6 Step Plan To Block Social Media From Controlling Your Life And Mind

being here right now. I am so grateful for your time, your energy, your presence. And this is one of those themes that I'm really excited I get to address with you today. I think that I'm reading more and more searches, more and more trends, more and more articles about how social media is negatively affecting our mental health. And as someone who creates a lot on social media, who's sharing a lot of insights and ideas on social media, I want to help you navigate and understand how you can

use social media so that it stops using you. And today I'm going to give you a step by step plan to block social media from controlling your life and your mind. And I want to start off by saying this, All new technologies are always going to catch us off guard. They're always going to surprise us. There's always going to be pros and cons. It was the same as when TVs arrived, then color TVs, radios, the Internet. Right, There's always been fear. It's always affected us positively and negatively.

But what I've understood is that a lot of the times, we spend a lot of our energy talking about the challenges, the stresses, the pressures, the fears of what this new technology brings. I'm not saying we shouldn't do that, but often we spend such a high amount of our time on the issue that we don't really talk about how to maneuver, navigate, and guide ourselves through with what is happening. Inevitably, right, social media happened and is happening. AI has already happened

and is happening. And I think unless we can truly understand how we fit into a world where it exists, it's really difficult for us to take steps forward. We can't just keep talking about the challenges and the issues.

We have to use the challenge and the issue, which is what I'm going to attempt to do today and then give you solutions, actions and a plan to transform that now, just to make it really, really clear, because maybe some of us are thinking, Oh, it doesn't affect me that much, or it's okay, or maybe you're listening right now and you're saying, Jay, this is exactly what

I need right now. Right If you're someone who spends it's too long on social media, if you're someone who's feeling a lot of fomo, if you're someone who's feeling more stressed and anxiety about your social media usage, you're in the right place. So this study blew my mind. Forty six percent of respondents indicated that social media makes them want to permanently change a part of their body through surgery. Now I'm raising that not because I have

any issues with surgery. I'm raising that because it just shows the level of impact. This isn't just an idea. It's an ideology that makes us want to physically permanently change something because of what we're seeing, because of what we're exposed to. Now, listen to this. Eighty nine percent of respondents indicated that they feel unsatisfied with their life and comparing it to others on social media. Raise your hands if you felt that way, Raise your hands if

that thought has crossed your mind many, many times. I think we all have that thought. Now the next one thirty two percent of respondents indicated that they feel addicted to bad news online. How many of us know that when we see bad news, we share it more, we comment more, we talk about it more, we hang out with our friends more. It's fascinating to me. Now, why am I sharing these three things? I know we all do them. And you know what the biggest challenge is,

we want to completely eliminate the thought. Here's the truth. You can't eliminate the thought. You can only have a response to it. You can't eliminate ever having a thought about fomo or bad news. You will have it. It will always be your instant response, because that's how we've been conditioned for years. All you can change is how

quickly you have a response that's healthy. Right, So, the unhealthy thought of I feel unsatisfied with my life, which doesn't make you feel great about yourself, right, It doesn't make you feel good about yourself. That thought is going to keep recurring for probably most of your life. But that's not something to get discouraged about. What we need to recognize is at the same time, if we can say I don't feel satisfied with my life and ask the question, but I'm going to figure it out. What

is it? What would make me feel satisfied with my life? Because guess what, it's not just doing what that person's doing. I don't really want to go to that party. I don't really want to be invited to that event. But I'm saying that there's a part of my life that's not satisfying. And that's the really interesting trick or switch that we need to make. Right, we're not really saying are we really saying that's the life we want? Or if we stop to think about it, we're just saying, no,

there's a life I want, but I'm not there yet. Right. You are going to respond to bad news. It's how our brains are wired. You're going to see bad news and become attracted to it, and you're going to want to talk about it. But how about next time you're with your friends and you start a conversation, you purposely propose a positive news topic. You say, hey, did you see this? Did you see this amazing video of this little kid? Did you see this incredible thing that this

person did in the media. How about you become that switch. I want you to try it out for seven days. Please please, please, please please, Because what we don't understand is when we talk negatively about other people, we're then more fearful of people talking negatively about us. Right if there's been the latest scandal, the latest issue, we're diving into the gossip. It feels like it doesn't affect us.

