Something I’ve been diligent about as I approach 40 is taking stock of where I give people way too much access to me. One of the main places I see it happening is on social media. I’ve also been reflecting on how distractions have impacted my life, especially through the lens of my neurodivergence.
These two inquiries, coupled with conversations I’m having with people in my community and books I’ve been reading about ADHD, attention, and focus have led me to an experiment: I’m logging out of Instagram and Facebook for the summer, with big curiosity around whether this should eventually be a forever thing. Join me on this episode as I expand on what factored into this decision and what I’ve been noticing as I start to taper off from those platforms.
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In episode 426 of the Embodied Podcast we discuss:
(0:41) Announcements and updates about the show
(3:20) My journey with being diagnosed with ADHD as an adult
(7:30) The details of my social media experiment
(10:34) Why I’m a huge advocate for letting yourself feel the full range of human emotions
(16:00) The consequences of endless and unmitigated commentary on social media
(20:14) Noticing how unintentional multitasking affects my energy and focus
(25:22) My plans for the free Wild Soul Community on Mighty Networks
(28:17) Reflecting on how I allow people to consume the content that I put out there
(32:33) What I’ve been noticing about my life as I cut back the content overload
Resources mentioned in the episode:
Work with me:
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- NEW! Join our Free Wild Soul Community on Mighty Networks
- Subscribe to my Substack
- Catch the full show notes for episode 425 here
- Email us with questions or feedback
- Don’t miss an episode of The Embodied Podcast
Quotes from this Week’s Episode of the Embodied Podcast:
- God’s plan for me does not involve doing something that drains and distracts the shit out of me, and in more recent years, also straight up makes my blood boil unnecessarily sometimes.
- Anger is very healing and revealing to work through. It’s very important that we not bypass our anger. Anger makes us honest, it shows us where we need boundaries, where we care about things, where we’ve been hurt or violated or perhaps where we’ve hurt or violated others. It shows us what we’re passionate about, what we’re willing to fight for, and what we need to forgive ourselves for. Because fairly often, when we’re angry at others, we’re really angry at ourselves for allowing whatever is going on between us and them to happen.
- The entire premise of social media is that almost anyone can say or post anything anywhere with impunity, and anyone that’s on the receiving end of it has to figure out how to deal with that.
- Over the last couple years, I cannot believe how many pictures I don’t have. I’m in the moments, not necessarily obsessed with capturing them. And certainly even when I do capture them, I’m not sharing them nearly as often as I did earlier in my 30s.
- I want to be more present in my life, in my body, with my health, with my movement, with my practices, with my creativity. I’ve been great in the last few months about leaving my phone in another room or on airplane mode for a while in the morning while I drink water, meditate, sit at my altar, pray, set intentions or any of the other things I love doing during my sacred morning time.
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About the Embodied Podcast with Elizabeth DiAlto
Since 2013 I’ve been developing a body of work that helps women embody self-love, healing, and wholeness. We do this by focusing on the four levels of consciousness – physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual.
In practical terms, this looks like exploring tools and practices to help you tune into the deep wisdom of the body and the knowing of the heart, which I believe are gateways to our souls. Then we cultivate a new relationship with our minds that allows the mind to serve this wisdom and knowledge and soul connection, rather than override it, which is what many of us were taught.
If you’ve been doing self-help or spiritual development work for a while, these are the types of foundational things that often people overlook in pursuit of fancier concepts that often aren’t practical or sustainable. Here, we will focus on building these strong foundations so you can honestly and thoroughly embody self-love. If you’re feeling it, subscribe to the show, and leave us a review wherever you listen from. You can also keep up with show updates and community discussions on Instagram here.
Transcript for Episode 426 “Reclaiming My Focus“:
Elizabeth DiAlto 00:00
One woman I had been following who I’ve love this woman, but Katie Bowman, a bio mechanist made a post a few weeks ago and it she was mentioning how she’s barely ever on social media. And she wrote this sentence, because the right amount of social media for me is very little. And that just calmed my whole system made me feel so good. And really made me go hmm, what if the right amount of social media for me is very little to, or none? Well, I’m about to find out this summer.
