5 Harmful Behaviours That We Have Unfortunately Normalised
They’re subtly damaging your mental health and your quality of life.
Hello again!
Here’s what I have for you today:
Life update
5 Harmful Behaviours That We Have Unfortunately Normalised
Bonus reads for voracious readers
Internet just got its coolest book club
I’ll also put down a summary of all links shared at the bottom so you don’t miss out on your Sunday reads. :)
Total newsletter read time: 5 minutes
The response to my previous newsletter was so encouraging :”) A huge thank you, everybody. Back when I started this newsletter, I was so grateful when 30 people subscribed. Since a week, we’re growing more than ever.
I’ve received an overwhelming response on side hustles and people expressing interest in knowing more about how to start them and how I did what I did. I’m planning on compiling something for you so you can keep all that information in one place, stay tuned ;)
An update on how things have been at my end since I became self-employed this month:
I planned to take 15 days off to chill. But the Linkedin post that blew up has me booked for some calls so I’m kind of still working… and I’m super grateful about it!
I’ve spent the last 10 days with my family and half of them have moved to America for good. The house feels quite empty though :(
I’m working on tackling 200 Linkedin requests a day after the thousands I received due to that viral post
Also, Mondays feel so de-stressed. I’m yet to figure out how my self-employed schedule will be, but I’m not too worried. Just taking life one day at a time.
I’m also currently:
Watching: Final season of Atypical (one of my top 5 favourite shows)
Reading: Superattractor by Gabby Bernstein
Listening to: Q&A with Tim Ferriss #518
If you know me from pre-Medium days, you’d know that I had a massive Instagram account that I deleted. From that, I now have a tiny private account I hardly use. I don’t even have the app installed on my phone, I usually download it to upload birthday stories… :X
There’ll be a post on that I’ll send you next week as I complete a year of deleting it but until then, here’s something that got published in a premium publication called Mind Cafe on Medium.
I’ve put a part of it here as it was too long, and a link for you to read further if it excited you. :)
I deleted my influencer account a year ago this month. An account that consisted of my travels from across the world, my great weight loss journey from becoming fat to having abs, and lots of positivity.
My followers told me that my posts are like a dose of positivity on their feed. Some told me I’m so lucky to be living the best life. Overall, it was more positive than negative. Only once I left that black hole did I realise we have so many normalised behaviours that are actually harmful. Today when I point this out to somebody, they think it's an attack because everybody else is doing it.
But does everybody else doing it make it right?
“The tycoons of social media have to stop pretending that they’re friendly nerd gods building a better world and admit they’re just tobacco farmers in T-shirts selling an addictive product to children. Because, let’s face it, checking your “likes” is the new smoking.” ― Cal Newport
I’ve spent the last year optimising my time to better potential and reading about the impact of meaningless scrolling and looking at others living their best life.
Here are a few ways social media leads us to pursue harmful behaviour subtly.
1. Excess Scrolling
My brother woke up at 8 am yesterday and started scrolling on Instagram. He’s 16 and enjoys watching reels that are short videos by Instagram. Somewhat like Tik-Tok for Instagram. He didn’t leave his phone for two hours until we had to leave home to go out.
Every time I enter a cafe and see people waiting for others to join in, they spend that time scrolling on their phones. Hell, even if somebody goes to the washroom, you pick up your phone and check your notifications.
When will we realise that seeing hundreds of pictures a day is messing up our brain function by firing too many neurons at once? It’s also leading to instant gratification, which is dangerous for a person’s ability to achieve their goals because you get so used to feeling good hit every time you desire it.
What to do instead?
Practice self-control to delay daily rewards, else your brain will get used to getting what it wants, which isn’t how real life works. Set app limits to control scroll time.
2. Being an Unqualified Therapist
Several times people post about mental health and express their willingness to help people for free. If you need me, I’m here to talk — they’ll put up on their stories. The intention is good here, to give those suffering a shoulder to cry on. If you advocate mental health regularly, more power to you.
But wanting to help somebody when you’re not qualified is a double-edged sword that will affect both of you, because:
You don’t know the methods to lead to conflict resolution
The suffering person can get triggered and suffer more
What to do instead?
Advocate and speak for mental health and direct people to a professional because they’ve spent years studying to solve these issues.
Can’t get enough and want to read more? Here’s something I published recently:
If you read them, hit reply and let me know your views :)
Internet just got its coolest Book Club!
I’m so excited to be a writer in the Books Are Our Superpower book club. It consists of 7 writers across the globe, and I’m honoured to be one of them. Psst, my first post goes live next week and my theme for this month is creativity.
Here’s what you can expect:
Nerd out about the books you love.
Read detailed, personalized stories and insights from books spanning several genres like fiction, psychology, history, world literature, creativity, and award-winning books.
Take part in exclusive author interviews!
Meet new friends who are just as crazy about books as you.
Attend a virtual book club meet-up on Zoom each month where you get to meet the community and the team of writers.
Learn about all the cool new books releasing and everything interesting happening in the world of books.
Be part of a community to share the most interesting insights from amazing books you might never have the time to read on your own.
Click here to check it out!
Here’s a summary of the links I shared with you:
If you’re enjoying this newsletter, I’d love for you to share it with your friends!