It’s Time To Stop Watching Other People’s Lives

I am guilty of spending too much time on social media watching other people live their lives! I don’t know about you, but I find it too easy to get sucked into the reality stream of social media. I then find myself dreaming about living their lives, having their lovely houses, cars or wardrobes and then when I finally pull myself away from it all. I am left feeling deflated and flat, and even sad.

Now is the time to stop.

This way of living is not healthy! Now I am not saying that spending some time on social media checking out those people we enjoy following is a bad thing. Not at all. Sometimes see what other people have or the way they are living their lives can be inspiring to us. It can inspire us to live our lives better to use a product in a better way. This can be beneficial and when things are helpful and make our lives easier, then that is great.

What I am talking about is those times when we get caught in the cycle of wishing we had something we don’t. Coveting those shiny new objects, whether it be cars, houses, holidays or even wishing for different family members and friends.

When we are so caught up in watching other people live their lives, we forget to actually live our own lives. This I believe is why we end up caught up in the cycle of spending too much of our time on social media focused on other people.

Children are a great example of this…

I see it in my children. All three of them love to watch YouTube and whilst there is nothing wrong with YouTube and it can be quite educational. I’m not talking about the educational videos so much as the ones where my children are watching other children and their parents living their lives on the screen. They can sit glued to the TV for hours if I will let them, watching the craziest and often boring things yet they remain watching.

Why is this?

Why is it so much easier to watch other people live their lives than to actually go out and live our own lives? Granted we often can’t go out and do things on the same grand scale as some of those people we enjoy watching. Yet they all started somewhere. Those celebrities that we follow all started with zero followers, they built their brand and their lives from scratch.

So, if they can do it why can’t we?

What are we so afraid of? Are we actually afraid of living? I don’t know about you, but for me I am done going to be each night regretting my social media hours. I don’t love that my smart phone collects how many hours I spend on it and actually notifies me of it. However, I do love watching that scale go down each week knowing that I have started spending more time living rather than viewing life.

Next time you go to pick up your remote or your smart phone, stop and pause for just a second and ask yourself “Am I viewing life or living life? And which one would I rather spend my time doing?” I believe that by asking ourselves this simple question it will bring immense joy to our lives.

Who knows next time I choose to spend a few minutes on social media it may be your life that I am enjoying watching, but we will never know unless we give living our lives a chance!