Someone at your office has this unusual approach to do things and is your first reaction is that it won’t work? Or consider this – you are on a trip and, everyone else is enjoying, but nothing appeases you – the stay, the itinerary, the rented car or the food.

And a lot of other times it’s not even verbal. For example, you find this close friend who has a newfound hobby in videography – they released their first YouTube video after a lot of research, effort and dedication behind the scenes. You don’t see all that. What you see is the final product – a 5-minute video. And your first reaction is ‘that content is so amateur’ or ‘I could have done that so much better’.

And if I have the liberty to extend this cynical behaviour to a further extent then consider this scenario. Someone gives you excellent feedback for a training that you delivered, and instead of feeling content, you start self-doubting yourself if you truly deserved it. So, in short, you spare no one and not even yourself while criticising.

Let’s understand this behaviour a little more.

Why does this happen?

1) The default lens with which we operate for others is different from the lens we use for ourselves

Let me explain using an example
You visit someone’s place, and it’s a tad bit untidy. You’d be quick to make a judgement of how they live in a complete mess. In reality, it’s just a little unorganised or dusty. However, we are quick to perceive and judge the host in a different light.

What we most often do not acknowledge, is the fact, that they might have had a rough day at work or perhaps they are dealing with some personal issues or maybe they don’t prioritise cleaning over their hobby. We don’t know that, but we judge them.

And the irony is, we might not have been any better, given their situation. Being critical of others’ habits is easier than introspecting our habit of judging others and almost always with different parameters than the criteria we use for ourselves

2) Wearing the ‘black hat’ is our default mode

In one of the training sessions that I attended, we were taught about the six thinking hats for decision-making. Each hat has a different colour, and each colour represent a different characteristic. One of them is a black hat which means you need to critically evaluate an option before you make a decision.

Now, if that’s the default mode that you operate in, you are going to be critical of every new idea and person. And you will always find the glass half empty. It is easier to criticise than to appreciate because we have a confirmation bias – the tendency to interpret new evidence as confirmation of one’s existing beliefs or theories. If you have a preconceived notion about someone, by criticising your strengthen those beliefs further.

3) People are trying hard to look smart

In this digital age, where we have plenty of information or misinformation, there is a view and counterview for anything and everything.

For instance, at a fundamental level, we would all agree that we should fight corruption, reduce pollution levels, enforce stricter laws against rape or save our planet. However, a lot of what is happening around the globe tells us otherwise.

The recent protests by Greta Thunberg – she received overwhelming support on one hand, and also had to face widespread criticism on the other. This accurately portrays our mindset and behaviour – of how we are divided in terms of our opinions and views, on rather black and white topics

‘For every one person saying it’s possible, there are ten others (if not more) who say it isn’t.’

‘NO’ is a powerful word. It immediately grabs attention, puts the other person in a defensive position. And irrespective of the outcome, the rationale or righteousness, the critic now assumes more consideration than the other person. Simply put, it is an easier way to get attention or appear insightful when the reality could be completely different.

Let’s be a bit more appreciative of people around us and especially those who put a conscious effort into creating or building something. Sometimes they succeed and sometimes they fail. They will have their own learning curve – let them find that on their own. They will be kind and considerate when you try something new. And if you could really do much better than them, ask yourself – why aren’t you doing it?

Remember, everyone has ideas, only a few execute and fewer see the goal post. So, be more considerate and less judgemental

Sometimes it’s just the workload be it personally or professionally that doesn’t let you soak in and absorb everything that is happening around you, that leads to overthinking. Whatever be your reason we all as human are wired to worry. But more than the problem I am going to focus on the solution in this article.

Here’s what I do to unwind and calm those nerves.

1. Declutter the space around you, Dust the furniture, vacuum clean and Light a candle

If you are a Marie Kondo fan, you’d already know the benefits of a clean space but if you aren’t then let me explain. A clean and tidy space helps to organise your thoughts as well. A lot of it is to do with what you see and how that makes you feel. So a clean house, organised wardrobes and a spotless place resonate good vibes and positive energy. When you sort your physical surroundings, it helps to focus on what’s on your mind.

