My Boundaries Around Social Media As a Wellness Creator
I live a life of radical rest. Meaningful joy. Heartfelt connection. The inner peace of non-attachment that comes when I do not deny who I am but witness and channel the potent energy of my being for community healing.
Yet social media is a test of discipline in how I catch myself identifying with the constructed self in ways that lead me away from my life purpose. The algorithm wants us to feel like we are never enough. It fuels our desire to be validated by external factors, even as it continuously changes the rules of the game so that we are never truly satisfied with how we communicate the self online.
More than one person has told me that they admire what I share on Instagram, and that it inspires them in how they want to show up online. They have a more positive relationship to social media and they have a desire to share themselves in a new way. It always makes me happy to hear that by me being myself online, others feel better about their own relationship to social media.
I am always pleasantly surprised because I’ve felt stuck ever since videos have been the next medium to tell your story.I first realized this when I began my online yoga club during the pandemic as a way for folks to begin their online yoga practice. Even if we were in lockdown, it didn’t mean we had to stop going to the psychosomatic tools that help us.
Video producing and editing are not skills that I enjoy and I find it much more stressful than writing; I find it a pleasurable task to rework my words, to move around paragraphs, and redraft. My insecurities around self-worth, however, came up around video storytelling and my longer breaks from social media were a result of my dissatisfaction with my video content.
When I began Irene Yoga Flow, Instagram wasn’t obsessed with being the next TikTok, Canva’s founders were being rejected by yet another VC, and most social media managers were creating content based on pretty photos with the same filter.
It wasn’t until I started to take more breaks from social media that I was able to summon empathy for my online folks that would periodically declare they would be leaving social media. Our mental well-being is important and in ever-changing online spaces, the sense of comfort that we receive from self-expression can be on shaky ground due to the number of likes, comments, shares, or bookmarks we receive.
Nedra Glover Tawaab talks about setting boundaries on technology use in her book, Set Boundaries, Find Peace. Low self worth and low self esteem can occur around technology use whether we are comparing ourselves to others or to ourselves. She talks about how you can’t control who people are online.
This truth also applies to you.
You get to change. You have that choice. We are all constructing a version of ourselves to present to the world, and there is nothing wrong with constructing a self that represents who you aspire to be. So many of us shrink ourselves down, stop ourselves from self-expression even if that’s what we’re secretly craving deep down. There is nothing wrong with that. And there is also nothing wrong with not being on social media if you feel no desire to be on it.
As I reflected a few weeks ago about how I want to feel on social media, I knew I wanted to recapture that feeling that I had when I first started my Instagram. I am a yoga teacher and tarot reader, and I am also a spiritual creator.
As a wellness creator focused on my mental health, here are my new social media boundaries:
I do not judge my self-expression as either too much or not enough.
When I begin to observe that I am reacting to other people’s self-expression in ways that bring me away from my centre, I take the time to pause and ask why.
In my season of slowness, I choose to honour my boundaries by creating content based on a schedule.
I do not compare my self to my past selves. I do not compare my self to other people.
Social media amplifies conversations but that doesn’t mean what isn’t popular isn’t relevant for me.
I use social media as a tool for finding community, exploring self expression and identity, and inspiration. If I am distracted, I make the conscious decision to be aware and hold compassion for myself.
I will not buy into every hot take. I use my critical thinking and research skills to avoid jumping on the bandwagon.
Having set these boundaries for myself, I am already feeling better and I hope these boundaries offer something for your social well-being too.
Written By: Irene Lo