#socialmedia #anxiety #division #violence #positivediversity
As we Clockwork Orange ourselves via our Smartphones, ingesting 150 disturbing images a day, polar memes designed to divide us, and we listen to all the echoing drama, fear and loathing within even our own tribe, it is no wonder that mental dis-ease is growing, and depression is ballooning – Illness becomes a rational and protective response to a wide and weird world, channelled straight into our eyeballs – It is like old people’s bodies stiffening up to protect themselves from falls, though that is actually the cause of more problems.
Resilience
We need to distance ourselves from an overload of otherworld pain, toughen up and begin a course of Anti-Catastrophising before we leap back into the stream of nonstop curated horror that is our Social Media feed.
Question
What freakout material did your phone recently yank your chain with? Take that catastrophising input and ask a more distant, measured and considered question – For you, here and right now, in your life, what is the worst that could happen?
Answer
With Bill Gates rowing back from his predictions of human extinction within his life time, we can take a breath. When you actually ask – Is it as bad as I fear, the answer, 99% of the time will be, “No, nothing like it.”
Drama to timeline
We can choose to move from night sweats to facts, from fire stoking chat groups to time lines of the rational, and we can build up our own anti-fragility by noting down a list of our strengths, capabilities, and abundance resources.
You
What are you good at? (Remember probably half the World’s population are not as good at what you are good at). What have you achieved just this year? Wow. And, who do you know that can help you out? Wow – that list is impressive.
What else?
When we ask, what else do our current levels of talent and experience lend themselves to, the answers will amaze. We can be agile, adult, strong and effective. Let’s set up a side hustle with positive actions today – Yes.
Symptoms
We are being manipulated by a fast-flowing sewage pipe of algorithm generated symptoms. We need to start finding some of the causes and dealing with them.
Are you being kept nervous by a channel, a polarised tribe or a controlling individual?
What do they do? What are they telling you? Why are they stoking your fear and creating and encouraging to manifest fear and hate?
Problem Solving
Let us get back to solving what we can sort out, start rightsizing issues, to actually tick off some implemented solutions for a change.
Separation
Misery loves company, and a coalition of the weak can be a good thing (e.g. a trade union) or a bad thing (a band of useful idiots inducted into a cult). We need to wise up and learn to spot the difference.
Accountability
When we step out of victimhood and passivity, (“same sh*t, different day)” and into agency, development, solution finding, and a general PMA – positive mental attitude, then tomorrow may still suck but next week, next month and certainly next year, will become significantly better.
Action
What will your first Anti-Catastrophising act be today? The answers and solutions are in all of our hands and always have been.
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