2. Listen to some relaxing music

Music is a great stimulant. It helps to focus on the task at hand, and as the music rolls, it helps in thinking straight, decluttering that mind and completely relaxing. There is proven research on this subject that shows a positive correlation between music and concentration – it helps in calming down and getting lost in a different stream of thoughts altogether. So days when you are down, don’t reach out for that bar of chocolate or alcohol, start with some good music to uplift that mood.

4. Take a shower

Steaming hot water helps to relax those tired and sore muscles and rejuvenates the entire body. It is also this time that allows a lot of artists to think of new ideas and also improves focus. Have you ever wondered why? Probably because a lot of your physical activities are restricted – you can’t write, read, listen, talk or do anything except for taking a shower which is a mundane activity wired in your subconscious mind. So that leaves your conscious mind to wander in those gazillion thoughts that you couldn’t focus earlier; this is precisely why meditation helps as well.

4. Dump all those wandering thoughts onto a piece of paper

I am a big fan of diarising your thoughts and writing down your those ideas, emotions, views, opinions and beliefs. It helps to slow down in your thoughts and interpret each word that you pen down.

5. Understand what is bothering you

Dig deeper in your thoughts to understand and break down each of those ideas, decisions or feelings. Try to understand what is causing that stress and what makes you feel overwhelmed. Once you recognise what the issue is, that solves half the problem there itself.

6. Do what brings joy

Today is your day. Allow yourself to do what brings joy – Binge-watch your favourite show, order food from outside, go for a run around the park, just groove to that hip-hop party song, plan your next travel, do whatever makes you feel good. These activities aren’t for the weekend or the future solely. Instead, do it when you are stressed or tired because that’s when it matters the most.

Credit – Joel Valve @Unsplash

7. Focus on one thing in that most urgent /important sort of quadrant

You’ll feel good about having thought through what matters the most to you. Even if you take one step today, you are one less step towards this most significant thing in your life. For me, it is blogging and developing on my writing skills, so when I am overwhelmed, confused and feel pressured, I write to relieve that stress. It helps me feel a sense of accomplishment.

8. Talk to someone on something unrelated

So when I am in this shell thinking (mostly overthinking) about myself and how the world revolves around me. Everyone is conspiring against me or criticising me, or the world is out to get me. But in reality, everyone is living in their shell too. So give yourself some breather and relax, not everything is always about YOU (unless you are Donal Trump or Narendra Modi). Talk to someone on something that is worrying them, and that might make you feel good and come out of this downward spiral of thoughts.

9. Vent it out

Let it out. Breathe. Relax. When you vent it out and tell someone about these gazillion thoughts, it would feel good because it is out of your system. Also sometimes at my workplace, unproductive discussions, directionless initiatives or meaningless outcomes stresses me out; I try to structure my thoughts – understand the problem, what led us to this situation, and discuss it with someone to gain perspective. If nothing at least you have let the steam off of your mind.

10. Exert physical energy

Be it Zumba or boxing or a weight lifting, whatever helps you to exert physical strength is a great stress buster. It is a known fact that it helps to relieve those happy hormones, improves concentration and makes you feel good about your physical self. These are the reasons why I love workouts – a great way to strengthen the mind, muscle and matter – all three.

Happens to me a lot and thought to share the 7 ways that I use to cope with confusion and frustration in the entire decision-making process.

I have spent a lot of time struggling to make simple decisions – ‘Which denim jacket to buy’, ‘What restaurant to go for dinner’, ‘Which hair colour would suit my hair?’ and so on. These are simple everyday decisions, but not being able to make a decision is a genuine problem that I face.

And I think there are others like me who might experience the same. I am not even talking about the right choices, but merely making a choice that you are 80% content with, is sometimes difficult. That last bit that I subtly added in there, that is where the problem lies – ‘being content with’.

If you know about the decision paradox, you’d know that no matter what you select, you’d never be content with your final selection as you’d always experience this feeling of missing of out on the ‘other alternative’ and what if it were better than the choice you made.

