I love new beginnings, second chances, and the general idea behind the New Year, new you wave that hits every year. Of course, for most people those changes don’t actually hold but I’ve always figured that whatever number does stick that is better than zero.
Sometime, in late October or maybe November I noticed that we started to have a lot of lists. Lists that seemed to be early to me for the New Year rush.
17 things every dad needs to do…
21 things every mom should do…
15 things to stop doing…
7 things that will change your life…
34 things to start doing right now….
Get a divorce…..from media
The last one has been making the rounds lately.
It is one that I find particularly twitch inducing.
Using my previous logic, I should be happy if the end result works for even a small percentage of people, right?
At some level, I am. Truly.
At another level, this type of list or thought drives me up a wall.
Here’s why:
By positioning the thought this way, we are propagating the lie that what is wrong with us is somehow positioned outside of us.
That is a disabling belief.
We have to embrace the truth that what is wrong with us is inside of us.
It’s not that I’m against people spending less time with their devices. I’m just tired of people acting like it’s the devices fault.
It’s not the device, or Facebook, or our neighbor. I’m tired of the judging of people who don’t find social media to be a problem. I’m tired of the judging that happens that to people who have their phones out and the people they’re with aren’t bothered by it. I’m tired of the passive aggressive blog posts about the mom sitting at the play area chilling out on her phone.
It’s us and the fact that we feel the need to judge those who don’t agree with us is proof.
We have to accept that these things take up too much of our time because of something wrong in our own story.
By accepting and embracing this truth, we can then transcend it.
We transcend it by replacing it. If you truly want to change something, you have to replace it with something else. I saw another list that really liked. Unfortunately, I can’t find it but the list was essentially 11 ways to be more minimalistic and find more peace. What I liked about the list was that it actually offered alternatives.
Divorce your social media.
But replace it with something.
There’s a reason that second marriages tend to fail at a higher rate than first marriages….