Elizabeth DiAlto 00:41
What’s up everybody? Welcome to episode number 426 of the embody podcast. I am your host, Elizabeth C Alto. And today we are getting into reclaiming focus. Before we dive into the show, I have got a few announcements this week that you may find exciting. Next week is our final interview, I actually had one more planned, and I wasn’t able to do it. So next week is the final interview. wheeze Duran is going to be back on the show, you might remember her from episode number 379. If you’re a longtime listener, you might also know wheeze from just knowing her being familiar with her following her out in the world. Or if you did the real uplevel with me this year, wheeze was one of the most fiery passionate interviews in the series, I was gonna say my favorite, because that’s true. And then it was like, I don’t say that. But you know, what I’m just gonna tell you we use was one of my favorite interviews in the whole damn thing. So I am elated to be joining forces with ways to create a program for men. So next week on the show, you’ll hear us talking about ways to support the men in our lives in doing their work without doing the emotional labor for them, which is so so important. And also whether they join our program or not how important it is for men to do their work, especially around things like internalized misogyny, integrity, extraction, entitlement and how they use women as resources, which by the way goes for all sis men, not just straight dudes. And of course, we’re also going to get into love and intimacy. Something we’re both super passionate about is going deeper than just getting men to connect to their hearts, which is important. But that is just the beginning. There is a lot of men’s work out there, led by men that never touches internalized misogyny, nor does it help men root out the ways in which patriarchy has harmed them too. So that’s what we use and I will be getting up to in our program. And again, we’re really excited about it. I know some of you will also be excited to share this with them and in your lives. And I know our small but mighty male listenership will be excited to finally have an offering just for you. Also, I was planning to take a summer a podcast break, like I usually do, and I was going to take it in June this year. But feeling into that over the last few weeks, I actually don’t need it. So I’ll check back in August, maybe I’ll take my break them. But if not, we’re just going to be releasing episodes all through the summer. So those are my two announcements.
Elizabeth DiAlto 03:20
Let’s get into the show reclaiming focus. Some of you have heard me mentioned in previous episodes that last year, I finally both realized and surrendered to having ADHD. I had suspected for a while and was in denial about it for a while, at the end of 2020, fall 2020. I started doing some ancestral healing, which again, longtime listeners have heard me mentioned that, and the first part of that was rooting out distractions. And that’s where it really became apparent to me just how distracted I constantly was, which then, of course made me wonder, how is this affecting me. And as I’ve been reflecting on the ways that distractions have impacted my life up until this point, especially now knowing that I have ADHD, not having known that, and getting to know the nature of how my neurodivergent was works. It’s wild by the way, how different it can be for people across the wide spectrum of neuro divergence. I’ve been doing a lot of research books like The Divergent mind by Gennaro Nierenberg hope I’m saying that right, and stolen focus by Johann Hari, which again, hope I’m saying that right have been enormously helpful, as well as connecting with people in my community both online and off, who’ve been consciously navigating their own ADHD much longer than I have.
Elizabeth DiAlto 04:49
The recent eclipses were also really illuminating for me around how I’ve been over functioning for most of my life, which that I’ve been knowing for other Reasons, I just don’t want to anymore. Even as I’ve dramatically reduced the amount of my over functioning and the ways in which I do it over the years, I still do it in certain ways. And maybe I always will.
Elizabeth DiAlto 05:13
But as I approach 40, which is coming up for me in September, there’s a lot I want to leave behind in my 30s stuff that I don’t want to carry into another decade of my life. Namely, I really just want to live with as much peace and joy as possible. I have healed and overcome so much, like a lot of folks probably like a lot of you listening, many of whom have had much worse experiences than I have. But comparing traumas is kind of pointless, right? What is the worst thing that’s ever happened to us as individuals is still the worst thing that’s ever happened to us as individuals. And I know it’s a friggin blast to poke fun at the self help industry, and even talk shit about how some people are obsessed with healing. But the truth is, some people need to be obsessed with healing, or their lives would be absolute disasters. So I don’t have any judgment for that.
