DND Era: A 30 Day Social Media Detox
It’s been 30 days (did you read this like the beginning of titanic “it’s been 84 years”?) off of social media and I’ve been transformed.
Before I share some of my biggest takeaways, I want to first share with you my reason for needing this detox. I was feeling extremely overwhelmed and chaotic coming back from the women's empowerment conference I had attended. I had information overload in the best way, but between seeing all of the takeaways from other attendees and feeling unsettled in how I was showing up in my business I needed to get quiet and go inward.
Even if you’ve curated your timeline to be full of people who inspire you and challenge you and are “good”, it still can be overwhelming. When it comes to social media, there can be too much of a good thing.
Despite what all of the ‘gurus’ and business experts were saying, I left social media two weeks before Thanksgiving. What happened next blew my mind.
Within the first 72 hours, I completely revamped what you know as the “& She Rises…” community and membership. It all just flowed. I started planning the first major event for this community which will be held in March 2023.
Within the first week, I had joined a new accountability group with three other ladies who were in attendance at the conference in October. We meet via zoom biweekly and have a text group for the day to day. What a game changer this has been. These women inspire me, challenge me and push me to operate in my potential.
Thanksgiving was calm and wonderful. I was ultra present with my family that day as we hosted breakfast and dinner. I couldn’t help but to notice how peaceful the day was. I had also unsubscribed from over 100 different companies, so my email wasn’t flooded with all of the black Friday/cyber Monday deals. I didn’t feel pressured to buy things I didn’t need because I wasn’t seeing them.
We traveled to Charleston the week after to celebrate my uncle’s 70th birthday. It was so much fun and because I wasn’t concerned with capturing every second for the ‘gram, I was able to be fully present with family and close friends. It was a 70s themed party and Jax’s crushed velvet bellbottoms were the talk of the party.
We will be traveling for 17 out of the 31 days in December and for the first time in a long time, I am not anxious or overwhelmed about Christmas. This is without a doubt a direct result of not being consumed by social media.
I want to say one last thing before I share with you my biggest takeaways. I don’t think social media is bad. I do think that it is a great way to connect with family and friends as well as people you’ve never met but can relate to. But prior to me doing this detox, I was for sure addicted to social media and not just because I use it to connect with clients and potential customers etc.
Ok, so let’s get into it. Here are my biggest takeaways from my social media detox:
1. My gut/intuition has never been wrong. I just couldn’t hear it before with all of the noise. One of the promises I made to myself was that I would never doubt my gut/intuition again. There were so many things that happened in the last week of Grayson’s life that left me feeling uneasy and I will never shake the feeling that if I would’ve trusted myself and not doubted what I was feeling that we would have a very different outcome. My gut hasn’t led me astray. Getting rid of the outside noise and distractions helped me to hear my gut loud and clear. I’ve been moving in alignment with my intuition this past month and I have no intention of stopping.
2. I have way more time than I thought I had. I spent a good chunk of this year saying things like “I hope to get my next book out by the end of the year” “I wish I had more time to do xyz” “I don’t have time to do xyz” when in reality, I had time. Time is the only thing in life we can’t get more of and I realized that I had wasted a lot of time scrolling through social media and not actually doing anything to get my closer to the woman I want to be or the life I desire to live. Since the detox, I have started working with my editor & publisher to bring my next book to life in just a few weeks from now. I have mapped out what I want 2023 to look like for my personal life, my business, the & She Rises community and more.
3. I have no idea what’s going on with strangers from day to day and it’s refreshing. I am slightly ashamed to admit how attached I was to watching the highlight reels of complete strangers. Why do I need to know when they are brushing their teeth or what their drink order from Starbucks is? I don’t. This detox has also helped me to get clear on how I want to show up on social media. Do I need to show you my every second of every day? Of course not. Releasing myself from the pressure of being “on” all the time has got me excited to come back and to get intentional with how I show up for you.
4. I have a handful of very important friendships and connections and being able to nurture them off of social media has been amazing. I’ve talked about this before but I had someone say to me this year that they didn’t feel the need to check in with me because they watched me on SM and already knew what was going on in my life. That comment really pissed me off. I get it, but I don’t like it. During this detox, I have been able to get intentional with friendships and connections outside of the platforms. Whether we’ve been connected for 2 months or 2 decades, I am loving how I have been able to show up in these relationships, and how some have shown up for me. I was so blessed by the amount of support I received from my village. People intentionally checking in on me and wanting to stay in touch so they could support me and cheer for me in real time was the fuel I didn’t know I needed.
5. Moving forward I want to have this time away from social media every year (thanksgiving through the new year). I understand now how vital this time of reflection and goal setting is and I am excited to implement this into my business plan for 2023 and beyond.
6. I need to bring someone on board with me to head up my social media so that I can show up more intentionally for this community. I realized that while I do love social media and interacting on the platforms, it’s not my zone of genius. In order for me to spend more time doing what I love and operating in my specific zone of genius, I need to outsource some things, including social media. This will be one of my top priorities going into 2023.
Well that’s it! If you have never done a social media detox, I would highly recommend it. If you have, I would love to hear some of your biggest takeaways from being on Do Not Disturb. To listen to the podcast episode on this you can listen here.