BEING DIFFERENT IS REAL

 Over the past three days of social media detox, I have come to realize that DIFFERENCE is real.

I decided on my own to just do a social media detox for three days after watching an intriguing video about a one week detox by Niklas Christl, where he tried to remove not just social media but other factors that where not necessary. I strongly recommend you watch the video by clicking the highlighted name.

MY STORY

During this period, to be honest, at the beginning it was so difficult as I was constantly desiring to reach out to my phone and unfreeze my social media apps so that I could start using it. But along the way, I just kept saying NO because I was actually desperate to see where this would take me in just three days time.

Amazingly, I suddenly began to feel a sense of burden being lifted up from my shoulders. I didn't know that things like this could happen just by doing something out of your comfort zone. 

As the days kept drawing to an end, I felt so amazed by my achievement thus far, because usually, I would always reach out to my phone and instantly turn on my data and be mesmerized by the amount of notifications from my Emails, WhatsApp messages, Snapchat messages, and my Instagram, including my Boomplay app. That's to show you that I had most of my dopamine triggered from series of notifications from different source which was a bad habit that I needed to stop. That was why I decided to do this detox to see how far and well I would go with this. 

Towards the beginning of my last day of detox I had series of temptations coming to me like CRAZY. I didn't understand why, I mean, I was was doing well at first so why this all of a sudden? It made no sense. 

Things like; 

My Choral Director ,after practice, told me to go to my WhatsApp so that I can download the song to practice before the day. (You might say:  "I could have used Xender". But unfortunately my Xender wiped itself out of my phone and till date I don't know why or how that happened and I never cared to download that app again). 

My friend, who I was shocked to see during our orientation, told me to send her pictures of what was explained to us via WhatsApp.

On top of everything, My mum called and told me to turn on video call so that she could see what I bought from the market. 

All these where happening at a stretch and I was so overwhelmed and angry at the same time.

MY REALIZATION

This quickly made me realize that as you make up your mind on something, towards or during that session of you trying to make that step of change with consistency, things/obstacles/challenges begins to come your way like no man's business. That's why as these challenges and curiosity (of wanting to reap the end result of listening to that song, sending that file, turning on the video call) came my way, I was pissed off at first but I quickly gathered up the courage to say "No" to everyone of them.

I didn't just say "NO" directly to my Choral Director or my friend or my Mum ( I can't even dare) but I simply explained to them the reason why I can't, though they looked and sounded skeptical about it but they still accepted it and we found another solution to them all. 

CONCLUSION

What I'm saying is that, to be different is real, to be something you desire to be requires a lot, you must be willing to lay down your priorities straight and try to stick to them. It will be difficult, trust me, I felt like I was killing myself. Cause, anytime I turned on my phone and those apps weren't at sight I just felt completely disgusted at what I was holding. But despite it all I persevered and it worked out well.

Obviously, I'm still going to continue to do this subsequently, and you should too, because what I have learnt just in three days is beyond what I can share to you.

All and what I will leave you with is; try and do something different. Detox those unnecessary things that doesn't make sense and fill that space with things that can make you better than your now. I filled those spaces with more studies and worship and even included in my schedule things I enjoy the most which was editing pictures and videos and it turned out to be more intriguing than mindless scrolls on social media. 

One of the things I did while I was on detox

Just try and be creative overall and it should not always revolve on social media, cause there is so much outside of that phone you carry around everyday.

Thanks for your time, I hope you found this inspiring. Please share this post and drop a comment, I would love to hear your opinion.

Have a nice day!✌