Elizabeth DiAlto 06:05
I do, however, always aim to be a person who reminds and models for people that we have to integrate, we have to enjoy being people who have healed, who have done so much healing and who have infinite capacity for healing, we have to enjoy the fruits of our healing labor, and celebrate how far we’ve come. And also be really discerning about what actually needs to be unpacked, and what can just be laid to rest, especially at a certain point.
Elizabeth DiAlto 06:34
Most recently, I’ve been diligently taking stock of where I give too many people way too much access to me, from family members, too many people in my personal professional life, who I just don’t resonate with on the level that they’re trying to connect, or the level on which I think I should want to connect with them. That is something that’s been really, really helpful for me to examine why, where and how I over effort to be connected to people, I don’t even actually want to be that connected to, ah, conditioning runs so deep. I’ve also been working on lovingly shifting my expectations of both myself and others, reorienting some of my relationships and obligations, how I work when I work, how I eat, how I move my body and sleep. It’s been a whole life overhaul to be honest.
Elizabeth DiAlto 07:30
And the absolute biggest shift I’m excited to experiment with and make has to do with social media. This is like what’s next on the chopping block for me, specifically Instagram and Facebook, where I have spent most of my social media time since 2012. So over a decade now. And over the last year, especially since Black Friday, 2022, Black Friday weekend, I just started to feel shittier than ever, about social media. So I couldn’t deny that it’s fun for me. I enjoy connecting with people sharing the content that’s always streaming through me. Saturday, sillies are a blast, of course, and the DMS from both people like you who listened to the show, or follow me on Instagram, and also my friends and loved ones. However, the ROI that used to be there just is not there for me anymore. And I’m going to really emphasize and highlight for me, because I’m sure plenty of people, social media is still a great platform outlet option for them.
Elizabeth DiAlto 08:39
So I’m speaking about my experience, some of you could probably relate, maybe some of you were like, Nah, girl, social media is my jam. And if that’s you, fantastic. But I really put myself through the wringer around examining this, right, like, maybe social media isn’t the problem. Maybe it’s me, I haven’t kept up with the changes on the platform. Maybe my content isn’t as shareable or clickable algorithm, this algorithm that like, what are the circumstances, what’s my part? What’s just the nature of social media. But a few years ago, I remember this was when the first was like getting hyped up, I think it was like 2019 When people were getting all hyped up around these algorithms that changes the timeline, no longer being chronological and stuff like that. I remember being like, listen, God is my algorithm. And, yes, that is true. As I’ve been navigating, and going through all of this, I’ve been praying and meditating a lot about it. And I’ve concluded that God’s plan for me does not involve doing something that drains and distracts the shit out of me. And in more recent years, also straight it makes my blood boil sometimes, unnecessarily right in a little while I’m going to talk about anger. and anger is important. It’s okay for your blood to boil. But unnecessarily, there’s no need for that.
Elizabeth DiAlto 10:06
And when I said many years ago that God is my algorithm, what I meant by that is to go in line with one of my favorite sayings, what is for you cannot pass by you, right. So even if the algorithms are not working in your favor on social media, and you know, people aren’t seeing your shit or whatever, I still don’t believe that I can miss out on anything or anyone that I am meant to connect with.
Elizabeth DiAlto 10:32
So speaking of anger, coming back to that a person left a comment on a post of mine, like, two weeks ago or so, saying that she just had to tell me which by the way, the way my eyes rolled, when I just saw that has have to tell, you know, you don’t know the fuck you do not. This should amaze me that because, again, I’m gonna talk about this more, but like, this is one of the problems with social media, people will be like, I just have to let you know, do you. She said, I have to tell you, you have an ocean of anger inside of you. And I hear every time you talk. Now, the part of me that is hilarious. Wanted to respond fuck you. Because I thought it’d be funny. But I also had a feeling that this person who just had to let me know about myself, even though she doesn’t even know me, and I have no idea who she is. I just didn’t think she would get the joke.
