So if you absolutely have to post something, post away! You’ll be doing so empowered by your new intentions and awareness, and that’s what this whole journey is about.