So you’ve heard time and time again how social media, especially Instagram, is the devil. In a lot of self-improvement communities, there is a high degree of backlash and disdain towards social media itself. People talk about how narcissistic, fake, shallow, and destructive to “game” all of it is. The backlash towards social media is unreal, as well as the push to get young men off of it.
Now as we covered on an old post, a lot of this really comes from envy and not having any success on certain platforms. Envy towards beautiful women who seem to be living the life, bitterness towards higher value guys who figured the social media game out, and anger towards not being one of those people with a popular social media account. Almost everyone who is anyone craves validation to some degree, a lot of likes is one of those ways.
So here is my challenge to you, think of it as more for personal development!
You are going to do the following:
- Go on Facebook or Instagram feeds and look at the pics that come up. If it is one of a hot girl or someone who seems to be high value but not exactly a celebrity, click on the profile and see their lives. If it is a mutual connection and happens to be someone really popular back in your high school or college days, look at their profile.
- Pay close attention to your emotions, train yourself to be as aware of them as possible. If you can, pull out a notebook and write them down. Be very mindful of what is running through your head when you do all of this.
- After you are done, reflect on how all of it made you feel. Pay attention to how you are feeling after you have done all of that and what state your mind is in.
Now, assuming you’re honest with yourself, use this as a litmus test.
If you felt bitterness, anger, or disdain towards the person in question, then chances are the issue is with you. You probably saw some higher value guy or some hot girl and saw the life they were living, this brought up a lot of negative emotions within you. Even if you were constantly talking about how terrible they are and dismissing their good times, that just reflects on where you are mentally. In other words, there is work to be done.
It is time to reflect, see what it is about that individual’s amazing life that made you so bitter. You’ll be surprised to find how much of it likely comes down to your own feelings of lower self-worth, not fitting in, or not having the kind of social life you want. Something being portrayed struck a cord in you and brought out those negative emotions, pay close attention to what that something is.
Now if you felt genuinely happy for the person in question or it didn’t even affect you one bit, you passed. You are mentally in a better place than a lot of other people out there that come to me for advice. For some reason, there is so much going well in your life or you are focused on so much in your life that it could barely matter to you if some dude is having the time of his life with his hot girlfriend at a beach or traveling to exotic places. Congratulations, you are more developed with your inner game than most men out there struggling.
For those of you who failed the challenge, do it again next week and take notes of how you felt. Track it for at least a couple of months and keep taking notes of how various profiles and perceptions are making you feel. Your goal is to get to being genuinely happy or unemotional at what you are seeing.