Elizabeth DiAlto 11:40
So instead, I just deleted the comment, and I blocked her. And I didn’t block her because she was calling me out or anything like that, or because anger is anything to be ashamed of, or hide from others. I mentioned this, anytime anger comes up. I love anger. alkalising anger is one of the most popular workshops I taught over the years. Anger is very healing and revealing to work through. It’s very important that we not bypass our anger. Anger makes us honest, it shows us where we need boundaries, where we care about things where we’ve been hurt or violated or perhaps where we’ve hurt or violated others. What we’re passionate about what we’re willing to fight for, what we need to forgive ourselves for. Because fairly often, when we’re angry at others really angry at ourselves, for allowing whatever is going on between us and them to happen. Right? It’s often illuminates choices we had that we didn’t make, or things that we didn’t know, we didn’t know.
Elizabeth DiAlto 12:40
And if you tend to be hard on yourself, you might get angry at yourself for the things you didn’t know you didn’t know personally, I think that’s a waste of time. Because how can I be mad at myself for some shit that I had no idea about? You know, a lot of people I should have known better. Why? You know, like, if you should have known better you would have so you know, we all we all have different relationships, so that stuff, but the reason I deleted it and blocked that comment is because a nobody fucking asked you, right? It’s unsolicited feedback. If you listen to last week’s episode, you know how I feel about that. But also, if you’ve listened to many episodes on the show, you know how I feel about it, because it comes up.
Elizabeth DiAlto 13:18
As well. The implication in her comment that there’s anything wrong with anger, again, being passionate and fired up about things. It’s not the same as being angry. But also she was wrong that day anyway, because listen, some days, I do have an ocean of anger inside me. Other days, it’s more of like a choppy lake or a babbling brook. Other days, my inner world is an ocean of love, a lazy river of common equanimity, or one of those soothing streams that trickles in the background of a nature scape sleep app. I am available for the full range of human emotions, law of attraction, people love to talk shit about negative emotions and point to the frequency and vibration of them, and also really instill fear.
Elizabeth DiAlto 14:03
And I don’t think their intention is to instill fear in people but this often instills fear in people and makes people quite obsessive about every single tiny little thought. I remember when I used to listen Oh God, this was more than a decade ago to to like Abraham Hicks and stuff like that. The term they would use is like sending, like every feeling every thought is like sending a rocket of desire into the universe. And I’m like, huh, listen, that there might be science behind it. Sure. But vibrations are meant to fluctuate. Unless something is your primary or dominant experience. Or the way a friend of mine used to put it, whatever is stronger and longer. That’s what counts in that what matters, right? So if you’re angry all the time, year in and year out. Yeah, that is definitely going to affect your life in a way. Right?
Elizabeth DiAlto 14:59
But If it’s not your primary or dominant experience, if it’s something that you just feel when you feel and then move on, it’s not going to ruin your fucking vibe for life. And it’s also nothing to be afraid of. We are all people, we’re allowed to have all kinds of experiences and we’re going to it is okay, as well. Have you seen the world, there’s a lot to be angry about injustice, oppression, Meg Ryan’s plastic surgeon. There’s also a lot to be bowled over with awe and joy about. And I spent so much time on this. Because this is a big factor. And how I’ve been deciding what’s best for me, in terms of using social media in the future, is just ridiculous. To me, the things people can and will say, without knowing you, or asking any questions, or being curious, or showing any compassion or generosity from behind a keyboard that they probably would never say, if they had to look us in the eyes. And this lady’s comment wasn’t even mean it was just condescending and inaccurate.
