I didn’t dip my toe, “ease into it” or begin with balance. I cold turkeyed social media for a month that turned into two. I let my soul take the lead, one soft, intuitively delivered step at a time. In 61 days, I deconstructed a broken business, mapped out my first book, launched a new website, sold my car, paid off a credit card and got outside more than I had in the past six months. I was grounded in myself and proud of my choices, with a sense that I made more progress in a few months than I had in three years. Instead of capturing every post-worthy moment with a pic, I was eating hot meals and relishing experiences with full presence. The all-too-familiar “Storage Almost Full” notification stopped interrupting my home screen. With no social media apps on my phone and zero need to incessantly generate more shareables, visual overwhelm shrunk.
I felt freer.
Before I plunged into distraction-free creating and focused Me Time, I sweated the decision to take the break. I worried—Will I look flaky and inconsistent? What if I let people down, especially the ones I interact with most? What if they’re genuinely concerned about my abrupt disappearance? I took a day to pack my brain with what-ifs to the point of panic. I knew I needed an overhaul on my business model, but wasn’t sure how it would look. If I were to post an announcement, I didn’t even know what I’d say! The Nike slogan bannered across my brain: Just Do It.
Without a word, I quietly stepped away from social media and into my life.
We look out into the world to know ourselves. Determine where we stand or how far along we are. Sometimes we seek feedback to validate our dreams, sometimes to disqualify them. I couldn’t imagine a life without judgement; after all, knowing what I don’t like helps me choose what I do. But the time came when I was living like every minute was past my expiration date. My body, my business . . . my every decision, was a strategic play in an exhausting game of Catch Up. Birthdays became a marker for the success I should’ve achieved “by now.” And if I wasn’t doing body-flipping, headstanding acroyoga, then my basic attempts at touching fingers to toes was, point-blank, inadequate.
The aim of Social Cleansing was two-fold:
1. Close the comparison channels to tune back into my spirit
2. Diminish digital clutter for clean inspiration to flow through