Someone asked me this question: “I feel pressured by social media. What can I do?”

Human Nature

In order to understand why you are feeling pressure from social media, I first want to share about human nature. 

Human beings have 2 natures inside of them. One is animalistic nature (follows physical desire and ego) and the other is divine nature (expression of harmonious, non-competitive nature, all-encompassing love). We’re always facing these two. Things around us, people, situations, and circumstances are always there. If we are not paying attention, we could easily be controlled by social media, phone apps, food, pleasure, or other people by following our physical desires or ego.

How many phone apps have notifications on your phone? How much time do you spend time scrolling through social media without any particular purpose every day? Following your physical desires is easy, like being lazy: you don’t have to do any training to become lazy. In the same token, without awareness, you can lose the sense of who you really are and why you are doing what you are doing. Why are you using social media, do you know? 

Because we have lost ourselves, there are so many things around us that can be misused. For example, a knife can be used to prepare delicious food for your family and loved ones or it can be used to stab someone when you are angry. Social media can be used as a platform to share information that is helpful for the greater good or to follow the human desire to show off things you have, material success or traveling around the world, trying to look good to be recognized. Social media can be a temptation coming to lure you. 

So we need the training to become stronger inside to know what we really want in life. How can you use social media to express who you really are? 

Who am I?

I don’t think social media is the problem. It is not that social media is pressuring you, it is just that you do not know what you really want to express through it. That means that you have to do the work to get to know yourself, who you really are. Then you can focus on how you wish to share the information to help other people. If you know who you are and what you really want, you won’t be shaken by what other people are posting. Instead, you will use it to be the expression of who you really are and begin to make a positive impact on many people. 

When you look at other’s posts with stimulating pictures, with amazing accomplishments, you can either feel bad comparing yourself to others or love/accept what they are doing and congratulate their successes.

Life is not about comparing ourselves to others and being better than they are, but it is about being a better version of yourself. 

If you are feeling pressured by social media, I hope this helped you.