Learning how to use the internet in a healthy way is about how we spend our time and energy online. Judging something as wrong and requiring you to spend time fixing and controlling it, can take many people way off course.
When we get into the habit of correcting and controlling, the brain always spots more things to correct and control. There are so many wrong things to fix!
This can happen to ourselves, in the form of constantly rewriting, rereading, and revising emails, social media posts, websites, videos, etc. This can be something we do to others if we’re only going on forums or social media channels to find things we see as wrong and tell people they’re wrong, and then our existence online revolves around the wrong things we hate. It’s like signing up to be a food critic that only eats at terrible restaurants. You eat a lot of bad food!
The correcting and controlling just takes us away from creating and giving. What do you typically spend time correcting and controlling online? How do you try to control what others think? With the actions you’re doing online today, can you create something better? Instead of fixing something wrong, can you create something good? This doesn’t mean you have to agree with the wrong thing you typically try to control. This is about growing something that’s much better and more substantial.
EXERCISE: Create and share something online, under a time limit, without any checking or correcting.
This is one of our favorite exercises. A big benefit is that the better you get at this, the more you can create, and the less time you spend doing it, which gives you time back to do other wonderful things (not online).
The exercise is to create something and share it without doing any checking or rewriting, redrawing, etc. And when you share it, don’t get caught up in trying to control people’s minds by discounting or downplaying yourself or apologizing in advance that this was just a quick draft.
Create and give and celebrate yourself.