However, in the long run, does it even matter? Probably not, what does matter though, is the time that you wasted in making those simple decisions that you could have productively utilised writing a poem, exploring a theatre, reading an article, playing a sport, just anything that you’d want to do.

Everthing you do, has an opportunity cost of time, so choose wisely.

Given this backdrop, I thought why not, just have a simple rulebook, that can guide me to make a better choice and not be burdened by the decision paradox.

So here are my 7 simple ways that have helped me make better decisions faster.

#1. Take the first option you see that fits your criteria almost 70% – 80% and go with it. Easy.

To explain you with my story, just today evening, I decided to have some dumplings for dinner,and as strange as it may sound, I have never had them in a restaurant setting ever and luckily, I found a cosy little place selling handmade dumplings with a decent ambience and pricing – so it just fit my criteria perfectly, and the obvious decision should have been to go there right?

Wrong! Not to me, because something in me told me to explore a bit more, walk down the road a few blocks to see what other options do I have – I couldn’t find anything similar.

Note that now I have a benchmark and everything that I would find I shall start comparing it to this one. More often than not, I’d not be able to find something similar or better (experience says that). The first one is just going to be the best one – there are a lot of psychological reasons to this than factual a) I have now missed the boat – in this case I already walked two blocks and going back was not possible b) there is a confirmation bias that it is better than other options you’d encounter, and is difficult to overcome that in that heat of the moment.

Anyway, now I keep walking towards my second option which I had in mind – just that I didn’t check the directions and then ended in the wrong place – so was a bit frustrated now, and I ended up buying some average Sushi from an ordinary place.

So the lesson learnt is I could have had a good experience eating what I wanted to – dumplings, had I selected the very first option which met most of the criteria.

Also, that would have saved me time and the mental struggle.

#2. Be clear about what you want and stick to it

This one is simple, just don’t juggle too much – it drains your mental energy and leads you to confusion. Keep it clear in your head what you want at a high level – not being too fussy about the details but just knowing the broad headlines of what you want. If you find it difficult, just close your eyes and imagine yourself wearing, buying, staying, playing, just doing that and living it – you’d know what you are expecting and now look around – does the reality match your expectation?

Restricting your choices does wonder for good mental health – instead use that energy on other important things

#3. Decide on how much time you’d like to spend on that activity

Especially when it comes to restaurants and shopping, set a time-limit by which you would decide on something – be it anything, doesn’t matter – the important thing is to decide by then.

Time pressure is an effective tool as it forces us to cut through those million useless thoughts and focus on that one thing that matters and take a call.

For example, for shopping grocery, I will set a time to complete the shopping in under 30 mins, and if I spend more than that, I’d have to cut on the other more important things.

#4. Develop certain principles that can help you navigate through options easily

For example, I have learnt it the hard way that I value quality more than cost. So I will avoid buying from a factory outlet even if it is cheaper. It is cheap for a reason. Another principle is to not buy without trying it or not to rush through purchasing decisions as that can work against you.

These are simple tips that I am sure, even you would have mastered through years of decision making.

It’s estimated that the average adult makes about 35,000 remotely conscious decisions each day

http://science.unctv.org/content/reportersblog/choices

#5. Use a funnel approach

If you have a broad range, select the first category that comes to mind and then try using filters (just like the ones you have on apps) to narrow your search. This approach will allow you to look in the right direction and come to the outcomes faster – we all do this, but sometimes I think we get lost especially in a new environment when presented with a plethora of options which are designed to confuse you in the first place.

#6. Keep it clean and organised

Now that you know what you want, you have narrowed your options and have decided on the criteria; it’s time to be methodical while approaching the problem.

For example, when my husband and I, we were looking for a house on lease, I had created a small note of which locations, what apartments we’d be inspecting, what is the rental, what amenities are available and what the commute time to work would be. And not a mental note but an actual record on my organiser that we share to help understand the details of the developments made on the decision so far.

You don’t have to pressurise your short term memory into remembering all these details later, as you can always revisit the notes, and it also helps you to think clearly. Another similar tool that I use is mind-mapping and I do it the conventional way using a paper and a pen – making connections, understanding the distances, relationships, patterns much better. Try it out if you haven’t done this ever.

