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

How many of us spend our free time on social media? Do you find yourself becoming unproductive because of it? Today, we will unravel the ways in which social media can subtly control our minds and lifestyles. The journey begins by acknowledging that if we don't learn to use technology consciously, it can end up consuming us entirely. Step by step, we navigate through practical strategies to regain control and create a healthier relationship with social media. These strategies guide us toward fostering more meaningful interactions, like detaching from devices during social gatherings, creating 'no technology' zones in our homes, and engaging in curious and vulnerable conversations with loved ones. We also learn the importance of transforming from passive consumers to active creators. In this episode, you'll learn: How addictive social media can be How to develop a healthy screen time How to spend your time more productively How to make genuine connections in person Through these steps, we embark on a transformative journey towards mastering technology, ultimately reclaiming our presence and connection in the digital age. With Love and Gratitude, Jay Shetty What We Discuss: 00:00 Intro 01:14 How does social media control your mind and your life? 06:57 If we don't learn how to use technology, it ends up consuming us 10:42 Step #1 On social media, people talk about themselves 80% of the time 12:39 How can we shift into connecting with others on social media? 15:51 Step #2: Do activities without your phone with your friends 20:00 Step #3: Create a ‘no technology’ zone in your home 23:14 Step #4: Have more curious, vulnerable conversations with people you love 24:59 Step #5: Become a creator not a consumer 26:45 Step #6: Having alternatives is easier than setting blocks See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Jay Shetty?

  This episode is brought to you by Vinted. Value can be found anywhere, even in the clothes sitting untouched in our closets. That's where Vinted comes in. Vinted is a secondhand marketplace app where you can sell clothes you no longer want and get more value out of them. Whether you're running out of space, moving, or simply updating your wardrobe. Listing items is a quick and simple process, and once something sells, Vinted creates a prepaid shipping label for you. And the best part, there are no seller fees, so you keep what you earn. It's a simple way to clear out your closet, be less wasteful, and maybe make some extra money along the way. And if you've been thinking about a wardrobe refresh, this can make it feel a little more worthwhile. You're not just letting go of clothes, you're getting more value from what you already have.

• 0:43Jay Shetty?

  Give your clothes a second life with Vinted. Download the Vinted app for free to start selling with no seller fees, so you keep every dollar you earn. This episode is brought to you by AG1. Are you feeling September reset too? Shorter days, longer to-do lists, earlier alarms, all those routines you promised yourself you'd pick back up. It can feel like your whole life is recalibrating. And when everything around you is changing, it helps to have a few things you can rely on. AG1 Next Gen is one of those easy habits to keep. It's the clinically-backed, comprehensive daily health drink that supports your gut health, energy production, and foundational nutrition all in one scoop.

• 1:26Jay Shetty?

  AG1's ingredients are sourced from quality partners for absorption, potency, and nutrient density to deliver the foundational nutrition your body needs. And alongside a proper diet, AG1 Next Gen meets 94% of nutrient requirements, and it's clinically shown to enrich the gut microbiome. For a limited time, save 20% on your first subscription order of AG1 Next Gen or AG1 Pro at drinkag1.com/onpurpose. That's drinkag1.com/onpurpose.

• 2:01Jay Shetty?

  This episode is brought to you by AG1. Are you feeling September reset too? Shorter days, longer to-do lists, earlier alarms, all those routines you promised to yourself you'd pick back up. It can feel like your whole life is recalibrating. And when everything around you is changing, it helps to have a few things you can rely on. AG1 Next Gen is one of those easy habits to keep. It's the clinically-backed, comprehensive daily health drink that supports your gut health, energy production, and foundational nutrition all in one scoop. AG1's ingredients are sourced from quality partners for absorption, potency, and nutrient density to deliver the foundational nutrition your body needs. And alongside a proper diet,

• 2:45Jay Shetty?

