The One-Week Facebook Detox

Hey guys,

I hope you had a fantastic week!

So, following on from my dramatic 'quarter-life crisis' post, last week, I decided to give Facebook up cold turkey for 7 days.

Why?

Well, I realised I was spending more time online, eyeing other people's posts, comparing lives, and distracting myself, than I was thinking about my own life, my own goals and my own dreams. Which doesn't make much sense right? I still have a lot I want to figure out, a lot of soul-searching I want to do, and clicking through an acquaintance's dinner photos for an hour totally doesn't make a lot of sense.

Facebook is such a strange addictive being - it preys on our deepest insecurities and our deepest desires - that yin-yang relationship between the fear of not being good enough, and the deep yearning to be heard, to have a voice. It creates celebrities out of each of us, plants us in a bubble of self-obsession and provides a platform for incessant comparison and external validation, that in the long-term surely cannot be healthy.

Now don't get me wrong - social media has done a lot of good as well. But there comes a point when the line fades.

 

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It's like society on a platter. Your circle of people watches your every move, your photos, your life events; and you stare back out at them, watching the updates flashing by. 

Everything we post up on social media is posted up with the knowledge that it will be judged by almost everyone you know. Which then means most of what we see being presented to us - perfect selfies, excited announcements, cool hashtags - are an airbrushed version of each person's reality. An attempt to reaffirm one's success in the eyes of society. I know this because I frequently am guilty of it.

And yet we forget the fact that everything see is 'airbrushed' when we scan our social media every hour - subconsciously the messages we are being sent as we click through our newsfeed are: everyone else is doing so well, why am I not?

I don't know if everyone feels this way, but I was definitely reaching the point where I needed a break from all the noise, and needed to retreat into my own world and figure things out.

So I didn't log into Facebook for 7-8 days. And here's what I noticed:


1) I didn't know what to do in the evenings if I needed to distract myself. So I was forced to focus and get my work done - by day 3, I was super efficient and super productive.

2) I wasn't bothered by information overload, so my mind felt a lot more relaxed.

3) I had eliminated a key aggravator of 'comparison syndrome' - I didn't feel the need to compare myself to all 900 of my FB friends because I no longer knew what all 900 people were doing. I kept in touch with close friends via email and Skype chat and that was just enough.

4) I was less bothered by ridiculous feelings of inadequacy if my profile picture got less likes than my friends (yes, we've all been there). Life suddenly felt a lot more calm, a lot less competitive and just a lot more simple.

5) I could more clearly assess me  and my life for what it was, and not for what it was relative to others. This is so key and so important.

So those were the pros. The only real 'con' I noticed, was that I found it hard to stay in contact with people in general, without using Facebook chat. A week later, I felt as though I had fallen off the planet and I had no idea what was happening with people I cared about - because emails got missed or time differences came in the way.

I also really missed making statements through my status updates - they were cool.

This led me to conclude that the only utility I wanted out of Facebook was:
1) The ability to contact friends I actually want to check in with, on my terms, through Facebook chat.
2) The ability to use Facebook status updates as a means to share strong beliefs and ideals that I believed would actually make a difference.

This all comes back to the point of 'being in control' - we should be in control of our consumption patterns, and our habits and lives should not be dictated to us by this crazy information-intensive mass consumerist culture that we live in. It's the same with mobile phones for instance - do we really need a new slightly-updated, but really not very different version of the iPhone every 3 months?

Anyway, I digress.

My Facebook detox was awesome. It gave me time to just be me, in the absence of a billion voices to compare with and filter through. And I feel a lot better as a result, because I managed to slowly figure out what I wanted for myself and some short-term goals. I was more in control of my thoughts and my time, and I felt relieved and relaxed.

I probably will not go on a total week-long Facebook ban again - but what I have decided to do, is to be more in control of my usage. 1 hour a day maximum. And I'm going to get my friends to use email a bit more ;). There's definitely something charming about receiving a page-long email from someone right?

So what does Facebook add to your life - and what does it take away? Is it time to re-jig the way you use it so that the tool serves you and you don't serve the tool? There's no denying that there has been a lot of good that social media does, so there maybe this is one way through which we can take the good without the bad.

As always, I'd love to know what you think!
 