#7. Now this one is a classic – Listen to your gut

It’s what everyone’s told you so far, and it’s cliche, but the very fact that it is famous is because it works. And it works, because there is science to it – your subconscious figures out the finer intricacies of the matter that is sometimes invisible to the naked eye. Bizzare right, what your eyes can’t see, your brain can – like it has eyes of its own. It just does the math quickly to know where this would click or not.

You are constantly thinking of how to do things better, be it at work or in personal life. How could you have done that project differently if you were to do it all over again? How could you probably improve this recipe a little better the next time? How could you shop more productively? Does it sound familiar?

Read the below checklist and tick against the ones you think applies to you. 

1. You watch the ‘Brightside‘ videos more often than the music videos
2. You read articles on ‘Medium‘ over browsing on Instagram
3. You learn from everyone around you irrespective of their age, caste, sex, experience, education
4. You try to find positivity even in the darkest places.
5. You beat yourself to death if you do the same mistake twice.
6. You crave criticism like pregnant women crave chocolate and you find feedback as a blessing in disguise.
7. You constantly improvise, that’s the only way to get better at a skill right!
8. You practice what you preach. It’s a sin to say something that you wouldn’t do yourself.
9. You hate it when people use jazz that they are not even aware of.
10. You feel suffocated if you find yourself in an unproductive session or a directionless discussion.

Now if you answered ‘Yes’ at-least 7 out of 10 times, you are a self-development junkie. If you answered ‘Yes’ in over 5 instances but less than 7 you are not a junkie yet, you are content with your self and less worrisome with what others have think about you. If you got a score of less than 5, you enjoy life on your terms and you probably don’t care what the world around you does and probably are in self-denial. Not always but might apply to a few.

This was just a fun way of probably knowing oneself better, and the above indicators are by no means any signs of telling you to follow this or not. That is totally up to you and no one else can/should dictate those terms to you. If you are content with who you are, that’s probably the best for you and need not always look for improvement.

It’s no different in life you need to push your limit each time you want to give up on your dreams, each time you want to quit that job, each time you want to break free from routine, each time you want to break that relationship, you say, No, not today, today let’s push the limit a little harder. Nopes. No. Nah. Never!!! What? No, that’s not what you mean? What do you mean then?

If you thought this was some motivational piece, then it isn’t. You don’t find yourself progressing in your career and are stuck, quit that job. You don’t find the relationship as exciting as it used to be; you don’t have the mental bandwidth to deal with the tantrums of the better (rather worse) half, let yourself and the worse half free of the bondages. if you don’t enjoy your routine, change the course and find something you are passionate about – now that ain’t that easy and I know because I am trying since decades and haven’t fully ever understood it was writing although I have been writing ever since I was a kid and I never gave up on it and it’s for the next article, but you get the point. So what I am saying is, do not push your limits where it makes little sense to you. I am a big advocate for change and so I would be the first person to advise, explore something different and try something else especially when we have a dearth of options in this universe.

However, sometimes changing from one course to another rarely helps. Sticking to the path you chose a little longer than you’d initially want to would bring wonders to your life. If you are an entrepreneur or at least daydream of becoming one soon, don’t just try something and give it up because it didn’t work initially. If you are a writer and you published a few stories on your social media, got a few likes but didn’t create a stir, don’t give it up. If you are a cook and a few dishes didn’t turn out to be exactly how you’d expect, don’t give it up. If you are an activist and your initial few blogs/initiatives didn’t ignite the spark, don’t give up. You get the drill or should I keep continuing. Pushing the limits, heh! Anyway the point is just as in the workouts that extra step, that extra push, that extra minute is all that makes the difference, you need that ‘extra’ in your life to make the difference you are longing for. The difference to your muscles, the difference to your mind and the difference to the matters that matter.

The sense of accomplishing a little more than you could, the sense of being your best self, the sense of conquering the space that once felt impossible, is what makes mind over matter to conquer the muscle.

