A little over a month ago, I had said that I was doing a social media detox. In light of all that is going on in the world with the global pandemic we are in the midst of and the social injustice America is going through, I just found the negativity to be overwhelming. For the sake of my mental well-being, I knew I had to do a social media detox.
But technology is only on the rise. I mean, let’s face it, even if we do a social media detox, we still look at our phones multiple times every hour. By just the tap of a finger, we can basically have any bit of information we wish to find.
While technology has made our lives easier in a lot of aspects, it has also made it more complicated as well. It’s helped to take away from the simple joys in life because we have our heads buried in our phones or because we find ourselves in the comparison game of always wanting more based on what we see on social media.
After just a few weeks of this social media detox, I can’t begin to tell you how much happier I feel and how glad I am that I chose to do this. Now, I want to share with you some of the benefits of a social media detox and why a digital detox may be exactly what you need.
Benefits You Can Expect From A Digital Detox
1. A digital detox helps to clear your mind.
When I would look at social media, I would instantly find myself wanting everything I saw. Money, success, popularity, freedom, I wanted all of it.
It got to the point where I started looking at my life and wondering why I didn’t have all that I desired. If others could have it, why couldn’t I?
While this can be motivating, it can also hurt the belief that you have in yourself. When you don’t achieve the things you want, it can cause you to start questioning yourself and your abilities.
When I was bored, I would look at social media. For me, it felt like my mind could never shut off and rest. Obviously it wasn’t going to do so when I was busy, but now to have racing thoughts when I was bored as well… it just didn’t feel good.
I don’t think there’s any question as to why anxiety continues to rise. When you don’t take a moment to pause and to give your mind a chance to reboot and start over, it’s not going to know when it should shut off.
I have noticed that through this digital detox I have felt more connected, I have made better decisions in regards to my life and health, and I have been able to find the good in the world instead of the negativity that often comes with social media.
2. A digital detox helps you to stay positive.
As I mentioned, if you don’t have anything to compare yourself to or don’t see the negativity that floods social media, you aren’t going to be consumed by it and it won’t be able to flood your mind.
Think about how many times you were having a good day and were then dragged down by a mean comment on social media or just let somebody else’s opinion cause a negative reaction. Unfortunately, this happens all too often.
For me, there wasn’t one thing that caused me to want to do a digital detox, it was a wide variety of things. No matter how hard I looked, it became incredibly challenging to find anything positive. It became hard for me to breathe because of the anxiety that I felt, and it caused me to be in a negative mindset even when I wasn’t looking at social media.
If that’s happening to you, that’s when you know a digital detox is exactly what you need.
3. A digital detox helps you to be creative.
Normally I am somebody who believes that it can be good to feed off of the ideas of others. I mean nobody is going to ever be perfect and there is always going to be room for improvement. So it only makes sense to take what other successful individuals have done and try to make it better with your own twist, right?
But there also comes a point where we have too many ideas going through our minds that it causes us to fail to take action. We become so fixated which option is the right option that instead of taking action, we don’t even get started.
Since starting this digital detox, I have had an easier time making decisions. I don’t question what I should write about, what I should be doing during the day in order to get closer to my goals, or anything else for that matter. I just do. As a result of taking action and not questioning myself, I have found that the quality of my life and my confidence have all increased.
4. A digital detox helps you rest easier.
Resting has always been something that’s been a challenge for me to do. Whenever I try to sit down to rest, I immediately begin to think of what else I could be doing with my time that is going to help me get closer to my goals.
Again, not always a bad mindset to have, but not always a good mindset either. Our minds are like our bodies, they need rest.
Have you ever tried going to the gym for 30 days straight? If so, you begin to feel sluggish and out of it after just a week or two. Rest days help your muscles to recover and rebuild after they have been broken down from usage.
Well, the same thing goes for your mind. Your mind thinks 60,000 thoughts per day. Once you wake up, it’s only going to continue to burn any energy that it has. If you add unwanted and negative energy to it, your mind is going to drain even quicker.
That’s why a digital detox can be a good thing. It helps to slow down how many thoughts you think and doesn’t flood your mind with negative energy.
Before You Go
If you are feeling tired, fed up, or just in a negative state of mind, try a digital detox. Give your mind a chance to rest, to once again find the good in life, and to get back to the creative masterpiece it was meant to be. While there are other effective methods out there, a digital detox is probably going to be your best option. Plus, it helps you to reconnect with the world around you and to find joy in the little things in life – the little things that we often overlook.
Michael Bonnell
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