Til' next time,
Love,
A.x

Behind that Perfect Selfie...

Hi Guys!

I hope you've had a really awesome week.

I came to a pretty big (but somewhat obvious) realisation this week.

That for all the little things I was doing - re-establishing my routine with affirmations and meditation, and strange and wonderful new techniques to think better and live better - I wasn't really addressing any of the underlying core self-beliefs that really needed mending.

What I have been doing, is taking a 'band-aid approach', and temporarily masking deeper issues around my thinking patterns and self-beliefs with momentary quick-fix solutions.
Don't get me wrong - practices like meditation are essential, but they are, I now realise, Stage 2 of any self-improvement journey: Stage 1 involving being brave enough to look into the mirror and really understand who we are - what are our most monumental fears? What really holds us back? What beliefs are limiting us from being the best we can be, and why?

   

www.flickr.com - Alana Steinberg

Doing this is scary, because it forces us to examine ourselves and our lives in rich, unapologetic detail. We're often afraid of our own truths - maybe because we've been programmed by the outside world to expect ourselves to be perfect, to feel as though anything less than perfect is something to be ashamed of. Indeed, all we see around us, on social media, in advertisements, is a clean and sanitised version of everyone's lives - a facade of perfection.


We're so afraid to admit to each other that our internal world is actually different. It's definitely not perfect. And we know it  - deep down, we know that everyone struggles, everyone's afraid, everyone has a dimension to them that is full of insecurity and past hurts. And that's what makes us the rich, complex, fascinating beings we are - the fact that we can succeed despite our failures, despite our pasts - the fact that the goodness in us has the power to ultimately overcome the misgivings and negative trappings of our mind. The fact that there is literally a battle between good and evil, going on within us everyday - the outcome of which is determined by our choices. 


And when we choose to ignore the ugly bits, the scary bits, the harsh realities of ourselves and our lives, we're not really winning any battles, we're putting them off. In fact, we're allowing the negativity in us to fester and grow quietly in the background, as we take overexposed selfies and post them expectantly on Facebook, hoping for the validation of others, for the many 'likes' and comments, to distract us, trick us into believing that everything is A-OK - when we know that it surely is not. I know I am often guilty of this.

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We need to stop running from the full picture of who we are, and take a moment to step back and acknowledge ourselves in all of our disgustingly awesome glory. Because that's where true self-love begins.


I grudgingly realized this when a few days ago, my mood just crashed - for absolutely no reason, no trigger. I felt like a heavy tent that had been held up by flimsy sticks, just crashing to the floor. And I could not explain why. I felt a sense of frustration and anger, and a deep sense of sudden dissatisfaction with myself and my life. And although meditation, and affirmations, and all of that made me feel better for a few minutes, as the day progressed, I felt the silent arm of unexplainable discomfort grip at me.

The last time I had felt that extent of dissatisfaction or uneasieness with my life, it had made me question where I was working, where I was living and what I was doing, and it ended up enabling me to find a sense of Purpose. Make no mistake - those moments of deep innate frustration, that feeling that wrenches at your gut, screaming at you to re-examine your life - that feeling always leads to change -  if you choose to explore it fearlessly, ready to hear and act upon the answers within yourself.

 

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But this time, I wasn't listening. I was ignoring. Because I was really scared of what I would hear if I dared to ask myself what needed to change in my life now. So instead, here I am, I'm listening passively to affirmations, hanging out with friends and learning Hindi. Which is nice, but I know that when I get home, and I'm alone with myself, that gut feeling will creep in again going *warning warning something is not quite right!*.

So I decided to start addressing it.

I basically went home one day and asked myself what was wrong - almost like a shrink session run by me, for me - and I took notes on my laptop. The first thing I wanted to figure out, was why I was being so tough on myself recently. Why did I feel I wasn't doing enough, achieving enough? All sorts of things came up - self criticisms, judgements, fears, doubts. So I took a step back and dug deeper, and tried to figure out where these negative beliefs were coming from - I could trace most of them back clearly to past events that had planted the seed of an flawed belief in my mind, and from then on, the self-fulfilling prophecy had ensured that everything I saw and experienced, reaffirmed that belief.

