It has been a lot of negativity on the internet lately (as seems the norm these past few years) and if we don’t be intentional about our use of it, we can end up allowing that negativity to influence our mindset around a LOT of things. So to avoid letting all of that potential negativity consume us, we are going to provide you with some tools to avoid unintentional internet influence.
First, if you know me, you know I love taking inventory, so it’s only right that this would be our first step. Its time to look through all of our social media sites one-by-one to decipher if who we are following/what’s showing up in our timelines are serving us in some way. This doesn’t have to be something that is always business or development related. For example, I follow positivity accounts to boost my mood and comedy accounts to give me the extra dosage of laughter for the day, but those are purely for entertainment. I hav
e chosen to unfollow most news outlets, gossip sites and accounts that post negative/depressing content more often than not, because that doesn’t serve my greater purpose. Life is about paradigms and perspective: What we surround ourselves with, will inevitably have an affect on our mindset, whether consciously or unconsciously, and it will shift the way we think about ourselves, others, and the world.
Okay, so now that we’ve taken inventory on what does serve us, it’s time to unfollow/unfriend those accounts that do not. Say “Bye Bye” and keep it moving. One thing about progression is that we don’t need to look back in order to find peace and move forward.
One thing about building new habits: once
you get rid of an old habit, you must REPLACE it with something new, or you will revert back to it (I’ll get on habit building sometime in the near future). So now, it would be a good idea to brainstorm on topics/people you would like to see and hear from, things that truly make you happy, and follow those accounts. For apps such as TikTok, try not to interact with the negative posts and do more interacting with those that align with you more so that the algorithm picks up on your newfound preferences and feeds you what you desire to see.
This is not going to stop all negativity from reaching you by any means. However, this will lessen the amount that hits you directly. If you’re worrying about staying in the loop, don’t worry, if it’s important, you will see it someway, somehow, because when things go viral, they tend to push to everyone’s accounts (someone you follow may post about it and you can choose to go investigate for yourself from there).
Content isn’t exclusive of social media either, take a look at the media you consume such as music, movies/tv, and what you read on a consistent basis. Do a clean sweep of these as well. I’ll go more in depth with these in a future article because that’s another behemoth to tackle. In the meantime, lets clean up our everyday content and let me know how its working for you in a week or two from now. You can email me directly at ajsstepsofalchemy@gmail.com or reach out to me through my site https://www.AJsStepsofAlchemy.com, I look forward to hearing of your progress! In the meantime, take care and don’t forget to think of 5 things that you’re grateful for every day, gratitude will change your life!
Sincerely, your local Life Coach, AJ.