At the end of June I was coming up on one year of launching The Strong Human program and posting social media content pretty consistently. I was feeling burnt out from just about everything and just wanted a break. So, I decided to take the weekend off from social media by deleting Instagram and Facebook off my phone.
The weekend came and went. I kind of enjoyed not being on my phone so much, so I decided to do it for one week.
It was a bit of an internal struggle to do at first. Afterall, I do have an online business that I run by myself, so probably not the best for business.
But I did it anyway.
As I reflected on different aspects of my life, I began to notice that my views of how I looked at things were largely shaped by the content I viewed and my views were not fully my own anymore, but rather a compilation of those whose content I was most interacting with.
So, I quit listening to any fitness and or health related podcast. I stopped watching my favorite fitness and self-improvement YouTubers. I stopped reading all the books I was in the process of reading.
I did this for the entire month of August. Probably the first time I have ever done anything like this to this extreme.
The results? A weird thing happened with my heart rate where my resting heart rate decreased by 2 beats per minute. I don’t know if it had any correlation, but maybe??
My motivation to continue to workout however, well I completely fell off track in August. I went from habitually lifting AT LEAST 3 times per week and most times 4 times to 1 MAYBE 2 lifts per week. One week I didn’t even get one lift in. And I went 10 days straight without working out.
So, in September I reintroduced some podcasting and some YouTube content in hopes that it would add some motivation back in. I thought, hmm, maybe if I only look at content that I have full control over I can find some happy medium and then I’ll start posting on social media and writing again.
But all the sudden I was lacking confidence in myself, having major doubts and really questioning, does what I do even matter?
How big of an impact am I actually having anyways?
“It’s been two months and no one has asked where I’ve been?”
So, I decided to stay off for a bit longer to find my voice again and see if I could get myself back to a headspace where I could put stuff out for others to read/watch again.
I did a lot of thinking and self-reflecting. I’ve been doing a lot of journaling. I still wrote basically an article a week during that time despite not releasing any. I came up with (at least new to me) a cool way to structure full body workouts (more on that in the future, probably). I have been mostly back on track with my fitness related habits while working through some other personal mental health related issues which is an ongoing process.
But I still wasn’t quite ready to get back on social media.
By mid-October I started reading again, listening to a wide variety of podcasts, and am mostly back on social media browsing at this stage. I plan to start posting some videos/stories on my page again in the near future so make sure to follow/like those pages (Instagram, Facebook, YouTube). For what I do, social media is a necessary evil and better to embrace it with control than resist and let it control you.
There is probably a message in there somewhere about taking time to get to know yourself, being patient, and giving yourself permission to do less in the immediate future to benefit your future self, but I’ll leave that up to you to decipher.
Where I’d like to focus most is writing this newsletter as I find it the easiest way for me to get my thoughts and message out. I have some cool content in the works that will be applicable to just about anyone whether you’re just starting out, an athlete, a meathead bro like myself, a parent like myself, looking to lose weight, need some extra motivation, or like the concept of self-improving. Not every article will be for everybody, but everybody will have an article they can find value in.
So please subscribe to my newsletter (it is free) by entering your email below! I’d love to hear some feedback from people on topics, struggles, or questions you have for me!