Digital Boundaries that Actually Stick

Foreign. Hi everyone. Happy Friday. We'll allow people to, to come on in here but I'm super excited about this topic, Digital boundaries that actually stick. Very excited to dive in. My name is Brianna and I am a wellness coach. I run a company attaining alignment helped you to align by mind, body and soul. So very excited to meet you and excited to be on the live digital boundaries. Boy, this one is definitely struck a chord for me as I had quite a, an interesting relationship with, with social media, the Internet from just a really young age and I've always been a techy person.

Love, love to be on the computer, probably more time than I should, more often than I should. Good morning, Amara Amar. And I thought this topic was perfect because I have really tried to put some guardrails in place for myself regarding being so digitally available and working on a computer all day. And so I'm excited to share a little story with you all here shortly. But first to kick us off, I just want to say that in today's world, we live in a digital world. It is bombarding us all the time with apps, with, with pings, our email.

It's, it's almost out of control unless we put some boundaries on. Hi, Nikki. Woo. I'm so excited to be here. Super excited and definitely love this, this community part of, of the digital world. Like we can connect with social media. So many people that we couldn't connect with before. Like, I've never met Nikki but she's a total soul sister of me now, even though we only met virtually. So there's, there's beauty with that and that's part of this balance of, of being, being digitally available and being digitally protected, right with, with these boundaries.

And so it's, it's crazy how you can go to, out to dinner and you can see a whole family just on their phones, not even interacting, right. And so it's just, it's, it's sad, but it's also the way of the world. And so how can we meet the demands of this new technology, technological world and still be human and cater to our true nature by, by being in nature. And so it's, it's a balancing act. And I, I was excited about this topic mostly because in 2023 it was to 2024, July 1st I told myself I'm deleting social media Monday through Friday for a year.

And I did this for a whole year. I would allow myself to redownload the apps when I was done with work Friday afternoon. And the whole point of this was really so that I could concentrate better at work. And B, I just needed more boundaries. I was sucked in, in scrolling and just being more of like a consumer rather than a creator. And so I was losing my creative edge. I just wanted to do, do better at work. And so I did this and I learned a lot. Monday was the worst. I wanted to reach for my phone so bad.

I was like, it was like I felt like I was detoxing on like some type of like drug. Right. And it was just, it opened my eyes to see how strong the pull and like the allure of like always being connected is and being available. And it, that was eye opening to me. And then another thing that was just a great ramification was that by Wednesday and Thursday, like I kind of didn't care. I, I wasn't, I was over the fomo. I was over the needing to check and be in the, in the know like all the time. And also then I was really enjoying the quiet.

It was way less noise and so much so that I actually, I really don't use like Facebook anymore because that just and pick whatever medium you want. But some platforms are just more noise to me than others and so that might be something to investigate. Right. Is see what creates more noise than others. But anyways, after a year of doing this, it was great. I felt like I learned some boundaries. I noticed when I was starting to reach for my phone or scrolling too long, it just really made me aware.

And I want to say that I think that's the first step of really creating your boundary with the digital world is noticing where you're at with it right now. And with that is where do you want to be? Does it match? Because then you can kind of cater to what your ideal digital landscape is for you. I have mindset for 45 minutes a day. And even that sometimes I think like 45 times 7 times 50, like that's a lot of time to give, to give to, to a machine. But from there I set the boundaries. I have the focus timer or the screen time settings and that has helped me a lot.

And then just taking inventory every week to see, to see where I'm at. And so that was one of the beauties that came out of my little social media experiment. And another thing too is create rituals. Creating rituals rather than like rigid rules, every time I've set a rule for myself, like I don't eat potato chips, I just want it more, you know. And so trying to frame it into like a positive, I, I, I want to contribute to social media. 30 minutes a day or 20 minutes a day or I want to create something on social media today.

