There are many ways we can handle our individual and collective social media self-care from a more conscious standpoint. What follows are some of my favourite methods. Let me know what resonates with you or if you have any ideas to add.
Having a Strategy of Love, Love, Love.
Loving your platforms, loving your content, loving what you have to share, loving the people you have to share it with, bundled up with a big fat dose of love for yourself.
If you are not feeling the love, listen to this as a sign to take a break or get some help, or both, depending on where you are in your social media journey.
Check in with yourself and listen to your heart to tell you what you need in order to have a healthy and vibrant digital experience.
Take Your Own Sweet Time About It.
Trusting in divine timing.
And higher timelines.
For your social media journey.
Taking breaks when you need to.
Hours, days, weeks, months as required.
Releasing the need for more numbers, for more followers, for doing what everyone else is doing.
Taking time to connect and communicate more effectively with who is already there, listening to or talking with you.
Communicating More Consciously.
Creating committed time and space for connection, contact, comments and DMs, rather than being so ad hoc and reactive, is something I would like to be better at. I plan to do this by:
Making communication more proactive and meaningful.
Creating opportunities to speak and connect more deeply and personally.
Sending more voice notes so people can hear and feel rather than just read. I love receiving voice notes. (They can often be quicker to do too.)
Being Aware.
We must become more aware of the information we consume.
Practising due diligence to find out if what we are reading or seeing is real, authentic and genuine — or if instead if it could be fake, manipulative or persuasive — would serve us really well as we move through this next decade.
We can start by being more discerning when looking at articles and posts online, getting better at asking where the information is coming from, questioning its authority and intention both when reading it and when sharing it.
Also by listening to what our body tells us about what content feels good we can identify who feels legit, inspiring, informative and kind, rather than just basing our opinions on the sales or Likes trail.
Cleaning Up our Timelines.
I have started to look at cleaning up my timelines in the same way I look at cleaning my kitchen: the more I use my kitchen, the more it needs cleaning.
If I am cooking up content and connections, I need to keep my counter and utensils clean; otherwise, I might get some bacteria or bugs or the mess will pile up and it will stress me out. Keeping an eye on our digital countertops is essential to maintaining a healthy digital diet.
Checking to see what is lurking at the back of our digital cupboards and throwing stuff out when it gets old and before it gets mouldy.
Unsubscribing from groups, accounts, emails and people that we no longer have interest in or digital time or resonance for if they are creating distraction or dissonance in your field.
Frequency of our Posts.
It is not just the content itself that holds our frequency, through our words, images, videos, podcasts and voice notes.
If we are 30% nicer and kinder to others online, this upgrades the energy and frequency of our social media vibration and output into the digital world. When our content impacts another human somewhere across the planet or down the road, this extra 30% can filter back into our embodied world, and into the planet.
Frequencies weaving through cyber space into physical space and into each other.
We can use social media to upgrade the frequency of the planet when we choose to use it to upgrade the frequency of each other.
So watch your frequency each time you post.
Remember that the timeline frequency — how often we post — can also have an impact on our digital wellbeing.
It can overwhelm our audience, our energetic receivers; if we post too much, those dialled into our frequency can feel overwhelmed if we post too often.
We should aim for quality, not quantity.
This works the other way round too; if I post a lot, I check and pick up my phone more. Balancing and adapting a slower frequency, how often I post doesn’t feed my addictive tendencies.
If we collectively slowed down the pace of how much we post, the algorithms will have to adapt to us, not us to them.
It is symbiotic. We are more in control than we know.
Like it or Lump it.
Likes provide a little dopamine hit.
Start noticing how much Likes affect you.
How it feels in your body when you are looking for and receiving Likes and comments.
Detoxing your Digital Time.
A digital detox could be a day, a week or a month or more. You have to listen to what feels best for you. The social media vortex of doom is what I call the feeling you get when you know that social media is affecting your wellbeing negatively.
Being OK with Being Bored.
Creating space to be bored.
Embracing it.
Allowing it.
Being it.
Embody at Any Given Opportunity
Encourage each other to take time away from the computers and devices to relax and socialise together in embodied spaces.
Creating more opportunities to gather offline.
Create meet-ups, lunches, workshops, talks and walks.
Arranging to meet up for a coffee or a chat.
By practicing these techniques and becoming more aware of how we feel while using social media, we can begin to move towards a world in which digital self-care is as widely practised as physical self-care. I’d love to hear feedback from you on any of the methods you choose to try. And again, if you have any methods you’d like to add to this list, please share them with me via email or Instagram.
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