I promise you it does because you now become less vulnerable about your challenges with your friends, because you don't want to be the talk of the town. Here's what I want to add as our direction for today. If we don't learn how to use technology, it ends up consuming us. We're not trained how to interact with new technology. And on top of all of that, it's designed to be addictive, and therefore we have to be more careful

when we interact with it. I find it really fascinating that addictive substances are generally bound by age, So you have to be eighteen to smoke, right, and nicotine is one of the most accessible legal drugs, and it's also one of the most addictive, and most people who smoke just a few times will get hooked, and only a very few people are able to smoke occasionally without being addicted. Now,

what's really interesting is I feel that way about social media. Right, you only have to use social media a few times before you're addicted. It's not something that's like a slow burner. More like alcohol, which is kind of like this. You don't get immediately hooked, but it takes a longer period of time. Social media, I think we'd all agree, is

far more instant. And what's really interesting is when you look at the relationship, we understand that what's happening chemically is the release of dopamine, and studies showed that scientists used to think that dopamine was a pleasure chemical in the brain, but now we know it actually creates desire. Dopamine causes us to seek, want, and search, and the pull of dopamine is so strong that studies have shown tweeting is harder for people to resist than cigarettes and alcohol.

You know, you don't have to be twenty one to be on social media, but our brains are not fully developed when we're using it, and it's more addictive. So I also want to take that as a point of empathy and compassion with yourself. That if you, your child, your niece, your nephew, your cousin is struggling with social media addiction, please don't see that as a weakness. Please don't see that as your fault. It's designed to do that. And I think when we stop guilting ourselves, we have

the opportunity for grit. When we stop making ourselves feel bad about something, we might actually be able to make a good choice. Right. Think about that. Listen to that again. When we stop making ourselves feel bad about something, we can actually start making better, good choices. Right. And it's just interesting how we've given access to something that is so addictive to everyone. Think about gambling, right. Gambling activates

the brain's reward system, which is powered by dopamine. And dopamine is a neurotransmitter inside the brain that reinforces sensations of pleasure and connects those sensations to certain behaviors or actions. So we're getting locked in that loop. Right. You go on social media, you see someone like your post, you comment,

you get that dopamine reward bang. I'm going to keep using it, keep using it to get that same dopamine reward, And the way it works is you have to keep doing more and more and more to get the same level of benefit. It's not like you do more and you get more benefit or more excit It's almost like you've got to do more every time to get the same level of excitement. So we have access to something very addictive, and if you're addicted or if you're struggling,

that is not your fault. It is natural. And today's all about saying, well, how can I actually develop a healthy relationship with something which has benefits, which has pros, which can benefit my life in many many ways? But how do I make sure that that's what I'm getting out of it? And that's really what life is about overall, is saying this exists, how can I interact with it in a way that it's beneficial to my existence. So

let's dive in. One of the first things I read which blew my mind in this studies that people talk about themselves around thirty to forty percent of the time in person. If you're an in person conversation, you're going to talk about yourself thirty to forty percent of the time.

Is the other time you're talking about them and maybe you're talking about a world event, right, So if you're talking about yourself thirty to forty percent, and they're talking about themselves thirty to forty percent, that's sixty to eighty percent, and then the rest of the twenty to forty percent is about what's happening in the world. Check this out. On social media, people talk about themselves eighty percent of the time. Eighty percent. That's double what we do in

real life. So when we receive a notification of positive feedback, we feel a positive sensation from dopamine. But let's look at that the other way. When you get a negative comment, it has a negative interaction. What I'm really learning here and I looked into some more of the research, and it says that talking face to face is messy and emotionally involved, and we don't get the time to do

what psychologists call self presentation or positioning yourself. So on social media we get to position ourselves how we want, as opposed in real life when you have to do it in the moment, we struggle to do that. Now, the challenge with that is also that when we position ourselves and we take a lot of time to curate ourselves, but then people don't like the way we curate ourselves.

That causes an issue, right, just as we like the positive feedback, of course, we get negatively affected by the comments. And sixty two percent of people say they feel better about themselves when people react positively to what they post on social media. But of course we know the same is true for the negative. So what are we trying to say here? We're trying to say that we're basically

more self obsessed on social media. We're more self focused, and that ends up creating rewards, but it also ends up creating issues. Here's how I want us to shift. How can we shift to focusing on connecting with others on social media? How can we comment positively on other people's posts? How can we truly feel excited for others? This is the real question that we're struggling with because we get so self obsessed, which makes us more amplified.