We never truly believe in ourselves, I mean there are some over confident assholes who do but I am talking about the other normal people like you and I. Most of us choose the comfortable option even when we know the risk-reward quotient of this other option is way higher than option 1 – have you ever wondered why do we do that? Because we don’t really believe in ourselves. We never fully believe we can do something spectacular, create something magnificent, make it big in our career, until we do.

We aren’t the best judge of ourselves, and so most often we underestimate our true potential and our beliefs. We constantly doubt the outcome of our choices and are too afraid of going the unknown path. And that leads us to the life of an average Joe going through the daily struggles of life just the way it is doing little to almost nothing to change this. 

Coming to my story, I doubted myself too. Should I pursue writing? Should I create my blog? What if no one reads it, what if people don’t find worth in it? What about those millions of books and literature that is already published? Should I check what is already out there? Like there were a billion thoughts and I call these a billion noise that I had to shut down. I just said to myself, I want to write because I WANT TO. There, just right there I had my answer in those three words – ‘I want to’. I want to write because that gives me satisfaction. I want to write because that is my avenue to reach out to you. I want to write because I get to explore my creativity. It was simple.

When you find this purpose, you easily overcome those earlier doubts – so what if there are a million books already written – that would still not solve my purpose, what if no one finds merit in what I write, but guess what I will never know unless I put them out there and let people decide

You see what I mean? Do something because that is what you love to do. And when you do that, you would believe in yourself. Because trust me, you are limited only by your own thoughts. Spread those wings and soar high, the world is your territory or your canvas if you are a painter or your notepad if you are interested in writing like I do.  

Oh my god, that’s such a big lie that anyone would ever tell you. I mean who are these super-productive people who have these perfect days each day every single day. I want to know these people.

In my life of 30 years I haven’t met one so far; so I am doubtful if I would ever find this perfect person who gets up early morning, reads the newspaper, does their workout, reaches the workplace on time, gets everything done, returns home on time, cooks a good dinner, indulges in some light reading, meditates, does their nightly routine and goes off to sleep and don’t forget — they have a good night’s sleep as well without a sweat.

If you tell me that people have this well-oiled machine, I would like to meet them. I strive for this perfect day and it just doesn’t seem to happen. I am sure there are a few people who follow a good routine that includes a lot of what I mentioned above and can consistently do that too but if you’d tell me that these people are happy with their outcomes I shall have my doubts. 

Seven out of ten adults in the United States say they experience stress or anxiety daily and can’t sleep peacefully. Now, do I need to say more? I do! What I want to say is that a perfect day is a myth. No one has this amazing morning routine, equally amazing day at work and an amazing evening too. That’s the law of the universe. You can’t have it all.

I constantly juggle work and personal priorities. I forget to bring groceries on time; I drag myself out of bed in the morning (I am just not a morning person no matter how hard I try) I just never seem to complete everything I need to – the backlog never seems to end. So you end up feeling sluggish, tired, and disappointed. But if you look at the glass half full – then you’d tell me you had a great day – you took those tiny steps to move forward, you probably met a few people, you learned something from them, you probably had a new idea and that got you excited and that made your life a tad bit simpler. And I would call it a perfect day. It is not about meeting the standards set by someone else, but it is about ‘setting your own standards’ and ‘living by them each day’. 

So the message is simple – Don’t run behind having a perfect day, get meaning out of each day, add value to the work you do, derive satisfaction from that me-time you get and that’s what a perfect day is.

Well this is the fourth attempt at writing this article and a zillion thoughts later. I doubt myself in that case – do I really love to write? Or is it just in my mind. Like I literally cleaned the house, then I thought maybe my husband wants to watch our daily quota of Netflix and then I just started cleaning my MacBook like the least important of it all but I did all that so I can escape writing. I don’t know why I keep avoiding it.

Ok, so this is the fifth one and I come back just the next day, which is great. Reason – we woke up and it is a usual Sunday morning and I was going to bury my head in all the routine and we were just discussing on how we can better manage our time over the weekend. To which I said my problem is that I prioritize house cleaning, household stuff before my writing or reading or other personal habits. To which my husband asked me

what is the one thing, which would pain me on Monday morning if I wouldn’t do it.

