[Transcript starts at 1:38]
Hello, my podcast people and shout out to all of you for choosing to hang out with me. It's not lost on me. You're busy, you got things to do. You could spend your attention anywhere and you choose to tune in. And most of you are listening at 1x because I be speaking so quickly. And, And I appreciate that.
So today I'm going to chat about something that is near and dear to my heart. The old Instagram. A lot of stuff has been going on and. I realized that there, you know, concurrently with that is a ton of social media overwhelm. And so I wanted to discuss that and throw out some of my suggestions on how to handle social media overwhelm.
You know, I was still, strategic and specific and not saying prevent it because, you know, overwhelm is part of a feeling and I don't think we can necessarily stop feelings, but we can take a breath, a pause, a moment, and then respond to those, right? Identify them and then respond to them. And so what I want to talk about today is, what we can do in that response period, which I think may help out moving forward and perhaps mitigate some of that overwhelm, you know, the next time.
So I think I got five points here. I got my little, my little board written out. You got about five points here. And something that I always want people to understand is that whenever I share content, whether it's on Instagram or on here, it's obviously from my own personal experience. And it's never to be like, this is the only way this is the right way.
And I do want to acknowledge that, like, I realized that We all think differently and many times just inherently how I am, how I grew up, how I was raised, how my brain is. It can make certain things easier for me and, you know, vice versa. There's certain things that would be easier for you, the listener. As such, it's, I'm never here to be like, it's just this easy and just do it.
But I will say that from my perspective, it is this simple where we can break it down into this and no, it doesn't mean it's that easy, but it's always my goal to provide you with some objective. information based on my own experience and some actionable, tangible steps. So that's what I want to do today.
I know that when we talk about anxiety, overwhelm, things like that, it's very subjective and can be very sensitive and it's not easy, right? I've been having a bunch of discussions with a close friend of mine recently about this and I get it. It is not like there's different brain chemistry. It's not just like, Oh, just think differently.
That you'll be better. That is like the worst. The worst fucking advice ever. Uh, something that I like to think about is the easiest way, to me, the easiest way to do less of something is to do more of something else. And so it's always my goal to try and give you that something else that you can do more of and you can work towards doing more of that will perhaps, you know, create less of that other thing you're looking to do less of.
So five things that I want to discuss about how to handle social media overwhelm. So number one. Take a fucking break, right? The big point here is show up on social media, show up on Instagram, the way that you want to show up on Instagram, right? Commit to it. And that means when you first decided to start using it, or if you've been using it for however long, doesn't matter.
Commit to showing up how you want to show up. If you want to show up every day, cool. Then you do that. You want to show up once in a blue moon, once in an ever, then fucking do that. Commit to showing up how you want Want to show up, right? It's not just commit to showing up. It's commit to showing up how you want to show up.
To that end, if you're like, fuck, I need a break. This is too much. It's overwhelming. Take a break. I'm giving you the permission that you do not need to take that break. I, maybe, you know, wait, there's concern about what might happen. And we're going to get to that in the future in the subsequent points.
But just as the number one statement, commit to showing up how you Want to show up and if you need a break take a break Take it. You don't have to announce it. You don't have to apologize for it. You don't have to ask for permission. You don't owe anything to anyone. You show up, on this platform, how you want to show up.
Number two. Turn off all your fucking notifications. So, in gen I just did a post about this. So I'm recording this on Saturday. I just did a post on Saturday on Instagram. About this and it all it said was my number one piece of advice for anyone using social media turn off your notifications And this is not necessary to prevent anything.
It's just that why the fuck are those things on? I think probably one of the biggest things that has contributed to my longevity in this platform on the platform besides me loving it Alright, it's like the two biggest things one. I love it. And two I show up on my own terms I never, in my whole life, had notifications on.
That seems so intrusive and I'm like, I will come to this when I come to this. I'll probably get to it very quickly because I'm on that shit anyway, but I do not need push notifications. I do not need things popping up and being like, someone said something and someone liked something. I don't fucking need that.
