Here’s how to break up with social media and fall in love with YOUR life

If you’re reading this, I’m assuming you’re curious about how to quit social media. Maybe you took a little break, and you’re reluctant to start up again. Maybe you just really really wish you could leave it, but you don’t think it’s possible, and you’re reading this because you need more proof that it can be done. I’m glad you’re here.

Social media isn’t good or bad. It’s a powerful tool, and using it can have beautiful and destructive consequences. To honour the one chance we have to live a beautiful life, we need to learn how to tolerate that paradox, and have the wisdom to own our choices within it. 

I’m so here for this. 

As a writer, I know that my attention is my greatest tool. Also, my business and livelihood is connected to the internet. For a long time (years!), I believed I needed social media to survive. Note that word: SURVIVE. It actually felt like my life depended on it. 

I also knew that a career that hinges on desperation (survival) is not conducive to creativity and inspiration. My career is all about creativity and inspiration. I was stuck in a dilemma.

A dilemma, as Al Watt writes in The 90 Day Novel, is a problem that can’t be solved without changing the paradigm.

In a story with an unresolvable dilemma, there’s only one way to move from Act 2 to Act 3. Surrender.

That’s when I knew it was time for me to change my paradigm.

I haven’t been actively engaged on social media for two years now.

Since then, my mental health and emotional health have improved exponentially. Even my physical health and financial health have improved, which surprised me!

I thought social media was inextricably tied to my social life and my livelihood.

Turns out, it was: just not in a healthy way.

You already know why social media is harmful, addictive, and life-sucking.

It’s time for you to reclaim your attention.

When you quit social media, people might react.

When I say, I don’t use social media, some people respond defensively. I think that’s because what they hear (inside their own heads) is, You shouldn’t use social media.

Most people (at least in my world), stare at me blank-faced when I tell them I don’t use it. Like I just spoke to them in a different language. There’s just this little… cognitive blip.

I’m afraid most people don’t even know they have a choice.

We have a choice.

And then, some people — just a few — lean in, and ask me, Wait — what? Really? How?

If you think you might be ready to to break up with social media, deleting apps from your phone won’t create the internal shift you need to feel great about the break. The transition requires some internal steps, including mindset, boundaries, and creative lifestyle design.

There are five phases in this transition:  

1. The paradigm shift: examining your beliefs about “needing” social media
   
2. Choosing your path: conscious boundaries vs. complete detox
   
3. Social wealth auditing: knowing your “enough zone” for connection
   
4. Lifestyle redesign: setting up autoresponders and detour systems, time uniforms and social uniforms
   
5. Replacement habits and concrete alternatives to social media

It takes some time to make the shift, and it’s such a worthwhile investment. 

I challenge you to join me, and to resist the dominant paradigm.

Be bold! Be unreasonable!

In the meantime, try it: take a hiatus from Instagram for 6 months, and see what happens.

You’re going to be okay. I promise.

Photo credit (top): Manki Kim on Unsplash.