  AG1 Next Gen meets 94% of nutrient requirements and it's clinically shown to enrich the gut microbiome. For a limited time, save 20% on your first subscription order of AG1 Next Gen or AG1 Pro at drinkag1.com/onpurpose. That's drinkag1.com/onpurpose. Attachment and aversion are two sides of the same coin, right? This idea that attachment, if I'm addicted to something, 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,

• 3:31Jay Shetty?

  you almost think about them as much as you love someone.

• 3:39Jay Shetty?

  Hey everyone, welcome back to On Purpose. Thank you so much for 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.

• 4:23Jay Shetty?

  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.

• 4:35Jay Shetty?

  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 colour 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

• 5:18Jay Shetty?

  that we don't really talk about how to manoeuvre, 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.

• 5:58Jay Shetty?

  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 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.

• 6:32Jay Shetty?

  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.

• 7:15Jay Shetty?

  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.

• 7:59Jay Shetty?

  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.

• 8:28Jay Shetty?

  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 gonna 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 wanna go to that party. I don't really wanna 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.

• 9:13Jay Shetty?

  You're gonna 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.

• 9:58Jay Shetty?

  I promise you, it does, because you now become less vulnerable about your challenges with your friends, because you don't wanna 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.

• 10:43Jay Shetty?

  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 show that scientists used to think that dopamine was a pleasure chemical in the brain, but now we know it actually creates desire.

• 11:28Jay Shetty?

  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 growth. When we stop making ourselves feel bad about something,

• 12:13Jay Shetty?

  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 liked your post, you comment, you get that dopamine reward.

• 12:55Jay Shetty?

  Bang, I'm gonna 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 excitement. 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?

• 13:36Jay Shetty?

  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 study, is that people talk about themselves around thirty to forty percent of the time in person. If you're in in-person conversation, you're gonna talk about yourself thirty to forty percent of the time. Because 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, 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.

• 14:18Jay Shetty?

  On social media, people talk about themselves eighty percent of the time.

• 14:24Jay Shetty?

  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 to in real life, when you have to do it in the moment, we struggle to do that.

• 15:07Jay Shetty?

  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. This episode is brought to you by Indeed.

• 15:52Jay Shetty?

  I know how important every hire is for a business. If you need to make the right hire, this is a job for sponsored jobs. Indeed sponsored jobs helps find quality candidates when you need the most. You can reach who you need based on whatever criteria you're looking for, like skills, certifications, or location. In fact, people are finding quality hires on Indeed right now. In the minute I've been talking to you, companies like yours made twenty-seven hires on Indeed, according to Indeed data worldwide. Spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes. Listeners of this show will get a seventy-five-dollar sponsored job credit at indeed.com/podcast. That's indeed.com/podcast. Terms and conditions apply.

• 16:37Jay Shetty?

  Need to hire? This is a job for Indeed sponsored jobs. This episode is brought to you by Whole Foods Market. If you're talking about quality food, you can't forget Whole Foods Market, who've been holding themselves to the highest standards since they opened in nineteen eighty. That means you'll see thousands of organic products across their stores, from the produce department to the aisles. It also means you'll never see certain ingredients. They've banned artificial sweeteners and colours, high fructose corn syrup and more, so you can shop with peace of mind. Shop Whole Foods Market in-store or online. This episode is brought to you by Wayfair. Home should be a place that feels like a sanctuary, a space that truly reflects who you are.

• 17:22Jay Shetty?

  But it can be challenging to balance style, budget and endless options. I was looking to create a dedicated calm space for my morning meditation and reading, but I was struggling to find pieces that felt grounding but could also stand up to daily use. I went on Wayfair and found a beautiful, solid wood accent chair and a bookshelf. Now that corner is my favourite place to anchor my day. The quality is incredible, it's built to last, and it completely shifted the energy of the room. Plus, you can shop with Wayfair Verified, where product specialists carefully vet items for quality and functionality, so you can shop with more confidence. And if putting it all together sounds like a headache, Wayfair can handle delivery, installation and assembly. Join Wayfair Rewards today to get 5% back on every purchase

• 18:07Jay Shetty?

  and start saving on your next home upgrade. Head to wayfair.com to shop all things home. That's W A Y F A I R dot com. Wayfair, every style, every home. 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,

• 18:51Jay Shetty?

  which means the positives get 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?