That's actually one of the gripes that I had with that movie, The Social Network. No, not The Social Network, Jesus. Uh, the social dilemma is I was talking about notifications as like one of the biggest issues and I'm like fucking turn them off like it's not that they're forced on you, you can literally It just turned them off.
So that is a like golden rule that I have for people is no notifications for anything. I, I don't have them, I don't need them. I'll get to when I get to it, which will probably be quickly, but it's still on my terms. Number three, and I teach this every, you know, every round of the intensive, curate your experience.
So this was, this means when you are on there, let's do everything we can to make it an enjoyable experience. If you are on there and you're just following people who just make you feel bad about yourself and you're constantly comparing yourself to them or your hate following them, right? Where you're like, Oh, great.
Sue had time to create another course. Must learn. That's hate following. Uh, let's cut that out of our life. We don't need that energy in our ecosystem. Curate your experience when you're on there. Enjoy it. So I follow a ton of like cat accounts, cat meme accounts, general meme accounts, uh, California accounts.
It's just pictures of California. I'm like, this is where I live. It's literally a picture of the beach I go to every day. And I'm like, this is nice. Looks good from that angle. I've seen that angle and I will agree. It looks nice. You do not need to follow people because they follow you. You absolutely do not need to follow your peers.
Follow people who you would hang out with in real life and who you'd want to hang out with in real life. Not because you feel obligated to follow them or anything like that. So if you have people like that and you're currently following them and you're like, but it'll be weird to unfollow them. Cool.
I'm not trying to start drama. Just mute them. All right, this way they don't know, but you don't see their shit either. Go on and enjoy your experience. Look, full disclosure, I have people muted because I know them in person. And I'm like, I don't want to unfollow you because that might be awkward, but you be posting wild shit on Instagram.
I'm not trying to deal with it. I, I am protecting my peace. So point number three, curate your experience. experience. Point number four has three points within it because this is my podcast. I do what I want. From a quote directly from my girl Holly, diversify your joy portfolio. Second part of this. Get obsessed with your own life.
And lastly, keep your eyes on your own paper. So three parts here, diversify your joy portfolio, get obsessed with your own life and keep your eyes on your own paper. So one of the things that I see is that people, they just derive such, you know, joy, value, joy and value will say, cause I can't think of a third thing, joy and value from social media, that.
When it's not going well, they are just fucking gutted and there's nothing else to turn to. Again, tying into my, you know, longevity on this platform, right? Cause longevity reigns supreme is that I have other things in my life that I enjoy. Like I will not lie when I first started using Instagram. I did not like where I was living.
I was living in New York City at the time, and I was pretty, getting pretty over it, you know, disenchanted by it, and I was ready to go, but I had just switched jobs, not just necessarily, but I had switched jobs because I was unhappy in the first place, I was into a new field, I was doing pelvic health, pelvic floor physical therapy, I don't know if you knew that folks, but yes, I was a pelvic floor physical therapist for, I don't want to say three plus years.
of my physical therapy career. Uh, I had just started doing CrossFit. That's actually what brought me into Instagram, was that I was doing CrossFit and I was like, I can't do this stuff. I want to learn more about it. What's going on? And I found, I, you know, decided to join Instagram and follow some accounts.
So I was doing that then, I had actually just finished running the marathon and the point being diversifying my joy portfolio and not just having this one thing that brought me a sense of fulfillment, a sense of joy, a sense of, a sense of value, multiple things so that when I wasn't, you know, when Instagram's acting a fool, because that happens, because you know, you make a reel that you think is going to be so good and it doesn't do well and you're just like, fuck, I'm working so hard, I got nothing to show for it, I'm really frustrated, go do something else.
