Hi guys! Welcome to Episode 269 of the Wildly Successful Lifestyle podcast! You may love social media, you may hate social media, you may not care at all how many views you get or you may care a lot. Whatever your relationship is with social media is, this is a good episode to share because there’s someone that needs to hear it and you could be the only way they get it. And also thank you for being here and for listening……ok
How many followers do I have? How many likes did I get? How many views did I get on that last post? How much of our day is spent wondering how to get more followers, how to get more likes and the most views possible. When will it be enough? why do we care so much.
You aren’t alone if these hit home with you. We have been conditioned to think that all that matters. But even when you get tons of likes, now you want to outdo that one…it’s never enough. Why??
I could go into how suicide has risen in all age groups except over 75. Some studies show it could be because of social media. This is why I so firmly believe we all have to take care of our minds. To protect our internal peace.
External validation is hollow. Because when it’s not there you feel like you’re not good enough or you don’t matter. None of which is true.
Make sure you’re loving what you’re doing, not just the attention you get for doing it. Because when that shifts and it will, if you’re primarily doing it for the attention or validation then when that goes away, you will feel not good enough, like you don’t matter.
We were recently in the pool with our family some of whom are pretty young….our little great nephew is 7. His name is Xander. So precious, he so wanted us all to see him doing his tricks off the board. Watch this! Rate me doing this. He was seeking validation that he was doing good. He wanted to make sure we saw how brave he was and let me tel you, he did a flip off that diving board for the first time without even thinking, it was quite impressive and we let him know that! And we had some other friends there too and they had a little boy that’s 3. And he was watching this take place and normally he wouldn’t go in the big pool but he was enthralled with the 7 year old so now all of a sudden he decides he wants to be in the big pool and he’s not quite ready to go off the diving board but he is running and jumping from the side of the pool onto this Lilly pad where we are all on every side of it. But he didn’t care one thing about us. He wouldn’t make one move until Xander was watching him. He so wanted Xander to see
him and acknowledge him.
The age of social media has shown us that we may never grow out of that.
I realized this for myself. I do reels, one will get 11,000 views and then one will get 300. I noticed myself saying ok that wasn’t good because it only got 300 views. I felt my emotions fluctuating with how many views or likes or shares I got. I recognized really quickly I needed to check myself. I created one that I loved and it resonated with me but then it didn’t do as well as I thought it should so I started saying well it must not have been that good. Wait a minute. NO!!!! Everything I put out is something I’m proud of. It’s
something I love. And that doesn’t change because other people don’t feel the same. It was like I was 7 again jumping off the diving board wanting everyone to look at me and rate me so that I can then decide how good I am. No. I am as good as I think I am. Period. And so are you. It’s easy to think we are alone in this but recently a woman I follow in Instagram her name is tonyalieigh. She has the school of self esteem. She raises the bar for me and I love it. I love people that have high standards for themselves
because I do too. Anyway she had dropped off a little bit from social media and then this last week she posted again with a story about taking a break because she had gotten a little tied up into what the algorithm will like instead of what she was passionate about. So she was posting things to get her noticed but not what she loved or was passionate about. I respect that she showed that side because it’s easy to do. It’s easy to try to please an algorithm instead of posting your passion and simply knowing it’s good regardless of the amount of attention it gets.
If you rely on external validation, when it it stops, you’ll look elsewhere for it and that can come in the form of food, drinking, overworking, people pleasing, seeking to fill the hole that is left that never gets filled. And can never get filled from external validation.
So, if you find yourself feeling sad or disappointed or depressed even…and you’re not sure why…. And you’d like a tool to know what it’s stemming from. I have one. And it works.
Let me tell you my experience. I was having a moment the other evening where I was just sort of feeling down. I didn’t understand why. Nothing bad had happened. I remembered a reel that Dr. Amen, he’s the brain doctor, I will put his Instagram handle in the show notes. He’s a good follow. I’ll put that and tonya Leigh in the show notes. But he said when he’s feeling down or kind of sad or depressed, he stops and writes down what he’s thinking at the moment. And then he asks himself, is this true? The majority of
the time the answer is NO. The idea is to Write your thoughts down because your thoughts will tell you why you’re feeling a certain way. So I did that. And some of the things were astounding. I’m embarrassed to say it almost because this was just a moment. I don’t always think this but I want to share them with you to show you you’re not alone with thoughts that aren’t serving you. So here’s some of the things I wrote in my thought download that night when I was feeling down:
No one seems to care about my message. No one cares about my podcast. I work so hard and for what? It’s a big world and I’m so small. I don’t matter. I’m afraid I’m not confident enough to put myself out there in the public speaking arena. Those are just a few of the thoughts I had at that moment. Of course I was feeling down, just listen to what I was saying to myself. Then i did the second step where I asked if these thoughts were true. Ok. Well. I matter to a lot of people and I listed several of them. I’m proud of my podcast and I enjoy creating every single episode and that’s all that matters. Where
my podcast is today I could only have dreamed of that when I first started. Me loving it has to be enough, because we are programmed to always want more. If I had 1 million listeners I’d want 10 million. Then I wrote I am enough and life is working for me not to me and I’m exactly where I’m meant to be. I started feeling better because I realized I was searching for external validation when what I needed to know is nothing matters except what I think. Am I getting value? Do I feel I’m adding value? Am I proud of what I’m doing? The answer is yes.
When you’re having feelings that aren’t serving you, getting to the thought that’s causing them and asking if it’s true is so helpful. Because so many of them are just thoughts. Just sentences in our brain that don’t amount to a hill of beans until we make them mean something. Knowing your own value and knowing that what you’re doing is your very best is as good as life gets. Sure there’s other fun things but true happiness and peace internally is what we are all striving for, it isn’t external things.
We don’t need everyone else’s eyes on us to feel seen. Everyone else is worrying about their own life. Look around…it’s true and that’s ok and that’s how it’s meant to be. It’s my job to take care of my own thoughts and my own internal world. No one can do that for me. I just have to acknowledge that what I’m doing is my best and make sure every day that that’s what I’m putting forward. My best.
So stop worrying what other people think. They are more worried about themselves.
Take care of you. Here’s what I am working on telling myself every morning as I go through my routine.
I am good enough just as I am.
I matter
I am exactly where I’m supposed to be
life is always working in my favor
Today is going to be a good day.
Breathe those in. Write them down. Put them on an alarm. Believe it. Believe it and it will be true. I promise you that. It’s already true. We just have to get on board.
I love you guys. I’ll talk to you in a few days.