Elizabeth DiAlto 16:00
We have been beckoned for years to not read the comments and not take them personally. And to be quite honest, I’m great at not taking things personally, I tend to read the comments. Because also that right the nature of that we should just ignore people. It’s all its mess, right. And I have to add here, I rarely get shittier annoying comments. So I’m not even up on this soapbox just for me. But just like how dress codes in high schools are about controlling what girls wear, so boys don’t have to deal with or learn about their attractions and sexual urges. The entire premise of social media is that almost anyone can say or post anything anywhere with impunity. And anyone that’s on the receiving end of it has to figure out how to deal with that. Kindness and basic human consideration has evolved significantly, since the dawning of providing endless opportunities for people who should not have platforms, or be sharing their harmful, ill informed and ignorant heartaches with anyone outside of a 10 mile radius, if at all, let alone receive validation for doing so from other harmful, ill informed and ignorant people.
Elizabeth DiAlto 17:08
But here we are waiting in the consequences of endless and unmitigated commentary from people we never would have and would be better off not hearing from otherwise. I mentioned this a little while ago, some people take things very personally, and it affects their mental health. Others just find it distracting. Either way, it is something to deal with that requires energy if we’re on social media, social media, social media. And my big curiosity of the moment is if giving it any energy serves me at all. Now, of course, my Gemini rising ass has to acknowledge that this goes both ways. Because the accessibility and education that’s available to so many is a miracle. The fundraising, the GoFundMe is the massive organizing that’s possible because of social media platforms is a miracle. So it’s such a mix. And we all have to decide how to engage with it in the ways that are good for us beyond what I’ve mentioned here, which are, you know, the obvious downsides, right?
Elizabeth DiAlto 18:14
So it’s like, it’s always going to be a mix, some of its highly paradoxical. But being an inquiry around it, and paying attention to how it impacts us. And all these other factors and things, I believe, is one of the most important things any of us could do. For our mental health, or emotional health, or well being, our productivity, creativity, the actual connections in our real lives, you know, I have friends with kids who are of the age now that they’re coming into their 20s and have really grown up being completely socialized with social media and digital communication being their primary form of connection. And so in person, one on one, social skills, some of the very, very crucial and important ways of CO regulating, some of these people will literally never know, or will just have such minimal exposure to it absolutely is having ripple effects and culture and society.
Elizabeth DiAlto 19:25
So again, I am making an argument for just paying attention and being an inquiry around it. Although and I’ll mention this later, you know, I’m never trying to convince people do what I’m doing or make the choices I’m making, which you hear me say all the time. But I had a coach many years ago, who would always talk about how important it was to measure stuff. And I forget the exact way he would say it. I tried to google it when I was writing this episode, but it was something like you know, that which is measured, can be improved or something like that, when I googled it It was attributed to a man named Peter Drucker. And that’s what he said, what gets measured, improved, improved. And the trick is to understand the value of data, measure the right things, and then make sense of it all to inform decisions.
Elizabeth DiAlto 20:13
And this is where I love the interplay between intuition and facts. Not that intuition is not factual, but data, right, like things that have been measured things that can be proven in a way other than just, I just know what in my bones, which, honestly, is a perfectly valid thing. But also, it’s cool that there’s data to support some stuff. There are measurements to consider here. After diving into the Johann Hari book stolen focus, what my intuition was already telling me it was confirmed right there in the book are all kinds of stats and studies about attention span, focus, productivity, the massive downsides of multitasking and more, as well as something I never thought of before since I typically only thought of multitasking, as doing more than one thing at a time, like more than one activity activity, for example, like folding my laundry while watching TV is multitasking, right?
Elizabeth DiAlto 21:06
So I’m doing an experiment this summer, I’m logging out of Instagram, and Facebook, with the intention of seeing if it makes sense for me to log out forever. And I do need to put an asterix on Facebook because I do have a small private facebook account that really is just for friends and people I know. And I don’t use that on my phone. And on my computer. I have newsfeed Eradicator. So that that I might keep, I haven’t decided, but in terms of like professional for my business, I’m logging out of Facebook and Instagram. And listen, I know people who run their businesses without social media at all. It’s not mandatory, like a lot of people think you need it. A lot of people would probably even argue that you do. But I’ve taken many breaks over the years, my business never spirals into the gutter when I do and I have been fantasizing about a business without social media.