It's almost like putting a magnifying glass on the self, which means the positives gets bigger and so does the negative. But it's actually the struggle that we have is how do we actually feel more excited about other people's joy. Here's a few things I want to share with you. Someone else's joy does not take away from your opportunity for joy. There is no cap on the amount of

people getting married in twenty twenty three. There is no cap of the amount of billionaires or millionaires or financially free people in twenty twenty three, or twenty twenty four for that matter. The world has made us believe that there is a finite number of seats. There's limited availability, there's VIP, and then there's normal, the special seats, the

last seats, the final few, it's sold out. Write This language has created this belief of scarcity, that there is less and less and less opportunity for you to live the life you want. And I want to remind you this. There is unlimited opportunity. There is no limit. There is no cap on any of the things you pursue. They're just don't Maybe you have to wait a bit longer, maybe it's not your turn this time. But I promise you that someone else winning does not mean you're losing.

And this is something we have to remind ourselves off daily. When someone else is winning, that does not mean you're losing. And instead of feeling envious and jealous when someone else is winning study them, study, learn take notes, learn about their struggle, learn about their journey, learn about what they did to get there, whatever that may be. Because when you study and you understand the struggle, you no longer

feel envious. You recognize that it took a lot out of them, and you're ready to go down that same path. So we have to shift our focus on how we view others and how we view ourselves. I think we spend too much time on social media thinking about ourselves, and we need to kind of get back down to

that thirty to forty percent. If we're on social media spending thirty to forty percent of time on ourselves, but then thirty to forty percent of time supporting our friends, supporting others, and maybe twenty percent of time making sure we follow and unfollow the right places, Like I have blocked, muted, unfollowed so many things that I don't want to see on a daily basis because I know that they trigger certain responses, and that's really important. Are you aware of

what triggers you down a negative path? Are you aware of what sets you off? Right? Who are those pages? I literally know the page when it pops up, if it ever does again, and I say, Okay, now, no wonder I'm feeling this way. Okay, number two, this one's really really important to me. And this one is something that I think we underutilize. And I'm sure you've heard this before, but I just want to reiterate it because

I find it becoming so common. Please do activities without your phone when you're with your friends, like dinners, lunches, brunches, Like put the phone away and put it away together. Make it a ritual where you all put it in a bowl at the beginning. You will put it away in your own bags or someone's bag at the beginning. Like make a commitment out of it. Make a commitment out of it, because we all know that everyone starts a good conversation phones on the table, Take phones off

the table. Take the phone off the table, and keep each other accountable to this because it's so easy for when someone says, I'm going to the bathroom, you just take your phone out. I've been forcing myself to not take out my phone in gaps. It's hard for me too, By the way, The gaps are the easiest time for me when someone's gone to the bathroom or I'm getting

in the elevator. I've been trying really hard to not distract myself with my phone and use it in that way and instead to just be present, listen to the music and the elevator, to observe the cool clothes someone's wearing next to me, to take a moment at a restaurant, to just look at the menu, to just take in the sense and the sites. It's really hard to do this, but it's so important that we get used to not using our phone as a gap filler. And you'll say

to me, Jay, well, how do I do that? Because my natural instinct is to pick up my phone, make your background on your phone saying put down your phone, put it away right. Whatever you need is that reminder when you take it out, right, when you first take it out and you're about to start scrolling, just take a moment to set the habit of when you pull your phone out, to ask why am I here? Do

I actually need anything from this? And it's going to feel weird at first, it's going to feel strange at first, but I promise you that the more you can actually create that distance between you and your phone in those gaps, the more you're going to start feeling peace and ease, and you just need to try it a few times

to feel it. A study found that ninety four percent of participants reported feeling troubled when they didn't have their phone, eighty percent were when someone else use their phone, and seventy percent expected to feel depressed, panicked, and helpless if their phone weren't missing or they couldn't find it. A study found that eighty nine percent of undergraduate students experience phantom vibrations. This is the perception of vibrations from a

