Your self confidence is easy to lose, protect it!

Everyone has bad days. Everyone falls off their chosen path every once in a while. Often all we see from the outside is the good stuff 'Oh, their life is so perfect. They have no problems' we say. This is far from true, no one lives a perfect life. We all have cycles of feeling great and energized about our lives and circumstances and moments of feeling inadequate and lost. We can never get everything rolling along perfectly non-stop. This is easy to agree with on the surface, but at a deeper (subconscious ) level this has been made very difficult for young people with Facebook, Whatsapp, Instagram, you name them. The fact is that, as humans we constantly compare ourselves with others around us to reassure ourselves and to feel secure and loved and liked enough. With social media, you now have the whole world as your mirror of reassurance. I know you often hear the advice, 'do not compare yourself to others', or you even think to yourself  'I am not that type of person'. In reality this is often very difficult because of how we are as humans; we are social animals. There is little you can do about this. The trick is to protect your confidence.

When we scroll down facebook, see photos of your friends in some party, new designer fashion clothing, some car (don't know if it belongs to them) or in another country, our minds start jumping around, we start to compare our situation with theirs and suddenly we start questioning our own lives and the paths we are on. We constantly check to see how many likes we have on our recent post. Our self esteem and confidence becomes dependent on this. By the time you realise your self confidence is out of your control. The more often you visit facebook a day, the more you risk to erode your confidence. You can't even see this happening because it happens subconsciously. Like the rains, you do not see gutters in a day; slowly your self confidence fades away.

I don't mean to we shouldn't go to Facebook, Whatsapp or any other social media platforms, they can be useful tools in a connected world and there is a lot to benefit from using them. But you have to be the one in control, otherwise they control you.

If you are serious about strengthening your self esteem and achieving your goals, you have to use social media wisely. It's very easy to underestimate how these things can impact our self image.
The problem with Facebook and social media in general is that all you see is people posting what is going well in their lives, rarely do we post pictures of our sad moments. This constant stream of information makes you question yourself and distracts you from your own goals  and reality. You think to yourself, 'Wow my friends are having so much fun! Or you start buying things or doing things not because they are really important to you, but because of this constant distraction.
What can you do instead? We can all take action to protect our self confidence. Personally, I have 3 set times in the day that I can go on to WhatsApp (I use facebook much less) to connect with my friends. Outside of these, I freeze all social media apps on my phone and concentrate on what I am doing. This can be hard in the beginning, but soon you don't even think about it.

It is easy to think that a quick check on facebook or 'sap' is harmless, but remember that the wind and rains do not make a big gutter in a day, as time goes on those little drops in confidence and increased distraction will have a bigger impact on your self image and will distract you from your true self and goals.
People like sharing what is going well in their lives, you are human you can't help comparing yourself with others, so protect your self esteem and concentration  by using social media wisely.