Elizabeth DiAlto 21:06
Or, you know, listening to a podcast while doing the dishes, you can tell I need something going on in the background while doing household chores. But what I hadn’t thought about, I personally had never classified like checking or dealing with notifications as an activity. But in the book, sure enough, this is covered checking notifications, even noticing them is a task, it takes you out of being present with what you’re doing, and could lower productivity and the quality of whatever we’re doing by like 20 to 30%. And listen, I’m not saying this from like a productivity obsessed place. But you know, we live in a world sometimes we just need to get shit done. And so productivity is like anything, it can exist on a healthy spectrum. And it can exist on an unhealthy end of the spectrum. And I’m not even person who has a lot of notification set to ping me throughout the day, there’s just a few that I consider critical. But analyzing this to make me realize how much harder I’m making things on myself, especially with ADHD, to get things done, as well as the cumulative effects of everything I’ve just mentioned on me mentally, emotionally and energetically.
Elizabeth DiAlto 22:16
Again, I know social media is more encompassing than just Instagram and Facebook. But I mean Instagram and Facebook, where content creation isn’t constantly running in the backdrop of my life years ago, after my last long term relationship, where my ex was all about projecting a life on social media, that was quite a bit different from how he actually lived. And would often by nature of me being his partner dragged me into that. This was one of our frequent fights and boundary conversations, I really let go after that relationship of letting social media interfere with my personal life, meaning I stopped trying to capture and share so many moments for the gram. And instead I just focus more on living them.
Elizabeth DiAlto 23:48
Over the last couple years, especially I cannot believe how many pictures I don’t have. After things after seeing people after all kinds of stuff. I’m like, I forgot to take a picture. And I think that’s just my way of life. Now I just am in the moments not necessarily obsessed with capturing them. And certainly even when I do capture them, not sharing them nearly as often as I did earlier in my 30s. I also never want it to be a lifestyle entrepreneur, which I am not. But it’s almost impossible to be on social media and not commodify your life or extract yourself for relatability on some level. If you’re a person who you know has a brand or does any kind of personal work with people where the point of social media is to give people a feel for you. So they can decide whether or not they want to work with you.
Elizabeth DiAlto 24:36
But even after years of taking breaks, having boundaries and even implementing community agreements on Instagram last year, the show is still draining the fuck out of me. And one thing that keeps me coming back to social media over the years is the community aspect is connecting with podcast listeners. And really I do think it is an absolute phenomenon that we could just connect with people literally all over the world. That is something amazing into me, like, there’s so many places in the world, I could travel, throw a post up on social and be like, hey, oh, who wants to do a pop up workshop or who wants to do a meet up and people will come? That is amazing. Also, if you’ve been a longtime listener, you’ve undoubtedly heard me invite you over and over again, into my DMs on Instagram, to say hi, or let me know what you thought of the episode.
Elizabeth DiAlto 25:22
And a lot of you’ve done that over the years, and we’ve had some great connection and conversation. And that I don’t want to get rid of so from now on, if you’re a woman, you can still do that. But we’re doing it instead of on Instagram or Facebook, in mighty networks, in what I’m calling the free wild soul community. If you go to untamed yourself.com, forge slash links, you can join us over there. Some of you might remember, because some of you have been around this long the free Facebook groups I used to have back before 2017. When I close the last one, even then I was trying to spend less time on Facebook. But the thing I love about mighty networks is there’s no algorithms, there’s no ads or suggested posts, you’re not to be constantly inundated by things you didn’t ask to see, that has become one of my biggest issues with Instagram.
