Things learned from giving up social media

 Well it is the day after Easter and this year I had chosen to give up social media for Lent to focus more on praying and investing in the people in my life. This also meant taking the games off of my phone. 

Now I also run a small business so the only exception to this that I made was continuing to run my business Facebook page but I realized something in the midst of the last 40 days that since I wasn't posting on my regular Facebook or Instagram page and my business page is linked to my regular Facebook page nobody was seeing any of my posts unless I tagged them in it. So my business kind of got put on hold for the last few weeks which is fine. Maybe that's what part of this point was. 

So I did learn some lessons during this time and I thought I would share them on this blog... 

SIDENOTE..I realize this blog has not been used in a couple of years or more... life has kind of gotten busy and I have gotten distracted in numerous areas...one of which has been my writing. Just journaling ...clearing out my brain .... as somebody recently called it a brain drain.... Has been helpful in the past to cut down my anxiety. This is definitely something I want to take the time to continue taking do.

Through this little social media fast I have also realized that I need to set some goals over the next few months to keep moving forward so I thought I'd share the lessons learned.

Lesson 1....a lot of times we turn to our phones as a distraction from whatever is going on around us.  It's mindless..it's numbing... and it can become an addiction. In this quest to get away from social media I found myself longing to just troll social media and see what everybody was up to but yet didn't have the energy to reach out and actually check in with people via messenger or texting. So one of my goals is to work on picking up my phone to call or intentionally text friends to see how they are doing.

Lesson 2... a lot of my time that I would normally spend trolling whether it's opening my phone first thing in the morning to see what everybody's up to or before I go to bed trolling to see just how things are going for everybody ended up turning into prayer time. which is the goal of this fast.  So whether I've reached out or not know that I've been praying for a lot of you.  As a mama of two young boys having that quiet time with the Lord has been very important and I have not necessarily made that time like I should and one of the lessons learned is sometimes we have to set aside things that aren't necessarily bad in order to have time for things that are better

Lesson 3... when you cut out things that you don't realize are suctioning time away it gives you more time to do things that may be on your to-do list or on your bucket list.  One of my goals for 2022 was to read more ...like actually read books and over the last month I've been able to finish three books and I am in the process of three more at this point.  I have taken a lot of book suggestions that people have given and thought those would be meaningful books to read in my life and have downloaded them onto my Kindle and read them that way.  I could blog about each of those books and what I've learned from each of those ... But as time and energy allows... we shall see!

Lesson 4 you can't give from an empty cup... as a mom ...as a wife... sometimes we put ourselves on the back burner.   One of the things that I've learned over the last 40 days is I can't give from an empty cup.  My cup has to be full in order to spill out on the guys in my life and be a better wife and mom for them. So in this process I've taken time to be able to rest and rejuvenate myself whether that means just taking 15 minutes and doing something that I enjoy ...whether that's reading a book or sitting outside and enjoying nature or enjoying an iced coffee but really turning my mindset on thankfulness and enjoying the things around me.

Lesson 5... Social media has its place to stay connected with friends and family that you don't see regularly face to face. It can also be very harmful when using it to gauge your self worth compared to everyone else. So my last and final lesson is this. I will continue to use social media as a tool to live intentionally... Investing in my guys and my family and friends...  I will not use social media to judge my worth or yours for that matter. My goal is to post things that are real... Messy or not! I want to encourage others to be real because you are enough just as how you were created!