It was a confronting couple of hours to step back and face your emotions straight up, but afterwards, I felt stronger, and I felt as though I was in control again - as though I understood myself better, my mind better. This is a science really. Our mind is a machine.And we should be constantly aware of its workings - we need to own the machine, the machine should not own us. And to be in control, we need to switch off 'Auto-Pilot', and stop ignoring what our gut is telling us. Took me a fair while to figure that out this week.

That self-shrink session was just beginning of me sorting out my own issues and dealing with what feels like a so-called 'Quarter-Life Crisis' - as questions like: "What really makes me happy?", "where exactly am I heading in life?", "what do I really want, in 5, 10 years time, and how will I get there?" have started pounding at my mind.

These are 'future questions', and to address these, we need to resolve our past.

So that's where I'm at and I wanted to share that. Because a part of me knows we all face similar struggles, but we don't always acknowledge it. And that's not okay, because we really are all in this together. These were some steps I took to make things clearer and start addressing my inner world:

7 Steps to Run Your Own Self-Shrink Session:

1. Take out a piece of paper and write down all the emotions you are feeling now. Don't filter anything.
2. Keep writing until you hit upon some recurring themes.
3. Now take a moment and observe your thoughts - what sort of thoughts are running through your mind? Write them down.
4. In front of you now, is your inner world on a piece of paper - what does it look like to you?
5. If it doesn't look too fantastic, uplifting or positive, start digging deeper. Try linking the emotions to the thoughts.
6. Tackle it one thought at a time - where did this thought come from? When did you first start feeling this way about yourself and your life...and WHY? (When I did this, I literally had a past memory flash in my head and it suddenly made sense where this belief was coming from).

7. You know why it's happening, so now fix it through:

• Writing and saying out loud your own affirmations that specifically address that memory or thought:  for example: even though my sister screamed "I hate you" when I was a child, I know she loves me, the world loves me and I love myself. Just an example.
• Visualising the same memory taking place with a different outcome, a happy outcome. Or, visualise that memory being sucked into a vacuum cleaner, and let it go.  
• Incorporate these into your daily routines, such as your meditation, to chip away at the blockages every day bit by bit. 

Essentially, this enables you to customise your routine - your affirmations, visualisations - so that they are specifically suited to address YOU.

I'm sure there are other formal techniques that help to remove mental blockages and I'll share them as I go along :)

Approaching this logically by writing down emotions and working backwards to see where they're coming from worked really well for me in identifying particular painpoints from my past that were holding me back today.

Right now, amidst the feeling that great change is about to come. I'm actually excited to get the trash out of my mind properly and see what this strange quarter-life crisis brings - and yes I'm also afraid, because I don't know what it will bring.

But I'd rather find out, than to live in fear and never know. 

If you've ever felt similarly, gone through similar phases, I'd love to hear your thoughts. We can work together to get through our deepest insecurities and succeed - I truly believe that.

Til' next time, and with Love!

A. x

The Stories Behind the Names

Hey guys,

I hope you've had a brilliant week!

So a bit of a different post today - this time about a personal breakthrough I'm really grateful for.

Ever since I was a teenager, I've always struggled with hierarchy.  I don't know if it's a result of my Asian upbringing; or of being the chubby shy kid at the bottom of the socially constructed 'popularity ladder' at high school; or, of that sense that as a 'small brown girl', I was in some way made to believe I was a disadvantaged minority, privileged to be amongst those who were really in power.

Whatever it was, I used to find it really hard to connect with people who had a sense of authority or power over me - or whom I felt were 'better' than me. I would be eager to please. Keen to impress. I changed my personality with the desire to win their approval, to win their validation. I became sweet and obliging and timid - and forgot myself in the process.

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Over time I made progress, but when I moved overseas last year, I felt as though I had taken a big step backwards - I craved approval in a society that was different to mine, in surroundings that weren't home, in situations that were constantly challenging and alien.

Don't get me wrong - I had the opportunity to meet some of the most brilliant people in the world and develop close friendships - my classmates were incredibly accomplished and driven people. I even had a chance to meet some of my biggest role models in person -  Jacqueline Novogratz; as well as Ratan Tata and Joseph Stiglitz, amongst others.