Elizabeth DiAlto 26:09
And when I say it’s really ticked up since Black Friday, last year, this is the primary thing. This has really been killing me a few weeks ago, in anticipation of logging out for the summer as kind of like a titration practice, I unfollowed, everything and everybody other than like 30 accounts related to Puerto Rico, because I’m going to Puerto Rico for most of the month of June. So from salsa dancing to beaches, spots to visit, and things to do that I want to connect with there. That’s what I have kept on my Instagram. Even so my feed is full of suggested posts and things I don’t follow an ads, there’s no consent, there’s no way to turn it off. I mean, I know you could do this on Facebook, I haven’t actually looked on Instagram, I think you can probably like hide one of the things I’ve started doing is just blocking accounts I don’t want ads from but that like it’s so tedious.
Elizabeth DiAlto 27:09
Again, this is kinda like the make girls wear clothes that cover up their bodies, instead of teaching boys how to deal with the urges, it’s like, should I really have to spend that much time clicking on shit D selecting options, constantly going into the settings to make sure I’m not being inundated with shit. I don’t want to fucking see. And I know that some of you might be thinking, why don’t you just hire somebody to do it for you? Because why on earth? Should I have to spend money on something that I don’t want to have to be friggin doing anyway?
Elizabeth DiAlto 27:44
And that’s really the answer I don’t want to last week on my Saturday sillies post, I added a note, I let people know this was the first time I mentioned it on Instagram, that I would be moving off of Instagram onto mighty networks in the next couple of weeks. Because I’m still gonna like the content that I posted on Instagram. I’m still gonna make it I love making this stuff. But it’s gonna go in the free mighty networks group now, instead of on Instagram. And a few people commented that they were going to miss me, they don’t have the energy to try out another platform. And I respect that I get that somebody even asked if I’d reconsider and suggested that the sillies particularly that posts that I make on Saturdays that a curation of funny memes is a great way for new people to find me.
Elizabeth DiAlto 28:30
And here’s what’s interesting. They’re actually not do I get new followers from those posts? Sometimes I do. But we track a lot of things in the business. And I’m telling you something, not a single person has ever joined a program. Of course, the membership are shown at an event and been like, I found you because of your Saturday sillies. People just love to consume that stuff, not necessarily check out what I’m actually up to professionally. And that was another thing that really started getting to me after the real up level. I really started thinking and feeling into more deeply about how I allow people to consume me, partly because of algorithms, partly because of the nature of the content. Every week, I would notice that the reach and the interaction on the Saturday sillies post is three to 20 times as much as anything else I ever post on Instagram.
Elizabeth DiAlto 29:27
So on Saturdays, it’s a party when I’m just dicking around and sharing memes. But the rest of the week when I’m sharing things that deeply matter to me that are part of my sacred work in the world. It barely reaches a fraction of the people as those damn memes do. And the engagement is often much lower. Now again, I know I could probably hustle, figure out algorithm hacks or outsource this to social media specialists. But I don’t want to at one point last year I was supposed to grabs to somebody’s newsletter, who every week shares what’s trending on social media. And so every week, there’s an email that comes on that tells you like for reals, like what sounds are trending. And the idea behind that is when you use those things, then when people click on the sound, it’s like another Explore page, right? It’s like a kind of a search function. Like, it’s another place where people might possibly see or find you, if you’re using the things that are on trends.
Elizabeth DiAlto 30:31
And I have to tell you, everything in my system was like, This is not who I am, to be out here just doing shit, because it’s fucking trendy. That’s the way I’m supposed to get people to see some of the important shit that I’m talking about. It just feels so shitty, doesn’t feel reciprocal. And honestly, over the years, I give so much of myself, I pour my heart and my soul into everything I do and create, and to have a machine decide who sees it or not, based on what it is, and if it falls under something Instagram would rather make me pay for. So that the platform I’ve been building for a decade, I can even access my own followers. It’s just not something I want to participate in anymore.