Something like. Yeah, and create. I love that taking inventory can be the ritual too. So every Sunday when the screen time alert comes up, I, I look at it and I'm just like, wow, okay. Hey, I, I, I did a lot with Spotify. I'm okay with that. I, music is good for the soul. So I'm, I'm cool. No limits on Spotify. Gosh no. And so I think that that can be really powerful. Is like creating the ritual with, with where, where you want it to be and how you want, want it to come through. And with that comes like your pre decided like settings and patterns.

Who are you following? What are you following? Like what are you consuming? Kind of going back to consumer versus creator. Like in a way you're co creating with what you consume. Right. Because it's, it's coming in, it's hitting you, you're thinking about it and that will affect you and create ripple effects. So can we consume better things so that when we're in the real world or even in the digital world, we can create better? Right. I think that, that, that's a really like powerful practice in itself is, is learning what you are and who you're kind of entangling with and co creating with.

So another thing too is, is, is posting. I'm not a good poster. I've never really loved to like share or put myself out there. That's my own work I'm working through. But as, as I've worked through that I've realized, you know, post and then peace out, just let it go. You, you put, you put your heart out there, you did what you could and let it go, just, and then peace out and go do something peaceful walk, walk in nature or, or whatever. And another thing with that is, is being present and, and mindful about what you're sending email to a colleague, a link to your mom or whatever.

It's very mindful so that we're not just in this autopilot like this digital dugout of we're in the trenches of what's being thrown at us. Right? Right. I think there's this need for us to take our power back and kind of the purpose of this talk really is to let's have boundaries with social media and come at it in a more mindful way. And not even just social media, but your team's connections at work or family, email threads or group chats. Right. Silencing the group chat. That's a very peaceful and profound practice for yourself because the in silencing notifications, I mean we can get so distracted so easily.

It's so important to protect our peace by creating these boundaries I would say. And so you know, with that like this, this has been awesome to share this story with you because like I said it really changed my digital practices and digital preferences too as to who I was following and what I wanted to actually interact with. And as I continue to go down this Cadre coaching route and continue to build my own business, I'm learning that my attention is sacred. What I'm doing matters and what I share out in the digital world should be, you know, a powerful presence and not, not a performance and it should be from a place of peace.

And if not then I'm trying to help others find that peace. And so high speak wonder and with, with coming at these things in a place of alignment it's or trying to be in a place of alignment so that when we show up digitally and create those boundaries we're practicing a good peaceful present. We're coming from that place of peace and presence. And I think that hopefully will go viral right. If you're doing it and then the next person that sees it, then they'll do it. I hope that that is, is what can happen is by being mindful of our boundaries and trying to flip the script on instead of creating more things for people of a doom scroll, we're flipping the script and creating a beautiful place that people can be heard and share from, from this place of love and even heartache if they need to.

They're that's. They're present in letting this out and sharing. Right. And, and so I, I hope that you know, with our intentful boundary putting in place along with you know, a beautiful community like Cadre that we can help kind of change the digital landscape for the better and create an even better community that's already here so that everyone can feel safe and not continually just reaping a pattern because it's kind of enforced upon us and ingrained in us. And so with all my jabbering going on I will just, I will leave you with this that you know, you gotta, gotta take care of yourself and protect your energy.

Practice muting the notifications or silencing what you need to and yes, sign me up for change. Yeah, like it takes so much effort. It like, like I said, this has taken me years. I took a whole year practicing how to align with myself to be digitally in capacity to handle the digital world. It's a lot. Some people literally just like, cut out some platforms or whatever. And so it's. It's a lot. And so give yourself grace because finding your sweet spot of what's too much, what's not enough, and like, trying to, like, keep the phone away, it just takes practice.

You're not going to get it right every time. And that's part of it. You're going to learn and it'll go back to inventory and keep doing it again and again. Working on your. I don't need this quite yet. Working on the rebound rate and, you know, with that. Peace. Peace to you all in the digital world. I hope you're following some really amazing people and excited to connect with you guys next week. So. So remember, balance. Balance is. Is a work of art. It's. It's never ending and you're. You're always bending and molding, so.

So stay with it and hope that you all have a lovely rest of your day. Thank you for hopping on by, everyone. Would you like to hide this live stream before.