Shifting Mindsets

My new class has officially started this week. Before our first meeting, I went through all of the materials on the course site that we’ll be covering and working on for the next 8 weeks. I don’t think it’ll be as daunting as I had initially expected. Yes, there are a lot of assignments, but since the course is asynchronous and online, I can actually block off time to chip away at the assignments when it’s most convenient for me. The course is about virtual collaboration and the professor has been teaching remotely for the past 30 years. She is definitely an expert in the field and the perfect case study for why remote work should stay (I’ll be marketing this heavy to all the managers I coach). In the first 30 minutes of our class check-in, she introduced us to at least 3 different virtual tools that I had either never heard of or used very minimally in the past. I’m excited low-key because I know by the time I’ve finished this course, I will have more tools that will make me more versatile, both personally and professionally. I’m about to start an assignment on emotional intelligence but I’m feeling a little distracted, so here I am.

As I continue to purge in this season, I’m hyper aware of how my thoughts can either have a positive or negative impact on me and my desired outcomes. Getting rid of unwanted material things has been easy. Changing habits and shifting mindsets is a whole other set of challenges. Imagine putting together one of those old school radios from the 1980’s/90’s (I remember my dad used to have to do this when he was in his electrical engineer certificate program), remember how complicated all that wiring was and appeared to be? Now, imagine after putting it together and using it for a while, you realize there is a glitch. You have to take it apart and re-wire the whole thing because of a small defect, but that small defect is keeping it from working efficiently. The task seems tedious and overwhelming. You’re dragging your heels because of the enormity of the project. That radio is me in a nutshell. Having to rewire and reprogram all that I am and all that I’ve learned has been a huge undertaking, but I’d rather do it now than to wish I had taken action when it’s too late. I’m in a season of unlearning that which no longer serves me.

I have dedicated this season to purging much of what hasn’t been useful to me, literally and figuratively, especially as it pertains to well-being. One of the things I’ve been doing often is cleaning up my social media, primarily Instagram, Twitter (aka ”X”) and YouTube. Every week, I’ll get a notification from my phone about my average screen time. I used to pride myself on how low that average time would be. I am so not a phone person, first off. I’m the type to put it on the charger and leave it there for the remainder of the night when I get home from work. Over time, I started to notice an upward trend in the time spent online and was surprised. The uptick in time wasn’t making any sense. Then I remembered the amount of notifications I constantly receive, especially from social media sites. All this “breaking news” and folks going “live” with effery or the next viral video constantly being pushed out was getting out of hand. Most of it wasn’t positive either. I didn’t notice until recently how many pages I followed that seemed to be in the business of selling fear and desperation. Even if I wasn’t following certain content creators and their channels, because of previous videos I had watched, the algorithms were trying to reel me in for more salaciousness, more depravity and just loads of negativity. We tend to forget that a lot of what we subscribe to has been fed to us both consciously and unconsciously, but more so the latter. I’ll admit that I’ve been susceptible to a lot of the toxicity lately. It isn’t until you sit back and re-assess that you realize you fell for the okie doke. A massive deprogramming and recalibration needs to happen.

I used to go on long digital detoxes but what’s the point of doing that if you’re going to return to the same rubbish you were consuming beforehand? I started my clean up with YouTube. Red pill content has taken over the innanets. Vloggers responding to the negativity also flood the YT streets. Sadly, I’ve gotten sucked in a time or two in the hoopla, falling for some of the hype that’s been spewed over the years. There’s a lot of creators posing as experts, leading the masses astray. First order of business, I went through all of the channels I was subscribed to. If it was a content creator that provided a balanced outlook on a subject matter I cared about, I stay subscribed. All of the other snake oil salesmen/women and wolves trying to profit from other people’s pain and desperation, I immediately unsubscribed to. I also unsubcribed from any gossip vlogs, some lifestyle influencers and some “couples” vlogs. Most of them are in it to make money, a lot of it isn’t real and staged for clicks. We’re all finding out that a lot of our faves were faking the funk and many of those couples are all splitting up. They’ve resorted to writing “tell all” books, doing explosive interviews and letting all the tea finally spill, thus guaranteeing more headlines which’ll generate more clicks, views and income for them for years to come.

I did the same with Instagram. I unfollowed a lot of news outlets, lots of pandering political pundit and gossip pages. I already know where I stand politically. Tired of my feeds being flooded with empty promises any time someone has something to sell or wants my vote in the next election. The mud-slinging is out of control. I grew up in the bluest of blue states, so I became civically engaged early on. Any information I need, I seek and find. I don’t need to open up the apps and be bombarded with the BS. As we’re seeing with current events, you can get swayed by one side over another based on the amount of stimuli being put out. Again, I have my sources that I go to when I need FACTS. As for “X”, who is running things over there? Can’t really tell these days…it’s giving very much far/alt-right. I’m not about to whine and complain about what needs to change since free speech is a right. I’ll just have to opt-out for some peace of mind.

Facebook is where the ‘‘Boomers” and Generation X reign supreme. There’s a few millenials and xennials talking their ish over there but not too much where I need to do a massive clean up of my friends list. Thank goodness for the mute option. I’ll leave FB to my pops, tatis, tontons and cuzzs’. I’m still on there because of family really, staying connected as much as possible. I’ve “muted” a lot of folks on there anyway, including some family (they know I know the real scoop) and I’d rather not have to see the lies they keep telling on there. I used to call “cap” on a couple of statuses and post directly under them with a side eye, but I’ll let them spin their alternate reality for their followings. I’m also on there more so for the groups. Now that’s where all the action is! Even those, I have to limit so I rarely check-in to them either and mute those notifications as well. I recently added TikTok, but only because homies in the group chat keep sharing videos from there and I was having a hard time viewing them without having an account. I take what I need from there and leave what doesn’t serve me. There are some funny vids on their though, along with some recipe and fitness ones that I like to watch. We’ll see how long I can stand it before I mute it on my phone too.

Clubhouse is another I had to opt-out of (it still shows under my apps with a little cloud underneath, meaning it needs to be updated). That app was lit during the ‘demy. However, even it too was becoming a tad too toxic. I would hop from room to room, trying to find one that reflected my interests and where I wanted to soak up some useful knowledge. If you hop in now, all you’ll hear is more hot topics/gossip and you’ll start to feel that there is a war between black men and women. Where is the love? Wherever it is, that’s where you’ll find me. Until then, I’m going to keep cleaning up my digital footprint on these apps, hopefully clearing my mind and resetting it in the process.