In Blackest Night – Turning Point

As I’ve mentioned in recent posts, I have been feeling much better.  I have had a certain…clarity that I had been lacking for quite some time.  As always, any new experience or feeling gets questioned by my probing mind.  I have come to realise that by avoiding things that don’t particularly add value to my life, I am able to think and function much better.  Whereas I once would flick through my newsfeed on Facebook and become irritated/annoyed/bored/repulsed multiple times a day I barely go on it any more.

I’d suspected for a while that Facebook was a catalyst in my negativity and to express that previously felt sad and pathetic.  But, just like chemical and substance abuse, it acts as a form of addiction.  When bored, I’d open the app and just trawl through the banal, bland and irritating drivel.  ‘Newsfeed’.  Interesting choice of words considering the ‘news’ consists of narcissistic selfies with stupid filters and shit, share after share of hearsay, memes and “Hey look at me trying to make my life look more interesting than it actually is”.  One of the more irritating facts is that I am guilty of most if not all of the gripes I have with social media.  One of the largest troubles nowadays is that it is very hard not to use social media.

Lately, I have shared things which I genuinely find interesting, funny, educational or that add some sort of value to the otherwise dismal, boring day.  As a result of me sharing articles from other sites and so on, I circumvent the actual Facebook app so avoid all the other nonsense.  As an inadvertent side effect I also miss a lot of things like birthday reminders and other events that crop up , but it’s a small price to pay considering the general benefits it has had on me psychologically.

Over the last few weeks I have spent time looking up techniques and activities to change my way of thinking and to aid my current therapy with MIND and cognitive behavioural therapy.  I’ve resumed and delved deeper into ‘Mindfulness’ and tried to focus more on a) what’s important to me, b) what I can control and c) what adds value to my life and others that I care about.

I picked up ‘Mind Hacking: Jedi Mind Tricks To Unleash Your Hidden Potential‘ and started putting some of the techniques into practice straight away.  If you’re looking to make similar changes or even just looking into it it’s a worthwhile read PLUS you can buy it pretty cheap or read it free if you’re a Kindle Unlimited user.  Obviously it’s too early t say what affect it has had on me but the fact that I took to it whilst riding higher than usual given my elevated mood of late, I definitely believe it will help in multiple areas of my life.

My mind had taken a jaunt down to ‘Negative Town’ initially over Facebook and social media in general.  Growing up, I always believed everyone should get along and be friends.  Seeing my ‘friends list’ drop numbers and knowing exactly who was no longer my ‘friend’ hurt the ego a bit.  But then I came to realise that not everyone will get along with everyone.  It’s human nature to like and dislike.  No doubt a lot of people don’t like the fact that I swear, have a particularly vulgar and cruel sense of humour or that I have come to talk openly about things like my depression etc.

Perhaps they did the same as I’m doing now–removing the things that do not add value.  Numbers on a social media account don’t really mean anything anyway (unless you’re running a business).  The greatest lesson I’ve learned is that, while it’s okay to be okay it’s also okay to not like or be liked.  If I were to base an analogy on a recent experience it would be my wedding – we couldn’t please everyone.  We had limited room so couldn’t invite every single person we thought of and had to focus on the people we spent more time around recently and the relationships that were more prevalent to us and needed to be maintained.  This meant that those who had slipped into the acquaintance category or simply ‘people we know’ wouldn’t get an invite.  Ultimately, people were undoubtedly pissed off that they didn’t get invited but that’s just how it goes.  Such is the way with life.  There will be more people that don’t like you than like you.  It’s simple math.  If you were to base your perspective on the number of friends on Facebook, subscribers on Youtube or followers on Twitter then you’d think the opposite but, bearing in mind (not to mention the bots and other interwebs nonsense) that it’s easy to be a friend with someone digitally but if you break it down, in a lot of cases, the majority of those friendships mean and equate to nothing more than knowing someone in passing or through a friend (of a friend of a friend etc.).

And so I reach where I’m at now: I don’t really care who friends me or unfriends me, how many likes a status or picture gets, whether I get birthday wishes from people that only know when my birthday is thanks to a notification on their account or what people I may or may not see again in real life think of me.  My name is no longer Blurryface and I’ve stopped caring what you think.

Based on a recommendation in ‘Mind Hacking: Jedi Mind Tricks To Unleash Your Hidden Potential‘, this blog post was powered by ‘Coffitivity‘ and ‘Pomodoro‘.