-Motivational one-liners by my not so philosophical husband

And I think I got my answer it would be THIS, if I am not able to complete this write up I would be quite disappointed. And thus I overcame my laziness or whatever that I was doing to delay the writing. I just took my laptop, wrote the article and there I was done. However I didn’t really publish until almost a month. But I wasn’t really gung-ho on the whole publishing thing, I just wanted to collect my thoughts in one place and really write it down.

And this is the sixth time I actually opened this write-up so I can finish it and only then crash for the day. Did you hear that? As I said it wasn’t the first thing I did today, it is the last and that’s what I need to improve upon. What I have learnt is I need to get better at doing what I want to do the first thing in the day probably after brushing and breakfast. And just do it. And get it out of my mind to be able to cut myself that slack. It’s something you want to love; you aren’t in love with it as of now, but you want to and if you make it a task it becomes one and a burden. So I am far from it being a habit but I am getting a little better each day. And the good thing is I have already published my first article on social media and I promised myself I shall post one each week. I shall keep writing and I need not be perfect about it. It need not be my best article, need not spend crazy hours researching and thinking and rewriting it. I am just going to write it and post it and improve a little every time I do that. Because this way I shall keep doing it and not procrastinate.

So I hope if you read it this far and found my story useful, take a small step and make a habit.

Okay, let’s start with the first 2 weeks. So they say it is difficult (like it’s a drug) to abstain from something you were hooked onto for so long. Now I shall admit that while I wasn’t posting something every day and didn’t have tons of stories daily. I was an avid user scrolling through pages after pages, following some of my favorite celeb stories and browsing through my favorite hash tags on food and fitness. I thought Instagram is just filled with these two. But it’s just what you follow that you would see more of, so if you are a cat person or a dog person, well Instagram is full of these for you.

Anyway, unlike others maybe I didn’t have much difficulty transitioning except for mornings when there aren’t any notifications to see or those breaks in between meetings when you pick your phone and realize you got no gram to surf. So you keep it back or in my case you switch to twitter (more on that later). And every time I went to a beautiful place or explored something extraordinary I clicked a picture and then I didn’t know what to do with it without sharing it with the world. But a promise is a promise and nothing bigger than the goal you have set for yourself. So just reminisced the picture over a few weeks or max share it on my WhatsApp family group.

Ok, now that’s done, what now? Or rather what’s the alternative?

Now it’s just a routine. You know the drill. Every time there is an urge, just find another source of entertainment. So for me I switched to Twitter, Medium and YouTube and recently Reddit(more on this a little later) but you will always find alternatives that would attract or distract you depending on what you are aiming to do with all the time off the social media. And you may say that Youtube and twitter are no less social media apps so that isn’t really going off the social media entirely, however my aim was to be more productive so even if I am on social media I made it a point I was using it for something informative – I follow Twitter and Youtube to understand Indian politics and to some extent US politics from the non-conventional sources as I don’t trust news channels these days. Neither do I trust social media; but, you can be smart enough to differentiate between facts and views more on this in another topic. So concluding there I was, able to find more time on news and politics—my topics of interest.

And this time also allowed me to research a lot on this topic–coming off social media and I started finding people who have done similar experiment in the past and what they learnt about it. So I want to share all of those findings with you.

Now I saw this video on ‘Quit social media’ by Dr. Cal Newport and he mentions that the most common argument that he has heard is people who have created their social identities based on these new age technology and to dismiss them altogether is like being in a state of denial, to which his counter argument is simple–in the 21^st century what the market values is the ability to produce things that are rare and valuable.

So what’s easy to replicate and doesn’t create a lot of value will not be something that would lead you to success.