• 19:03Jay Shetty?

  Does not take away from your opportunity for joy. There is no cap on the amount of people getting married in 2023. There is no cap of the amount of billionaires or millionaires or financially free people in 2023 or 2024 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. Right, 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.

• 19:46Jay Shetty?

  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. There, there just aren'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 of 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.

• 20:31Jay Shetty?

  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 30 to 40%. If we're on social media, spending 30 to 40% of time on ourselves, but then 30 to 40% of time supporting our friends, supporting others, and maybe 20% 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.

• 21:17Jay Shetty?

  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, 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, and this one is something that I think we under utilize. And I'm sure you've heard this before, but I just wanna 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 all put it away in your own bags or someone's bag at the beginning, like make a commitment out of it.

• 22:01Jay Shetty?

  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 in 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.

• 22:44Jay Shetty?

  To just take in the sense and the sights, 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 gonna feel weird at first, it's gonna 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.

• 23:27Jay Shetty?

  The more you're gonna 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 jealous when someone else used their phone, and seventy percent expected to feel depressed, panicked, and helpless if their phone went missing or they couldn't find it. A study found that eighty-nine percent of undergraduate students experienced 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

• 24:10Jay Shetty?

  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 and mind. What's happening now is we're doing more activities that don't require our three sixty presence. For example, if I'm playing pickleball, 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.

• 24:55Jay Shetty?

  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 gonna 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 pickleball for three hours and then go back to my phone and I'll think wow like, you know, I didn't even miss my phone.

• 25:40Jay Shetty?

  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 aversion. There's a beautiful quote in the Bhagavad Gita 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,

• 26:24Jay Shetty?

  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, 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

• 27:05Jay Shetty?

  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? At the dining table, no phone area. Like, what are those areas in your home? And literally put up signs, make it fun and silly. Your 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, wherever you think it's important for you to disconnect. Because people who limited their social media use to 10 minutes per day for three weeks led to lower loneliness and depression. You think your loneliness may go up if you're not on social media.

• 27:46Jay Shetty?

  Your loneliness actually goes down when you reduce your time on social media. And reducing social media use to even 30 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. I'm 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,

• 28:30Jay Shetty?

  they're no-technology times. And I've 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 1.8, literally used to lock my phone and 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 have 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.

• 29:14Jay Shetty?

  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 wanna 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?

• 29:55Jay Shetty?

  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, we have a deep intimate 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 isn't perfect.

• 30:39Jay Shetty?

  Now, 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, 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 a hundred thousand followers, while most creators, about a hundred and forty million, have between one thousand 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 time 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.

• 31:23Jay Shetty?

  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 McNei and her account is called Inspired to Write. She's 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.

• 32:06Jay Shetty?

  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, I think we're seeing like 25 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 on all your devices at once. This is an article I saw on zapier.com, which gave these great recommendations. Cold Turkey Blocker for scheduled system-wide blocking.

• 32:48Jay Shetty?

  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 I've heard about being useful for people. But I've also found, and 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.

• 33:33Jay Shetty?

  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 Kindle app 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.

• 34:17Jay Shetty?

  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 year.

• 35:04Speaker 01

  Mr. President, my company told me of the explosion on our rig. On October 2nd. Causing massive water displacement and triggering a tsunami. They all heap the blame on me. Tom Cruise is. Digger got us into this mess. And Digger's gonna dig us up. From the director of Birdman and The Ravenette.

• 35:21Speaker 02

  What would happen if I stopped going? You start, you freeze to death, that's what.

• 35:25Speaker 01

  With great power comes great deniability.

• 35:28Speaker 02

  I'm not the first daddy.

• 35:29Speaker 01

  Digger, see the trailer online, only in theaters October 2nd. Rated R, under seventeen, ninety minutes without parent.