mobile device that isn't vibrating. People crave receiving notifications so much that they start imagining them right, and this is why we have to get out and do activities where you don't even think about your phone, like ping pong, tennis, pickleball, walks, hikes, getting out there into nature with friends, with family. You won't even think about your phone. You won't even need it because you have to use your body in mind. What's happening now is we're doing more activities that don't

require our three sixty presents. For example, if I'm playing pickleball, or if I'm playing ping pong or tennis or whatever it may be, I can't be on my phone and hold a racket at the same time. It's just not possible. If you're into golf, if you're into football or soccer or whatever it may be, you're not going to be able to be on your phone at the same time, and you could be out there for two three hours. Right, And we're doing too many activities where you can be

watching TV while you're on your phone. You could be cooking while you're on your phone, right. You could be doing so many other things while you're on your phone, while you're talking to someone else. And the more we take time every day to do activities where it's just physically impossible that you're incapable of doing it while you're on your phone. Especially sports is such a great way of getting outdoors and being away from it. And that's

where we're training ourselves to have extended periods of time. Right. If I just told you just sit in your house and don't be on your device, it's not going to work. And so we have to find that alternative. We have to find a way of being off our devices in a way that's fully present. I know that I can play pickaball for three hours and then I'll go back to my phone and I'll think, Wow, like you know, I didn't even miss my phone. Now the next one.

We all know we need to reduce usage. And this is something I want to talk about because a lot of us think we need to completely stop using social media. Now. That can be useful in small periods, but overall, we need to build a healthy relationship. And a healthy relationship is not a version. There's a beautiful quote in The Bug with Ghita which says that attachment and aversion are two sides of the same coin. Right, this idea that attachment.

If I'm addicted to something, actually, if you're trying to push it away and reject it, it's as strongly present in your life. Right. If you love someone and you hate someone, you almost think about them equally. If you hate someone with that same obsession or that same intensity as you love someone, you almost think about them as much as you love someone. And so with social media. If you hate it, if you're trying to be like I don't want it, I want to be away from it,

it's almost like you're thinking about it again. Now here's something I want to say to you that's really helped me. No, technology zones and times in your home, and I want you to think about this in a fun way. You can literally put print out signs with the no phone sign almost like a no smoking sign, but with a phone picture, in areas of your home that you want to be reminded that you have to leave your phone

out of. So I remember, for me, I almost visualized lasers in certain parts of mine and my wife's apartment and now our home where it's like, okay, in the bedroom, no phone area, right the dining table, no phone area. Like what are those areas in your home? And literally put up signs make it fun and silly if friends will come over and they'll have to leave it out as well, and all of a sudden it's like, okay, we're in a no phone zone. We're in a no

phone zone in the house. This area we're not using it. It could be a table, it could be a bedside table, it could be wherever you think it's important for you to disconnect. Because people who limited their social media use to ten minutes day for three weeks led to lower

loneliness and depression. You think your loneliness may go up if you're not on social media, your loneliness actually goes down when you reduce your time on social media, and reducing social media use to even thirteen minutes per day results in significantly lower levels of anxiety, depression, sleep problems, and of course fomo. Now now I like using social media, and I found a way of limiting my social media in a way that I'm following things that make me happy,

following things that don't give me those negative responses. And that's what it is. It's those it's the responses that make us feel unhealthy that we're looking out for. So I want you to think about the no technology zones and no technology times in your home, Like for me, an hour before bed and the first couple of hours when I wake up, they're no technology times. And I found that the easiest way to do that is to

lock in to my morning routine. So, whether it's my meditation, my reflection, I need to do something in the morning. But I found that my phone just has to be far away. Right. At one point, I literally used to lock my phone in my laptop in my car and I got a real alarm clock and it saved the day. Now I want to address fomo. I want to address the idea that we think that everyone around us is having an amazing life, and the reason we think that

is because we don't actually know them. Our relationships through social media become shallower. As your relationship becomes shallower, people tell you less personal, intimate information about them. Therefore you only have the very non intimate public version of this person, and that's the version you trust to be reality, when what's actually happening is there's so much going on behind the scenes, which is why we need to have deeper

relationships with people. Now I'm not saying the reason to have deeper relationships with people is to so that you know how sad they are, so that you don't have FOMO. But it's a natural impact. It's a natural byproduct. When you get to know people deeply and intimately, you realize we all have so much going on, we have so much stress. You realize everyone's life is not perfect, and you say to yourself, oh, okay, I get it. We're

