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Feb 27, 2019

There I was, laying in bed with the glow of the phone burning my eyeballs at 11 pm at midnight while Mike slept peacefully beside me. Swipe after swipe I could feel the anxiety, tension, comparison, guilt and shame creep in.

“Who do you think you are trying to be as successful as her?”

“Why should you deserve this success?”

“You are never going to look like that no matter how much discipline you have.”

“She is smarter and more successful than you ever will.”

“It’s not going to work for you. You don’t have what it takes.”

Have you ever found yourself being so sucked into social media that you can’t even find your own voice? Social media has been one of the primary drivers into creating multiple 5 figures of extra residual income into my life each year. There is a science and psychology to using social media to improve your net worth and there is also an extreme risk to your mental health when you use it this way. I am not a doctor and I don’t play one on the internet or on this podcast but here are some statistics about what the dangers of inappropriate social media time can do to your life.

  • There is a statistical correlation between time spent on social networks and depression.

  • People with lower self reported self esteem have higher user activity online and have more self-promotional content.

  • Reducing your time online can decrease depression and loneliness.

 

Here is the deal though. Social media is also a powerful connector. It’s not social media that is bad, it’s how we interact with it that can be bad and that is our responsibility to interact with it safely, professionally and responsibly. 77% of Americans are on social networks so if you are building a residual income stream through customers purchasing your solution, you WANT AND NEED TO BE ONLINE. Here are some tips for making sure that you are spending less time online and more time making positive connections with the time you are online.

  1. Be careful with whom you connect with. You don’t have to be everyone’s friend and friending a bunch of random people in hopes they will buy your product or service is a waste of their time and your time. Build genuine connections.

  2. Use a scheduling app like PLANN. I spend 30 minutes on Sunday nights planning out the weeks post.

  3. Set a timer for being online. I set a timer each night to go and comment and like on people’s posts and I keep a list of people I want to see so that I am not see what the algorithm thinks I want to see but what I really want to see.

  4. Don’t randomly check your notifications throughout the day. In fact, turn them off. Having notifications turned off will decrease the amount of time your brain has to switch between tasks. This is taxing on your brain to switch between tasks and by reducing the frequency of checking your social networks you thereby reduce the fatigue on your brain.

  5. Take my Instagram course! See below for the link. We have outlined how to grow your Instagram in a free course so it takes the thinking and guess work out of how to use social media better.

  6. Forget about checking every notification and responding to every comment. If your business grows - it’s unlikely that you will be able to manage it all. See all those celebrities commenting on every post? Yea- they have full-time staff who help them. Don’t compare yourself to them. Do the best you can with engaging with your audience.

  7. Turn off your phone when it’s family time. This means, no phones at the dinner table, no phones in front of your kids all day, and no phones in the bedroom.

  8. Stay in your own lane. Your journey is uniquely gifted to you. YOU ARE THE HERO OF YOUR STORY. Stop comparing your beginning to someone else’s middle as they say. Who actually said this first? hmmmm, no clue.

  9. Avoid negative engagements and comments. Delete/block is your best friend. You do not have time for negative people in your life.

  10. Make it fun. Use the features of social media that make it fun. Tryout filters, going live, asking questions. Your social media experience will be more noticed when you make it more fun.

Social media is an amazing way to circulate money for causes, rally people together and build community. If you make it that way. I want to know what you think about this topic. Head over to our Facebook group for the discussion!

 

 

References: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4183915