Like, Please, go outside or go inside, go play videos. I really don't care. Whatever else brings you joy, go and do that. I specifically, strategically moved across the country and I live where I live now because it's impossible for me to have a bad day. It's impossible. Even if I wake up and I've had some shit and I'm like, It'll look outside my window and there's a palm tree and this is gonna be different for everyone But for me seeing palm trees has always just brought me such joy I associate it with you know vacation and just warm weather and my body feeling better.
Like I love the Sun I need the Sun y'all know I got one vitamin D like I got two actually one got that blood work done I got two so I think if I actually Like, go outside in the sun more and expose my torso. I was only doing that a little bit at the end before I went and got retested. So I think if I go outside, as per the recommendation from my guy, Dr.
Rachel Rasmussen, from the podcast Do So Fucking Smart, I think if I should go do that, then I'd probably get up to like three or four white blood, uh, three or four vitamin Ds. My white blood cell count's all good again. That was my main concern. It's all good. Especially being in the middle of a pandemic.
I was like, I got two white blood cells. What's happening? Everything's good there. Uh, but What I was saying is that palm trees, they bring me such joy. They, they make me feel good. Being in a place like this makes me feel good. I went for a walk this morning and I was just, it's May gray. And I was still like, fuck man, this is amazing.
The beaches here, the beaches are crowded right now. Everyone playing volleyball. Cause it's, it's Memorial day weekend. And I was just like, I have such joy. And it's okay if this other thing isn't going great, or if there's a lot of stuff going on. It's not that I'm like ignoring it or like pretending that bad shit doesn't exist in the world.
It's the both and. Everything can't be bad all the time. That is not the way to make things better. better. We have to have the other side of that, right? Which is the joy. I'm totally fine with, you know, being super self critical and hard on yourself and wanting more. Amazing, but you gotta also celebrate yourself.
You gotta look at the good things as well. It's the both and. So, in terms of diversifying your joy portfolio, the importance there, so that when things get heavy on social media, or things aren't going well on social media, you can balance that out, right? It's not about, it's not about balance as a noun, it's about balancing as a verb, and you can lean into other things.
And again, like I said, point number one, if it's too much, it's a fucking date break. Getting obsessed with your own life. One of the things we see with social media is that, that comparison trap. And we just, and this is twofold. One, we see it in terms of looking at other people's lives and, you know, if they're showing a highlight reel, which I hear come up and I'm like, I don't experience that personally.
And I've polled my audience, and I, my audience is my friends, and they're people that I know, and the people that write back are people I know, and like, know them in some capacity, but I've worked with them in the mafia, whatever. And, you know, they subscribe to that same, same approach of, you know, they're not living in that, deep in that comparisonitis, or they're not following people that are like, just out there faking it, right?
They've, they've curated their experience, they've cleaned up their feeds, and so we're seeing people's, people's lives. But when I say, Get obsessed with your own life. When I say keep your ass on your own paper, that, that largely relates to understanding that everyone has a different capacity for everything.
And so if you are comparing yourself from a creation standpoint, and you're looking at like, Oh my God, like, you know, my show posts all the time, like, fuck, it's just so much. Guess what? We have different capacity for these things. I don't have any kids. I will say that a million times. I have Rupert, and he is like, The complete opposite of a kid.
My man just takes care of himself. Like, he's not needy. He doesn't want to cuddle. My guy doesn't want to cuddle. Except in the morning, 5. the covers. It's super easy. I'm not being pulled in a million directions, especially with the kid thing. I have the capacity, because of the choices I've made, the lifestyle I have, and just because of, you know, innately, I have the capacity to show up like that.
And if you are comparing yourself to me, or to someone else who's able to show up more than you, you're gonna be disappointed forever, and frustrated forever, and likely overwhelmed forever. So, my advice, keep your eyes on your own paper, understand that everyone's capacity is different, and run your own race.
