Three better habits lately

[mollyringle]

My stress and anxiety levels in recent months have been so much lower than last year's. I could yet stand to improve my overall happiness, but "equanimity" does now describe me far more often than it used to. As a result of being calmer, I sleep better, which means I have more energy and don't get sick as often, so my physical health's much

Comments

[emrys_mk]

Thank you for sharing these three things. I've contemplated closing my Facebook account for years, but haven't. I hold out hope I'll do it soon. Like yours, my anxiety levels would no doubt go down quite dramatically.

[mollyringle]

Yeah, anxiety can be a beast (but luckily a treatable one!), and online drama seemed to be a big trigger for mine. Still, it took me years before I'd finally had enough and was ready to pull the plug on the account. The withdrawal-ish feelings afterward were uncomfortable at first, but they fade. I wish you courage and inner peace! :)

[camelittle]

Well done for identifying the things that made you anxious and taking steps to eliminate them from your life. Facebook eats too much of my time, I really should ditch it as well - it's useful for keeping in touch with people who live far away. But maybe I could do with unfriending the ones who keep cluttering my inbox with things that make me mad.

[mollyringle]

I do miss the updates of some of the people I kept in touch with that way. But luckily there are lots of other ways these days! The unnecessary updates that just tied up my time without really helping - yeah, those are what I don't miss.

[anonymous]

It's cool that you're feeling better, it's not cool that you're publicly calling the people who tried to support you and your career toxic. One day you may want to reconnect with the good ones but you'll have burned the bridges you need to do that.

[mollyringle]

As I said in the post, the individual people really weren't toxic, and I'm not calling them that. The Facebook feed as a whole, though, became a never-ending to-do list for me: the comments, the tags, the likes, the arguments. My presence in most of those was really not required, and it was raising my stress level too much to be monitoring what people were doing, and to be worried about what they'd think of my own too-frequent posts. Not everyone has this experience on FB, but that's what it had become for me. What I kept finding, over and over, was that I was doing my best on FB to be kind and upbeat, and too many people were answering with snark and complaints. I don't think it's because these people *are* snarky or mean; I think it's because the culture of FB breeds comments like that, and I'm almost sure these friends would actually be a lot nicer to me in real life

[mariole]

Wow, Tip #3 is awesome! I'm sure I'll find some item to practice that on today. I can go months without looking at FB, so I don't have that habit. (Love the toxic friend analogy!) Mine is watching familiar videos over and over; we all seem to have some time-wasting vice

[mollyringle]

Hee, true about Harrison making it trendy first! :D And that's fabulous that a doctor actually prescribed meditation for you, and that it worked! A yoga camp sounds like a blissful place. That's something I could look for, or at least proper classes. Right now I'm just using one of the many available meditation apps, at home with my earbuds, but even that makes a huge difference.

I actually first got acquainted with meditation in the '90s, via a college class. But I didn't practice regularly at all until lately. For too long it was the kind of thing about which I'd think, "Yeah, I know, I should do that. I'll try that again. Sometime."

I wouldn't worry too much about watching familiar videos over and over. Some time-wasting, sure, but it's far more soothing than the frenetic culture of likes-and-comments-in-real-time on FB.

[peripety]

Great ideas here, though since I've always avoided FB like the plague I've got #1 already covered :D I like tip #3 and want to try that out. We need all the de-stressing tips in our crazy lives we can find, I think! Thank you for sharing these :)

[mollyringle]

Very wise of you to avoid FB in the first place - don't change that policy. :) Yes, I feel like the world is starting to notice that we're overreaching ourselves with our constantly-on devices, and maybe we're finally beginning to correct for it with calming techniques. So I hope!