I’ve noticed a trend recently. People think they will find motivation or figure out what they want out of life from social media. Unfortunately this is false.
You will not find yourself or motivation from social media. All of that comes from within and choosing to start.
Social media does provide a ton of information and ideas, but it cannot give you motivation. Because social media overloads our brains with stimuli and options, we get overwhelmed and often do nothing instead. It is proven the human brain can only handle between 8-15 options. So if you see 20 different posts on Pinterest about what you can do with your kitchen, that is too much for our brains to handle.
Inspiration may occur from social media, but then we scroll on to the next post rather than choosing to get up and start OR there are simply too many options for our brain to handle (Analysis Paralysis). Then we often forget about that moment or “save it for later” without ever actually doing anything about it.
Social media ends up overloading our brains with different emotions too. We see a funny cat video, then scroll & see people being bombed, then we see something political that upsets us, then we learn someone passed away, then we have old memories pop up on our timeline of people we don’t talk to anymore, then we see someone has a better house than us, etc. This goes on and on. We jump from one subject to the next and from one extreme emotion to the next, all within 3 minutes. Then we wonder why we feel anxious or depressed or unmotivated (Not to say that there can’t be other factors). We are totally mentally & emotionally exhausted. Especially if you start off your day on social media.
Not to mention how it makes us truly believe we want or need things when we don’t. If you see multiple influencers in a day having clothing from the same brand, you will begin to think you want it too. If you see someone with a better car, better house, on vacation, etc. Your car suddenly feels inadequate or you want to go on vacation now, work drags on a bit harder that day. If you didn’t see those posts, you probably wouldn’t have even thought about most of those things. There are constant ads & content creators making sponsored posts so that you buy products that you are easily currently living without. Their marketing works too, that’s why it’s a multi-billion dollar industry.
The best way to figure out who you are, what you truly want from life, and become motivated is to sit with yourself and your thoughts. Let the voices of the outside world grow quiet or even silent by taking a social media break or leaving it all together. Only then will you learn what your heart truly desires rather than other people telling you what you should want.
There will be a learning curve, often in your teen years and early 20s, but there are people in their 70s who never figure it out either and are motivated by what others have rather than what their soul needs.
Let yourself become bored. Boredom is drastically underrated. Creativity and innovation are born from boredom. Give your brain a chance to think for itself. If after work or school you never let yourself become bored and go on some sort of media instead, you are depriving yourself of the opportunity to think for yourself. I’m not saying you can never use or watch media, but allow yourself to become bored sometimes to maintain balance.
What I’ve noticed for myself, is once I start meditating a million things pop in my head that I could get done that day. If you ever forget something, just become completely still and it will come back to you. If I have a day without technology, I’ll become bored for a few minutes, sit at my dining table thinking, then something pops in my head that I can get done. On these days I feel so mentally & emotionally clear as well as motivated & productive. I go to bed very calm and satisfied with my day.
Overall, I hope this post helps you become more creative, motivated, and more you.
As always thank you for reading!
-Meghan
P.S. this post was inspired by a recent breakdown I had when it came to social media, again. As I have said before, I am addicted. I can quit for a month or two then I come back and binge. This time, my husband is quitting with me which is awesome. I’m pretty sure this is about my 5th time quitting social media, I don’t know if it will be the last, but I need to try my best to stick to it, for me and my health. I just need to go back and read my older posts to remind myself why I am quitting.
If you liked this post, here are some more:
- How to Stop Procrastinating and Get Stuff Done!
- Trying to Break the Social Media Addiction
- 9 Reasons Why You Should Quit Social Media
- Stop Forcing Yourself to Like Things Just Because Other People Like Them
- How to Find Your Life’s Purpose
- Grief, Ego, & Principles
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