As it relates to what I had said earlier about, The easiest way, in my opinion, to do less of something is to do more of something else. This is where getting obsessed with your own life comes into play. When you find that that, you know, comparisonitis is coming in, go and do your own things. When we find ourselves looking around, think about what can I do to not necessarily look within, but to get focused.
on what's right in front of me, my own shit. So for me, if that's going to happen, if I'm like going to be deep into scrolling or being like, God, there's like, you know, people doing this, whatever, I'm going to go and create, I'm going to go and get obsessed with my own shit and whether that's creating content or go out and like go and lift or go and play volleyball, I'm going to get obsessed with my own life.
I'm going to turn my focus on the things that I can control and things that are about me. What can I actually be doing? Not just consuming what everyone else is doing. So point number three, diversify your joy portfolio. Shout out to Holly for that quote. Get obsessed with your own life and keep your eyes on your own paper.
All right, lastly, did I say that was point number four? I hope I said that was point number four. Lastly, point number five. is trust yourself to handle the outcome. And perhaps that, that point should actually be develop the skills, develop the confidence to trust yourself to handle the outcome. I think that people struggle a little bit with like, should I take a break?
And like, is it okay? Because they believe, and I'm not saying it's, it's wrong or right, but they believe that if they take a break, they're going to fall behind. Right, they're going to lose some engagement, they're going to lose some of the traction that they've made, it's going to look a certain way, people are going to think something about them, right?
They're concerned about the outcome and the possible consequences, right? Consequences being just a fact, not necessarily being negative, right? Just the outcome of something. I said it before, and I will likely do an entire podcast about it when I really get more thoughts. Or maybe I'll just make a podcast that's like one minute long, a podcast episode, excuse me, it's one minute long, which is true courage.
My true confidence doesn't come from doing the thing and trusting that you can do the thing. It comes from trusting that you can handle the outcome. If we take it back to physiology, we take it back to my physical therapy days, you can never jump higher than your nervous system believes you can attenuate the outcome.
the impact. So if you want to change someone's, someone's jumping height, you can do it incrementally very quickly by having them do like a box, a box, um, like a depth drop, a box drop. And they just are, they are on top of the surface and they jump down to the ground. When the nervous system says, Oh, I'm You can handle that.
Obviously, they have to like land and not break apart. And then they land from that, suddenly the nervous system says, Oh, you're actually safe. You can handle that. And their vertical will improve. It's not going to like turn into Michael Jordan overnight, you know, or in that moment, but it will improve from if you had tested them before they did that depth drop.
Um, why? Because the nervous system said you can handle the outcome of this thing. It's, it's no different than running. You can never run faster than you can slow down safely, never gonna lift more than you can actually lower and control safely. So, same thing goes for any of these actions. In life, in business, if you can learn to trust yourself to handle the outcome, which if we use the example I just gave about the boxes, you need to expose yourself to that outcome first and learn that you didn't die, right?
Expose yourself to the outcome, take a moment, take a pause, reflect on it, dissect it, get objective about it and be like, okay, this is what happened and this is what I did. I took a break. I took a day off. Did the world collapse? Did I lose all of my followers? Did my account get banned? Like, what happened?
Did anybody even notice I was gone? Maybe not. Perhaps you're worried about that. Maybe you're worried people are gonna forget about me or people have already forgotten about me. They don't know. This is where it's important to take some time. Think about these things and then we can move forward, but this last point I think is hugely important is Develop the skill to trust yourself or develop the skill of trusting yourself to handle the outcome All right So recapping that number one take a break commit to showing up on social media way that you want to show up Number two, no notifications.
Turn them bitches off. Number three, curate your experience. Number four, this is a three parter, diversify your joy portfolio, get obsessed with your own life, and keep your eyes on your paper. Number five, develop the skill to be able to trust yourself. To handle the outcome. Alright, that's all I got for you.
If you're feeling like you need a break from Instagram, take a fucking break from Instagram. And when you get back, I'll be there, probably, unless I'm taking a break, to say hello. Alright, I do believe I'm gonna wrap it up. I've got no asks, got no announcements or anything like that for you this time. As always, endlessly appreciative for every single one of you.
Until next time, friends, Maestro out.
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