Revitalize Today: Start Your Social Media Fast Now!

Have you ever felt you were drowning in endless scrolling, watching silly dog videos, or perhaps anxiously scanning headlines that leave you fearful and unsettled? I certainly have been there, and with the goal of serenity and peace, I have weighed my options of deleting the app and reclaiming my life.

Big questions arise for me as this flashes through my mind. Do I lose all of my data which is the warning I am greeted with when attempting to do so. My inner saboteur comes back with "Oh don't do that, you don't want to lose all of your data, do you?". Well, maybe I do. What really does it matter? What will I miss out on? How else will I keep up with what's going on? The questions abound.

I have been finding myself drawn to my phone whenever I have any downtime - catching up on the latest celebrity gossip, the ever-present doom and gloom news cycle, or my own favorite topic, which lately is astrology. Now there is nothing wrong with learning about a topic that fascinates, but when it is cutting into other productive work or social time, or worse, is impacting your mindset, then it might be time to curb that habit. I can feel my mind become cloudy and unclear after a scrolling session? How about you?

So, in the interest of experimenting with what this might actually look like, I have removed, actually deleted one of the apps that was sucking my time. And my life along with it.

I call it SM Fasting. Just like intermittent fasting is a recent bio-hack that perks up your metabolism (and has many other amazing benefits), fasting from endless scrolling could be your ticket to more energy, productivity, and maybe most importantly, serenity and peace. It can clear out and calm your nervous system, give your brain a break, not to mention the impact to your heart and soul when you aren't reading and seeing images of the horrors around the world.

My challenge to you is to pick one of your apps that drains your time and remove it from your phone or better yet delete it.

Breathe.

Then, instead of that mindless activity, what might you do instead? It might be helpful to think about those things prior to deleting it, but no matter which way you do it - create the list and see what you are now able to do.

There are so many options. I have been turning to my keyboard or journal and finding solace and entertainment in writing. I also have been finding delightful books to read - real, paper copy books, not on my e-reader or phone. Connection with my family and friends is more possible again. If you are old enough to know what life was like before cellphones, what did you do then that you could do now? Go for a walk, garden, pick up a pad of paper and sketch something?

Some of the immediate consequences to my experiment are encouraging. My eyes feel better, my shoulders are relaxing, my mind is calm. This is mindfulness. It is winning back your time and reclaiming your life. You will no longer be living someone else's which is what you are doing when scrolling headlines or comparing your life to another on IG. I am taking it slowly and seeing what I might notice after a one month hiatus.

Set yourself a short goal - try it for a week. Then maybe two. A month and assess.

• How do you feel?

• Are you better for it?

• Worse? How so?

• What have you replace the scrolling with?

Give yourself permission to experiment. You can be in the driver's seat of your life, but when you are on auto-pilot you are giving control over to another. It's these really small practices that make a difference, one day and one step at a time. I challenge you to reclaim your life and your energy again. Notice what opens for you!