all struggling. We're all in the same boat. And I want to take this opportunity to say that to you. I'm in the same boat as you. I have stresses, I have anxieties, I have challenges, I have problems. I have all of the above, right, And it's so easy when you don't know someone deeply to just assume that they're fine. I remember last year when I was talking about the surgeries I went through, or you know, on the podcast, of course, if you listen to me, we

have a deep into my relationship. You know, I talk about my issues and challenges. But if someone just follows me on Instagram, I don't get the context to go this deep all the time. Right. And by the way, I love posting on Instagram. I love sharing what I share, but the podcast is always giving you more context of what I'm going through, And so I encourage you to have more curious, vulnerable conversations with people you love, and

especially the people you have fomo about. Right, those people in your life actually get to know them and you start to realize that their life is imperfect. This one's a big one for me. Become a creator not a consumer. This is something that has helped me on social media. I find myself because I'm a creator. I'm often on

social media to share as opposed to consume. And there are over two hundred million creators worldwide, and of these creators, two percent, which is around four million, have more than one hundred thousand followers, while most creators, about one hundred and forty million, have between one and ten thousand followers. The idea is when you're creating, you have less time to consume. Also, when you're creating, you have less to be on social media because you're actually creating off social media.

And the reason I encourage you to create not just consume, is your consumption becomes more strategic and effective. You're now watching things that inspire you. Now watching things that help you learn what's your passion go and follow accounts that really speak to your passion. One of my favorites accounts right now is Amy McNee and her account is called Inspired to Write. She is a writer and an author and a creativity coach, and she posts some of the

best advice for creatives. And I think when that pops up on my feed, it makes my day because it reminds me how I want to create. It reminds me how I want to show up. Whereas if I'm just following things that don't give me that reminder, if I'm not making it easy for myself, right, if I'm not making it easy for myself then of course I'm only going to see things that trigger me and bring me down.

I think too many of us that proportion of things that inspire us, that ratio of the things we follow between the things that inspire us and the things that trigger us, is like for every one thing that inspires us, we seeing like twenty five things that trigger us, and that needs to change. Now. I want to share with you some apps that may help as well, because sometimes we need to not be limited by the apps we have by more apps. So freedom for blocking distractions and

all yours at once. This is an article I saw on zapia dot com which gave these great recommendations. Cold Turkey Blocker for scheduled system wide blocking, leech Block NG for free browser based website blocking, Rescue Time for time tracking with built in website blocking, Forest for motivating you to put your phone down, Self Control for a nuclear option, Focus for a combination, Pomodoro timer and distraction blocker, Poor

Block for distraction blocking with cute animal pictures. Now I'm not affiliated with any of those apps, but those are just some that came up through my search that have heard about being useful for people. But I've also found and here's here's the reality that I've found that having alternatives is better than having blocks. Blocks is almost like

it's almost like teasing yourself where you want to break through. Right, It's like when your parents told you you're not allowed to play on the PlayStation for this much time, or you're not allowed to be on your phone for this long. You just want to break that rule. So I don't think rules help as much as alternatives. And that's why I love that you're turning to the podcast app, have an audiobook ready to go on your phone, have a book on your kindlelap on your phone. That's what I

do to me, That's what I turn to. So I used to come into my phone and go straight to Instagram or TikTok. I've trained myself to open up Audible or Kindle for me to get me doing the thing I want to do. Now, really, all I want is something to do in my gap, right, because I want to distract myself or be busy or whatever it may be. And I found myself giving myself a healthier distraction is

far better than trying to avoid a distraction completely. Right, It's been really, really tough to do that so I hope that this episode helps you. I hope that you try out at least one of these techniques. I'm so grateful for the energy and time that we get today, and I want you to have a healthier relationship with social media. It is going to take a bit of discipline, it is going to take a bit of work, and this is the core rule I want to share with you.

Find alternatives, Find the thing that you're going to choose over the thing that forces you to choose it. Finding a first choice. Making something a first choice is far better than just trying to resist it completely. That will break down your willpower and your personal energy, and it will just make it way way harder. Thanks for listening on purpose. Make sure you leave a review, make sure you share your biggest takeaway on stories on Instagram, on

TikTok in the comments. I'll be looking out for them, and I wish you an amazing bit