So how do you protect your brain and your body against social media? And so I dug a little bit into science and it turns out for the average person our heart rate actually increases when we are on social media. The pleasure centers of the brain are stimulated. We get something out of it. And that’s not always positive. It’s about turning us into consumers but it’s also gives us soapboaces and wanting to be heard and wanting to argue.

And rather than letting the social media companies determine as to why we are online, I think we need to step back and think about why am I online. I should actually not use the word “why” as an NLP trainer. But Question #1: What specifically is the reason why I am on social media? What specifically is the reason why I am on social media? What specifically would I like to achieve with that? What emotion specifically would I like to achieve? And lastly, what is important to me about social media? And how is that in line with your values?

And the interesting thing is that when scientists did research on how much time we should actually spend reading the news, they said well you only need to spend about twenty minutes a day and do that after 11 am in the morning and before 3 pm in the afternoon. Why? Because then it’s not close to waking up and not close to falling asleep, and you can allow your brain to process that. And we consume news through social media as well, whether that is news about the world, news about people, friends, and all these things bombarding our minds.

First, we have determined as to what specifically is the reason that we’re on Facebook, what is it that we’d like to feel. Based on that you determine how much time is actually appropriate to spend on social media. Now when you think about your life wheel as a whole and all your goals, and all the people and things that are important to you, how much time should you logically allocate to social media if you were to be a person who lives a life in excellence, who lives a life in purpose and meaning, who is the best son or daughter and the best worker and the best person in a relationship and the best friend that you can be, the best you that you can be, the best version of yourself. How much time would you spend on social media? And allocate that time. Set the timer to it.

And if you cannot commit forever, commit for… I don’t know, 30 days. See how that works out for you, how that would be life-changing for you, rather than announcing to the whole world that you’re going to disconnect from social media and then you don’t. And you know [who] you are. So that’s one.

Now you need to detach your brain from social media. So you need to detach your brain, it’s another step. And how can you detach your brain? For me, what works is either singing inside my own head, or actually listening to music, and [make put 3:38] the music on the forefront of my attention, and put the social media in the background of my attention. So that really works for me. For you it may be something different.

For some people what would really work really, really well is to literally step out of your own body, step out of your own emotion, and to actually watch a movie of yourself scrolling through social media. What is it that you’d like to see, hear, and feel the moment that you’re done with social media? And it better be a positive impulse rather than negative. What would the movie look like of you on social media, you know when you’re holding your phone, or you’re stretched out yelling at it, you’re rolling your eyes or…

Those are also NLP techniques that you can use to actually really get an awareness of what you’re doing and limit that timeframe. And scroll through it and do what you need to do and to make sure that you achieve the reasons why you’re on social media, the feeling that you’d like to have, the reason why you’re that… that you actually are fulfilling that and not much more. And so that is how you use NLP to limit the stress and limit the control that social media has over you.

Resources

Book

The Chemistry of Calm: A Powerful, Drug-Free Plan to Quiet Your Fears and Overcome Your Anxiety – Henry Emmons M.D.