Day 5

protect your feed

Challenge: Declutter your friend, groups and pages on your social media feeds

You have full control of what enters your online vortex.

And it is a vortex. Vortex is defined as: a mass of whirling fluid or air, especially a whirlpool or whirlwind.: "we were caught in a vortex of water" or "a swirling vortex of emotions".

Don’t you often feel that way about your social media feed - being caught in a whirlwind of information and comparison.

But you have choice around this. You get to choose whose messages you hear. Gee I just love tuning in to some of my favourite people online - it’s like my own personal TV station where I choose the programming.

But I can also get very side-tracked. There are seriously big downsides to having the world wide web at our fingertips - don’t you think?

Here’s the interesting thing about social media feeds - it’s been shown time and again that our feeds reinforce our existing beliefs and values. They are reflection of what we already know. That’s why I push the boundaries sometimes and I shut off from the information that I am familiar with (Oh Em Gee no more).

I like information from a select group of people. People I know and like and TRUST. People who make my life BETTER.

But there’s also my personal feed. It’s irritating how many people in my feed I don’t actually know!! How have I let that happen? I meet someone at a conference, they ‘friend request’ me and then I am a viewer of their life. It’s so weird!

Sometimes delightfully surprising. But many times I end up de-friending.

I like to keep that friends list as clear as I can. Anyone that makes me feel less than awesome - gotta go. But it’s like an itch that we have to scratch, right? Do we really need to be reminded that THEY have a house that looks like it’s from the pages on a glossy magazine?

Do we really need Negative Nelly’s or Polly Poser’s in our feeds?

YOU HAVE A CHOICE! This is sacred brain space. This is your mental health. We need to take this more seriously.

As someone who runs a business from home I would be LOST without my favourite online communities that make my life BETTER. I value them just as much as real life communities.

But gee there’s a lot of noise that I can do without. A regular feed declutter is 100% necessary. Fiercely protect your feed. Let in the good stuff - and clear out the nasty, the negative, the bitchy.

And report into the Facebook Group when you’re done!