But the underlying thread across all of my interactions in the last 8 months, and for that matter a large portion of my earlier life, was a feeling that I was not quite 'up to par' - and this shaped my behaviour, the things I said, the way I acted around the people I met. I still remember being breathlessly in awe of Novogratz in the elevator, to the point where nothing I was asking her made any sense at all, as I blurted out a jumbled mix of words that were barely coherent.

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Professors, accomplished colleagues, the rich and the famous  - I felt a need to change who I was around them. And I didn't realise this until I started noticing the way some of my own friends interacted with very same 'big-shot' people - they around them in the same way they acted around me. They felt no need to to put on a facade, they felt no nervousness in asking direct questions, curious questions, and breaking through the boundary of unfamiliarity.

One night, I walked home in the rain with one of these friends  and we ended up in a coffee shop at midnight, chatting after volunteering at a big conference event. I told her I had always been in awe of her ability to interact so freely and openly with anyone and everyone - in exactly the same way, regardless of their achievements, fame, or fortunes. I asked her how she did it, and I still remember her response:

"They're just people at the end of the day, A. Do you really think Ratan Tata likes being idolised or likes being mobbed? He's a human being and he just wants to connect with others - the same way you and I do. He is just as curious about you as you are about him. So when you sit down and talk to someone as though they are 'real', it makes a big difference. Just try it.  

I've never seen one person as being different from the other - we really all the same at the end of the day.".

 

Dnms in a NYC coffee shop at night - only good things can result.

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Something about what she said that night resonated so deeply with me that for the next few weeks, I became acutely aware of the way I interacted with people. And it was true - for all my talk about equality, I was not demonstrating it in my own human interactions. The confident and friendly manner I had around a barista, disappeared around a Professor, as I warped into a submissive people-pleaser. Not only did this realisation appear to strike painfully at the core of my beliefs, but it also revealed a plethora of other issues I needed to address, the core ones being:

• Why did I need this external validation, from a so called 'higher source'? What was I looking for from others, that I couldn't give myself?
• Did I internally have some sort of 'ranking system', some sort of discriminatory lens that placed a higher value on certain people over others? What defined my interpretation of this value? Fame? Money? Power?
• Did I not believe that I too could be capable of achieving great success? Hero-worshiping is indicative of limiting self-perceptions - a 'them vs me' mentality, that is loaded with the belief that "I may never reach the impossible heights that they have". It builds a mental barrier between what I am capable of, and what I think I deserve. Not good, and not okay. 

These questions prompted a lot of soul-searching. Around the same time, I started noticing references to this topic everywhere. One of my Professors one day told us:  

"What do real change-makers do, that enable them to be bold? They think horizontally - they forget the vertical lines of hierarchy, and they see everyone as the same."

We all have to stop doing this.

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It must have all seeped into my head - or perhaps being aware of my behaviour enabled me to also subsconsciously change it. 

When I came to Indonesia for my internship, I could still hear my friend's words in my mind. And one day I had the confidence to walk into my Country Director's office and just ask for a coffee chat. Not to network, not to ask him for work even. But just to talk, and see who he was a person. We ended up talking for 2 hours and he has since become one of my biggest role models.

When I started seeing people as people, and not as roles or positions or labels, my whole experience of human interaction changed. You ask people questions, you discover where their passions lie, what they care about, why they do what they do - and suddenly, nothing else really matters.

Of course, another aspect of this change was probably the re-introduction of my daily routines like meditation, which helped me to regain control of my world of emotions and build inner strength.

But I  guess what I'm trying to say is this - a whole new world has opened up for me since I changed the way I viewed people. A world often hidden by societal constructs, assumptions and snap judgements.

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This also feels good because the way I act now, is more in tune with the values I want to stand for. And the personal stories I have heard as a result? AMAZING.  They range from incredible to heart-breaking to purely inspirational. The one thing I've learnt then, the hard way, is this - whoever they are, people just want to be heard.

So to that friend who taught me to treat people as people and  not as 'things', not as achievements, position titles or dollar signs, thank you - I think you may just have changed my world.

What do you think? Have you ever noticed this behaviour in yourself? Have you ever found yourself subconsciously changing who you are in certain situations for certain people, and if you have, why? Do you think it's okay, or do you think this needs to change? As always, I would love to hear from you.

Til' next time! Stay fulfilled.

Love,
A. x