The Self Care Life with Sara Miller

Spring Clean Your Mind by Unplugging from Social Media

March 08, 2022 Sara Miller
The Self Care Life with Sara Miller
Spring Clean Your Mind by Unplugging from Social Media
Show Notes Transcript

As you're thinking about giving your physical spaces a refresh, consider how you can refresh your mind and practice some good old fashioned self care. Let's dive into what it looks like to unplug from social media and why you should!

Here's where you can find me:
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Sara Miller:

With a thousand things on our to do list, a lot of us are doing life on constant autopilot forgetting to care for ourselves feeling overwhelmed and frustrated with the way things are. I strive to help you, the everyday woman to stop and to embrace the power of effective self care, in order to reduce overwhelm and anxiety and find fulfilment in your everyday life. I'm Sara Miller, and I'm here to help you stop going through the motions and start being the happiest and healthiest version of you all by caring for yourself, like someone worth caring for. Join me for conversations about self care, wellness, mindfulness, and so much more that will help you find your own self care lifestyle. I'm Sara, and you're listening to The Self Care Lifestyle Podcast. Welcome, welcome. Today, we are here to talk about spring cleaning your mind. But really, we're here to talk about unplugging from social media. I think that this is a great thing to integrate into your spring cleaning, as you're like, thinking about refreshing your physical space, but also refreshing your mental state. So let's dive on in. Social media in general, is a really loud and noisy place to be not necessarily quite literally. But mentally. You're constantly taking in information from across the globe. And in the age of influencers and celebrities and all of these people that you don't even know personally, social media has become less of a place to connect with your family. And it's a place to consume content. And that is not necessarily bad, it's just it can be a lot, a lot for your brain a lot for your heart a lot to just take in all the time. So I really want to encourage you to take time away from it because of that. Because by constantly taking in this content, taking in other people's thoughts, images of other people, all these just different things of people with different experiences, people that you wouldn't connect to face to face necessarily because they live across the world. It just can be very draining. I think that it really is easy to of course fall into that comparison trap and see everybody's you know, the highlight reel concept. Everybody's life is a highlight reel when it comes to Instagram. And we hear that we we understand that logically. But it doesn't mean that we're not still subconsciously taking in this messaging of, oh, I want my life to be like that, that life looks so perfect and good. And people live this perfect life. And it's just not entirely true, as we know, logically. And I think this is where there's a few things that come to mind here for me. First off, being really really intentional about who you follow. If someone you follow makes you feel jealous, or angry or sad or upset in some way. Don't follow them. The point of consuming content should be to bring in things that actually add value to your life. So pick and choose people who when you see their things on Instagram, their posts, you're inspired, you're not frustrated or down on yourself because your life isn't like that. One of my favorite people for that is Allie Casazza. I find her content to be super inspiring, inspiring without me feeling necessarily like jealous or frustrated that I'm not there yet because she teaches some amazing things. I would hope that I create a space that is like that. Some others that have done that, I think include Darrian Chamblee, who I believe will be on last week's episode when you're hearing this. And let's see who else... McKenzie Valenta is another great one who's been on the podcast before. So there's so many out there. Just be very thoughtful about that when you are consuming social media. So that is my soapbox on social media as far as taking time away from it being intentional with it, or sorry, not taking time away from it, but just why it's an issue to begin with and being intentional with it. So now I just want to kind of focus in on taking time away from it, and like, what does that look like? So I always like to share this story, because it was really impactful for me. And it's something that I often need to revisit to remember why this is so powerful. Back in college, I was going through a period of just really, really struggling and I at the time was freelancing, but also doing blogging, doing Instagram stuff, all that. And I think this was like my senior year of college. And it was just not great. And my husband encouraged me to take some time away from social media, and he actually had me work on a painting that still hangs in our living room to this day. During this time, to give me something to to work on, but also to like, get me back to my roots of what I enjoyed doing before social media was even a thing. So I did that for three days, three days of no social media at all. I did not do any work, I'd like done all my homework in advance so that I could really be unplugged. I was mostly online at that point. So I think I managed to schedule it where I didn't have class those days, or maybe had class to like the very last day or something like that. And it really just left me feeling so refreshed. So much more connected with myself with my thoughts, not somebody else's. It had me more connected with my desires, and my what made me happy. versus focusing on everybody else. Now I know that I had the luxury of being it was, you know, basically me home alone for three days. Not doing any social media. So it was like almost this little like at home retreat. And I know that that's a little harder to do now with an almost two year old at home. But I still think that that unplugging from social media itself piece is one of the most powerful parts of this. During those three days, I was able to work on things like painting, I stained some shelves and hung them up. I I did watch some old like favorite movies from my childhood. I read. I listened to podcasts. That was the first time I had like, really tried to listen to podcasts. And I started listening to them on a regular basis after that. I tried. I mean, I don't I did a lot of just things that were about recharging. There was a lot more time in my day as well, when I wasn't scrolling through social media. So I really, as you're doing your spring cleaning, here's your challenge. I challenge you to take it at least 24 hours away from social media if you can take 24 hours away from like TV and computer as well. Awesome but bare minimum. Take a day away from your phone away from while away from social media itself. I would say generally away from your phone because it's so easy to pick up your phone and just start scrolling, some pro tips, delete the apps, plug your phone in and another room And like leave it and don't carry it around with you like you normally would. That's really helpful for being able to unplug because it's like not physically there in the room with you. So those are just kind of some starting points, I think that taking time away to get clear. And to kind of rest your brain from that, like comparison game is really helpful, and can really give you that feeling of spring cleaning your mind. So I encourage you to do that and to bring self care into those that time away from social media. I mean, I think the act of taking time away from social media itself is an act of self care in it of itself. But bring in other things, maybe something that helps you feel really good is yoga. Maybe it is journaling, or reading or doing something creative, like painting or writing. There's so many different things that you could spend that time on, that you normally would spend scrolling. Now, don't worry, I am not going to leave you alone. To do this, I will also be taking some time off of social media. And I don't know, I don't know if I'm going to do 24 hours or a couple of days at this point. We'll see as we get closer, you know, I like to record my episodes in advance. But yeah, I will probably post about it because what's a social media detox without posting about it, although I encourage you not to if you are not a content creator. My goal with sharing it is to remind you to take the time off as well. So keep that in mind if you see a post from me about it. Thank you so much for joining me today. Before you go be sure to grab my free Own Your Self Care Starter Kit by visiting theselfcare.life/own-your-self-care/. This kit is specially designed to help you identify what kind of self care will work best for you. That way you can start developing your own self care lifestyle. If you'd like to stay connected find me on Instagram at @sarastrives or on TikTok at@TheSelfCareLifestyle. Thank you so much for listening and I will talk to you again, soon.