Elizabeth DiAlto 31:28
One woman I had been following who I love this woman, but Katie Bowman and bio mechanist made a post a few weeks ago. And in it, she was mentioning how she’s barely ever on social media. And she wrote this sentence, because the right amount of social media for me is very little. And that just calmed my whole system made me feel so good. And really made me go hmm, what if the right amount of social media for me is very little to, or none? Well, I’m about to find out this summer.
Elizabeth DiAlto 32:04
And by the way, as always, I mentioned this a little bit earlier, but I want to say something a little more thorough. I’m not out here preaching to others, that they should see things the way I see them, or make the changes I’m about to make. If anything, rather resonates about what I’ve shared here about social media great. I am sure some people somehow are crushing it on social media are really enjoying it, though I have to be honest. And so I’ve been sharing about this with my friends and colleagues, not a single person has been like now girl, I fucking love it.
Elizabeth DiAlto 32:33
Especially not my neurodivergent friends. And I didn’t even mention the reflecting I did on the sheer overload of content. The stats about that, and the stolen focus book, honestly made me feel ill. It is fucking with all of us on so many levels, and it’s only getting worse. And with another election coming up in the United States over the next year, I really don’t want to be seeing extensive political heartaches rage posts or anything else in my feeds. I want to be more present in my life in my body, with my health, with my movement with my practices, with my creativity. I’ve been great in the last few months about leaving my phone in another room or on airplane mode for a while in the morning while I drink water, meditate, Sit at My altar pray, set intentions or any of the other things I love doing during my sacred morning time.
Elizabeth DiAlto 33:21
And this feels extra important to me with AI on the rise to as the world is going even more digital and replacing humans with robots literally. And by the way, if you’re a 90s kid like me, I swear this shift freaks me out extra, because some of the movies we grow up with that were considered science fiction at the time, are now just like a regular fucking Wednesday. So I am feeling called into even deeper devotion to my body, the earth to what I call my divine support squad, to my ancestors, to very tangible things to cooking to rest. And not just sleep, but reading, writing, drawing coloring, things that are restful, also, for the mind, for the emotions for the nervous system, even cleaning, which is wild, because I’ve hated cleaning for most of my life. But I can literally derive pleasure from doing the dishes now because it gets me away from screens.
Elizabeth DiAlto 34:13
As I’ve been gradually spending less time on Instagram and Facebook, anticipating this complete logout for the summer, I’ve been reading more. And I’m elated to report that I’ve noticed a massive increase in ability to focus and finish books. At first it was just fiction, which I’ve always been able to tear through if it’s good, but now it’s nonfiction to. So realize that I can reverse the damage this digital age has already done on me my attention and focus, and also learn to live better with ADHD by shifting my focus and attention and where I’m putting my energy and who’s getting access to me and how much access they’re getting to me has been really healing and empowering and I can’t wait to see how much more it will be this summer when I log out completely so but again, and I think I mentioned this in the beginning I’m doing this as an experiment.
Elizabeth DiAlto 35:01
I don’t want to be one of these people who like, oh, believe in social media forever. And then like two weeks or two months later, they’re like me again. I’m back, you know, I’m logging out for the summer with the intention of seeing if maybe I want to log out forever. Or maybe I want to do the Katie Bowman approach, which is barely ever use it pop in every once in a while here and there, say, hey, whoever sees it sees it. No big deal. We’ll find out.
Elizabeth DiAlto 35:26
So I hope you enjoyed listening to this synopsis of where I’m at with this. And again, if you’re a woman who wants to stay connected, geek out on the podcast or be on Instagram, and yes, get the Saturday Sillies, which I will still be posting just in the free wild soul community on mighty networks, go to untamed yourself.com forward slash links and join us in there. And the other thing I’m really excited for the free community about is that it lends itself to connection discussion and ways Facebook and Instagram just absolutely do not. It’s also safer and a more liberatory space since random people can just swing through any given moment. So that’s a wrap y’all. We’ll be back next week with wheeze. This was episode number 426. You can always find the show notes at untamed yourself.com forward slash podcast and we’ll see you later