Each year I make a Simnel cake. Along with my extremely alcoholic Christmas cakes, it’s become a much loved family tradition. I envision myself, in the future, marking out the seasons with different cakes. I’m almost there, as my carrot and courgette cakes are widely welcomed during the summer and help manage the courgette glut.
As an avid baker, once I find a recipe that works, I tend to stick with it. My firm favourite for Simnel cake is one by Nigella Lawson which can be found in her book Feast, but is also available for free here. I highly recommend you try it. The only tweak I’ve made to the recipe is to soak the fruit in brandy beforehand, about 3 tbsp should do it. If you don’t fancy alcohol, then orange juice would also do the trick. It keeps the fruit nice and juicy.
But back to the story…I was rather proud of how my cake turned out this year, it looked amazing (and I’m not one for blowing my own trumpet). It had risen perfectly and wasn’t wonky in any way (yes, I confess, I do tend to make wonky cakes), so I posted a picture of it on Twitter and tagged Nigella in it. Not thinking anymore of it, I went to bed.
The next morning I was alerted to a comment on my Tweet from the one and only Nigella Lawson. Talk about being starstruck! One of my favourite ‘celebrity’ chefs had replied to me and said that my cake looked “beautiful”. I was over the moon! Obviously I took a screenshot and sent it to my family and friends, because, well, it just gave me that warm ‘ready brek’ glow.
Now don’t get me wrong, I’m under no illusion – it doesn’t mean that me and Nigella are suddenly friends, it doesn’t mean that I’ve suddenly hit some sort of social status or that I’m ‘special’ and in all honesty, I’m a little amused at how happy it actually made me. But it was just ‘nice’. Nice that she took the time to respond and connect and nice to realise that these people we see on our screens are ultimately just people.
As I shared out the cake with my family, it was also nice to say “Nigella thinks this cake is beautiful – enjoy!” I’m sure it made the cake taste a little bit sweeter.
My social media reset
Interestingly, the above event happened at a time I was reflecting on my own use of social media. I’ve taken a break from it for the last month and have felt much better for not being as active online. Instead, I spent time tending to my ‘real’ life and getting things organised.
I’ve been weighing up the pros and cons of socia media, thinking about what it means to have an online presence and how we can balance that to ensure that we still are present in our day-to-day lives. In reality, I realised I was spending too much time online and I wasn’t feeling the benfit. Instead, as I stared into my smartphone, I felt like a child who had gorged herself on too many sweets. I didn’t feel healthy and it left me feeling drained and uninspired in my daily life.
Here are a few of the thoughts that I considered during my social media sabattical. Bear in mind that this is wholly based on my own experiences with social media, you may have your own omissions or additions, but it’s a starting point to reflect on how social media may be impacting upon your daily life.
Social media – the pros (aka the good stuff)
- It’s a great educational tool. Those of you who have followed me over the last year will know that I attended the Pop Up Business School which led to me setting up Chicken Roulette Press and Only A Stones Throw Away. All three of these things originated from me being inspired from something I’d seen on social media.
- It helps me keep in touch with friends. This became especially evident during the recent lockdown when social media became one of the key ways I kept in touch with people. As someone who lives on my own, it helped me to feel like part of a community and stopped me from feeling isolated.
- Find your tribe. Jim Rohn said that we are the average of the 5 people we spend the most time with. Yet in day-to-day life our ‘tribe’, i.e. the people we choose to spend our time with, tend to be based on convenience rather than choice. What I mean by that is that it’s easier to form friendships with people who are in close proximity to us, than it is to seek out people who we genuinely resonate with or inspire us. This can cause us to stay stuck in the status quo. Yet social media can help us to find and connect with those people we truly resonate with and stretch ourselves beyond our current comfort zone. I’ve met some people on social media this year who have become part of my tribe, they’ve encouraged me to step outside of my comfort zone and my life and horizons have expanded. Because of this, I’m definitely not the same person I was this time last year, although admittedly, I do still get star struck by Nigella Lawson commenting on my Tweet.
Social media – the cons (aka the nasties)
- Time. It will come as no surprise that social media is a huge drain on your time. A few weeks before my social media sabattical, my weekly screen time report was over 4 hours a day! When I looked closer, the majority was due to social media use. That time could have been much better invested in something I enjoyed such as reading, yoga or baking; or channelled into my businesses. Instead I had nothing to show for it and I didn’t feel great either.
- It can drain you energy. As I mentioned earlier, spending too much time on social media makes me feel sick and lethargic. Then, in lethargy fuelled attempt to avoid doing what needs to be done in ‘real life’, I busy myself on social media again.
- Spending. It’s so easy for social media to make us spend. We see someone else’s bright and shiny life and lack mentality creeps in, so we buy stuff to make ourselves feel better. (Spoiler alert, more ‘stuff’ doesn’t make you feel better – feeling good is an inside job, literally). Alternatively, the constant stream of advertising we’re exposed to as we scroll plants little seeds of desire in our minds. Some of the current desires I’m actively ignoring are a Shakti Mat, Mushroom Coffee (yes, really) and fitness subscriptions. I’d love to try the above products, but I only have so many hours in the day and many of them come with a time tax, as well as a financial outlay, so I’m not going there. Instead, I’m focusing on what I have in my life right now.
How to do a social media reset
If, like me, you’re feeling the impact of social media on your day-to-day life, then consider doing a reset to redress the balance. Below are a few suggestions of things to try:
- Go cold turkey. I didn’t do this, but if you’re wanting to do a hardcore reset then it’s a good place to start. For anywhere between 1-30 days, ban social media. Beware – this will be hard and you will feel bored. But eventually, you’ll find a range of enjoyable activities to fill the social media void and you may even learn a new skill or two.
- Set a screen time limit. This is especially easy to track if you access social media on your phone, as many allow you to track your daily screen time and set app limits. I did this and it made me much more intentional in my social media use.
- Ask yourself this one question. As I became more mindful of my social media use, I began to notice how many times I unconsciously reached for my phone. It was scary! So I started to ask myself one question: “What are you going to do?” If I couldn’t answer this question, then it meant that I was using social media to fill a gap and I put my phone down. But if I planned to share something, then I allowed myself to continue, being mindful to put my phone down once I’d done it, rather than succumb to the endless scroll.
- Build your defences. I’ve noticed that there are key times within the day when I’m more likely to binge on social media – early mornings and late evenings. To avoid getting sucked into the social media black hole, I plan for these and have an alternative activity lined up.
Finding freedom
Social media is here to stay and it is an amazing tool which can hold such potential if we use it mindfully. My social media use is still excessive, but I’m enjoying the process of reclaliming my time and becoming an observer of my habits and hang-ups.
As my regular readers know, one of my main goals is freedom – that’s why I worked so hard to become mortgage free and have the luxury of reducing my working hours. What I don’t want is to have created that freedom only to have those hours sapped by social media use. That isn’t a life.
So as I move forward, I’ll be continuing to create a more mindful approach to social media, embracing the good stuff and reducing the nasties. Afterall, the key to a good life is to live and we can’t do that by staring into a screen.
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Image courtesy of Adam Jang on Unsplash