– Dr Cal Newport

And social media to a large extent is just like that. Even a 6-year-old can create content today. So unless you are producing content based on research, conversations with experts and market leaders, experience and a slowly roasted recipe of persistence, incremental knowledge over the years and communicating with finesse; you aren’t really adding much value to your social media eco-system. Look at the one’s who are at the top in their respective fields they would have a career even if you take away the social media from them. For instance, MKBHD(Google or YouTube him if you don’t already know who he is) who reviews smartphones has gathered immense knowledge on the evolution of smartphones and has given extensive benefit through his reviews and feedback to a million users. So if tomorrow YouTube is no longer the medium he would use something else, but that’s all it is–a medium. You can’t take away his knowledge and research on mobile phones, his communication and video making skills from him.

Now if you are merely replicating someone without having the skills/knowledge or just produce 15 second videos, sorry you might gain instant fame for one video but you’d be down to nothing the very next day, and that is what I am against–the mere ton loads of content of absolute bad quality and have a life lesser than that of a fly. And that’s when I realized if I will post Insta stories that would attract a 100+ views and Insta posts that might attract another 100+ likes but what does that really mean–does it mean I am producing some content? Not really. I am no celeb who needs to maintain a certain social identity and mind you, I am no social media star who needs more traffic to their content. So what does that mean–I am only there for instant gratification or what we call as validation from someone else that this is right and this is beautiful. When you do these things just to create those beautiful stories without any additional value, without utilising that traffic effectively to promote something to gain something, you are effectively like the next door Aunty who likes to show-off their new jewellery, new car or new travel. Period. And if that is what you want that’s absolutely fine too. Just being aware helps at times and I believe not everyone is conscious and so they post at times, get their ego boost, go off for a few months, get frustrated -don’t really know what they want out of it or why are they even doing it.

And that brings me to the next point–Are those posts even remotely like your real life? There are again multiple references to this in our movies, soap operas and even in real life. Like friends who would go through a shitty relationship but post pictures of #relationshipgoals or going through a routine boring Sunday but just posting a few pics from some other day to show the fun day you have had. Or editing a picture to make it look like it’s from another planet when in reality it wasn’t worth the effort. Really, I wish we could have some filters in our life like in Instagram to filter out the nuisance from what makes sense.

No one posts about the struggles or the miseries, they all post of the beautiful vacation trips, their beautiful lives and their perfect spouse.

Sorry to break your bubble but I feel sorry for some of them who paint this picture that their life is just perfect or much better than others when in reality it is just shallow because you only lived on social media. Switch it off and then see if your life is still that beautiful, if it is well it’s great, enjoy those moments, cherish them and share a moment or two as you feel appropriate. But don’t ruin that moment especially when the friend whose picture you just posted is trying to have a conversation while you dig your face into that social media app and act busy to see what people are reacting on that picture. You care less of that friend sitting right in front of you but more of your social perception that you have just created. And that is what I am against. I am not against the social media apps, please don’t think otherwise, I believe they are a wonderful medium to express ourselves but we need to use them wisely and not be enslaved by them.

When you realize what you were doing was to create this reality which is far distinct from who you are or what you believe in you’d feel cheated and by none other than cheated by yourself. And I think that’s an existential crisis–and if you don’t believe me watch this excellent documentary on Netflix called ‘American Meme’ wherein they show how the big 4 names of the social media industry – Paris Hilton, Josh Ostrovsky, Brittany Furlan, and Kirill Bichutsky, hustle to create empires online. Kirill Bichutsky goes by the name of slut whisperer and if you don’t know him, just do a quick google search and you shall know he is most notorious for his “Girls Gone Wild” style stunts in which he pours champagne on women at nightclubs–ridiculous isn’t it?

And I know I have escalated in my write up from the girl next door to the celebs, I understand that but we are all still sailing the same boat and the point I was trying to make is that this guy is famous and makes money for pouring champagne on girls’ booty–well if this isn’t rock bottom I am not sure what is. I mean he himself doesn’t like it, he says he needs to be drunk to do it and he thrives only because of the demand there is which is even insane. The person who created his empire off the stuff he doesn’t believe in–well that’s what I call as existential crises when you contradict what you stand for, your core values and what makes you, YOU!

So, it is not really about questioning the medium but just the way we use it and if we really think through all of this or just follow the herd.