Why am I doing this?

Is your head spinning from too much scrolling? You might need to count your content calories. Laura Williams explains more and offers some food for thought

Last month, I wrote about setting boundaries about what you consume. If you’ve not seen the article, it was based off this quote from Steven Bartlett:

“Your mental diet includes the things you watch, what you read, how you think, who you follow and who you spend your time with. If your goal is to improve your mental health, start by removing the junk from your mental diet.”

Think of time like calories. There’s a set amount available that we could use on nourishing and needed foods… or we could just stuff our faces with junk. Tempting, but not a long-term strategy! At the end, I said to you: “Think about what you consume, what’s happening, how you’re feeling and what setting boundaries in this area could help you to achieve.”

And since I wrote it, it’s all I could think about.

Food for thought

Every time I picked up my phone or sat in front of the TV, I tried to pay attention to what I was doing and how it was making me feel which unsurprisingly led me to question ‘why am I doing it?’

Sure, I get a kick out of scrolling on Instagram and I love a good Netflix binge (The Gentlemen… hello?!!) but there were times I was consuming mindlessly and instead of feeling good, I was feeling anxious or procrastinating and putting off doing something else.

With social media and endless news and ‘stuff’ to do at our fingertips, there just isn’t an end to the information we could consume or things that we could be doing… but are we subconsciously using what we consume to hide from what we should be facing or doing?

This is called a displacement activity. If you’re not familiar with the term, displacement activities (according to the Cambridge dictionary) are “an unnecessary activity that you do because you are trying to delay doing a more difficult or unpleasant activity.” For example, “When I was studying for my exams I used to clean the house as a displacement activity.”

Ring any bells?

I want you to think about whether the things you mentally consume and the things that you’re doing are a good source of nutrition for your mental diet or whether they are ’empty calories’ (something that tastes great/feels good but does not give your body/mind what it needs to thrive).

Ask yourself: Is it the best use of your time as an SBL? Is it creating a positive impact? Is it of value to you? Is it ultimately good for you and your mental wellbeing?

If it is, dive right in but if it isn’t, back away and ask yourself what you should be doing instead.

The academic year is almost done, so let’s get focused, set those boundaries and be the heroes you are.

You got this!