The first moments of the day happen every morning. Each morning, we wake and serve. We consume.
As I reflect on serving and consuming in the mornings, my mind directs me immediately to physical nourishment, the first meal of the day. We serve breakfast to our stirring toddlers, pack lunches for school; hopefully, we consume a morning meal ourselves. But, if I am honest with myself, is it truly the first consumption I experience in my day?
I wake. I roll. I scroll.
I see messages, photos, and moments from family & friends living time zones apart, longingly looking from afar. I consume unintentionally. I breakfast on posts, images, news, and the never-ending concerns. I consume other worlds entirely far before processing my own and before even considering the inner stirrings of my own home.
My consumption is unintentional and yet I continue to consume. And when I consume, I begin to serve a world that is entirely not my own. I feel depleted by others before I even put my feet to the floor.
It is time to digitally diet.
I want to consume more of my babies’ morning giggles, messy bed hair, and pitter patter of their toes. I want to notice more of the Georgia morning light that slowly creeps through my windows.
I want to consume my own home before breakfasting on the first meal of the day the world will offer me when I step outside my door. I want to consume intentionally and serve knowingly.
Join me along this journey of developing healthier social media habits. I encourage you to take these first steps:
- Follow accounts that bring joy and purpose to your life:
- Here at the Military Mom Collective, we are a community of real women, writing from the depths of our hearts while balancing demands of life. We reach and connect mothers, wives, sisters, friends, and many more who walk this journey of serving or supporting the United States Military. The Military Mom Collective builds communities and that is purposeful to me. Find the accounts that bring you joy and purpose and focus your time and energy on those.
- Be intentional with your usage:
- It is OK to scroll from time to time, but make your time intentional. Hop on Facebook for something. Go to someone’s Instagram account to view it and hop off, not to parse through dozens of accounts aimlessly. This takes practice but can be done.
- Set a personal time limit of daily use:
- You schedule so much of your day, so schedule your daily social media time! You can even use apps to help you. This article lists 4 great ones, and I like the Flora app. Every time you set your timer for 25 minutes and follow through on the limit, it plants a seed or helps you grow your “tree” to motivate you. You can share your progress or team up with friends, and it even has an option to plant a real tree with your progress.
- Power down before bed:
- We all know that avoiding screen time before bed is an easy way to help one sleep better, but it is even more effective to completely power down your devices at bed time. Our phones and tablets are constantly chiming at us and can tempt us to hop back online for just a quick second (that turns into 30 minutes). If you must keep your phone on during the night, consider turning it facedown and setting it on Do Not Disturb (or similar setting).
