Structuring a self-care routine can be challenging nowadays. With the pandemic being an evolving issue, there’s no telling when gyms will close again and whether remote work will still be the norm for your company in the months to come. You find yourself meeting new people and exploring the world through social media, and now more than ever, your life seems to persist through the virtual world.
When mapping out ways to establish a self-care routine during the pandemic, one of the best choices you can make is to cut back on social media. It’s understandable why your usage increased since the outbreak, but no matter your reason for scrolling through your feed for hours, its negative impact lingers. If you’re really intent on creating a well-rounded self-care routine, a social media detox should be a regular commitment.
Enhance your experiences
There are many ways you can detox without fully disconnecting. In fact, regulating what and when you post is one of the most important things you can do today. Constantly recording videos, staging your dining table, and taking photos take away moments that are better lived in the moment. People think that they’re immortalizing memories, but they fail to live in them in the process.
So, the next time you go on your much-awaited road-trip, consider whether it’s worth posting every shop visit you make in Utah. Do you really want people to know that you have a hitch installation? Do your friends need to know that you bought a trailer or that you know how to install it to the hitch without (excuse the pun) a hitch? These posts may be harmless, but as you go along your road trip, you miss out on living in the present.
Try to remember when you last marveled at the sky without taking a photo of it with your phone. Paying attention to what is happening now is an underrated skill with tons of benefits. The longer you practice this with social media, the easier it will be to apply it to other areas of your life, like working out and eating healthy meals.
Free up your schedule
Are you often consumed by the thought that you have so many things to do and so little time to do them with? This is a problem that arises from poor time management skills. It hurts to know that you’re either over-committing or underperforming, but it’s the first step to freeing up much-needed time in your schedule.
Observe how long you spend on each social media app. Your smartphone could be equipped with features that can give you a daily estimate. On average, a person spends 114 minutes on apps and sites daily. Countries that rank high on using social media spend a staggering 240 minutes every day. If you’ve been wondering where time flies, then you now have your answer.
One trick you can do is remove the app from your phone and access them solely on your laptop. Since it’s more work booting up your laptop, you’ll get discouraged from randomly checking your notifications and scrolling through your feed.
Break that competitive streak
Comparison breeds competition. It’s just a fact of life in the age of social media. The more often you use applications like Instagram and Facebook, the more likely you will compare your life to your friends. It’s likely you also follow celebrities that give you unreasonable beauty and material standards.
You may try to overcome its effects like depression and low self-esteem by overcompensating. You’ll buy more expensive clothes, take more expensive vacations, and purchase more expensive items that you don’t really need. The competitive streak that it starts is difficult to break, but you can slowly do it by taking extended periods of social media breaks.
Go offline for an entire vacation. Commit to no-social media activities on the weekends. Filter your feed and unfollow people that trigger ungrateful thoughts. It’s challenging not to reach for your phone the first few times you try it, but you’ll soon find yourself enjoying a more peaceful state of mind.
Detox in many ways
There are many ways you can cut back on social media. Create a plan on how you’ll limit your daily use and when you’ll disconnect altogether. When it comes to self-care, the significant changes happen first when you transform your mind.
