How to Have a Healthy Relationship With Social Media | Well Being + Lifestyle

Social media has completely changed the dynamic of our society. Many of the walls and obstacles that entrepreneurs faced decades ago has disappeared as the world is now more connected. But, it can be a distracting double edge sword. As an entrepreneur you face the constant balance of being available for connecting and sharing while being fully present in your everyday life too. Below are 5 steps you can absorb daily to start having a healthier relationship with social media.

1. Evaluate – Do you find yourself reaching for your phone the moment you get up? Do you have your phone in your hand until the the moment you go to sleep? Can you get through a meal with someone without checking your phone? Be totally honest with yourself about your current relationship with social media. Watch your habits over the next few days and notice how much time you spend on it and how often you reach to check your phone. The fastest way to see how influential it has become in your life is to completely unplug for one day and see what it feels like. Sometimes you don’t realize the hold something has on you until you can’t get to it.
2. Block out your social media times – Create your own rhythm of when you go online and check or update your feeds. Shift your behavior to thinking of it as fully checking in and then fully checking back out. This allows you to step in and step out of that world without it being something that is constantly running in the background of your day. You don’t always have to be available to every update and notification. In fact turning off notifications is one of the most disciplined decisions you can make. Whatever it was really can wait and it allows you to stay focused on whatever you’re doing in real life.
3. Have a plan – Decide on an approach for how you want to spend your social media blocks of time. If you’re just going on to mentally check out, that’s cool, just make sure to be conscious of how much you’re checking out for. Set a timer on your phone if you have to. The same goes for if you’re going on for connecting and sharing. Have in mind the amount of time you want to do that for and stick to it. Social media can seriously become a black hole of wasted time if you don’t remain aware of that.
4. Be real with yourself – If social media is part of your content marketing or overall business connecting strategies, then definitely apply the above are ways to keep it balanced. But, if you’re always going online just to scroll around or if it’s become an unconscious habit out of boredom then you need ask yourself: is this the best use of my time? Literally ask yourself if looking in on the lives of what others are saying or doing means more than progressing the vision for your own life. It’s totally your choice, but I’m pretty sure that there’s always something more productive you could be doing with your time.
5. Keep it all in perspective – The world is not going to stop if you don’t comment right away to something within the few minutes it was posted. It also will not stop if you don’t see what other people are sharing in real time constantly throughout the day. Whatever they shared can be seen later in the day or during your blocked out times. Will your day really be that much better by constantly keeping tabs on what everyone else is doing? Why does it really matter? What does it really do for you? Be honest with yourself about the intention and motivation behind your social media usage.

Social media has it’s advantages, but to many people it has become a leash they don’t even realize they are on. Having a healthy perspective towards the amount of time and impact social media has on your life will ensure that you maintain a sense of enriched wellness. It may difficult to unplug at first, but pretty soon you’ll start to experience new levels of creativity, peace, and productivity in your days and become addicted to that instead!

Originally published on Empire Life Magazine