Why control social media

I will admit that I also had some bad habits. For example, I liked to play computer games, and I could sit for eight or ten hours straight, days even, forgetting about sleep and food. In general, I was a gaming addict. There was another bad habit — watching soap operas. I would start binge- watching a TV show, and I would watch it for five or six days straight and couldn’t stop. It was so addictive. How did I get out of those habits? I stopped watching TV and deleted all the games from my computer. The only game I sometimes play is chess, and that’s very rare.

Many of you probably can’t imagine life without social media. There was a time when I also spent my days on social networks — Odnoklassniki, Facebook, endlessly commenting on something, reporting something to someone, and letting in a lot of unnecessary information. I had another bad habit — communicating with everyone. I spent my time listening to the problems of strangers and people far away from me and absorbed their negativity. Then it was tough for me to deal with that negativity. So I started to produce negativity myself. Some people are always whining, moaning, complaining, “Why am I always unlucky, what a bad day today, what terrible weather” and blaming everyone around. It is also a bad habit that can lead to devastating consequences.

Then I realized that all of this was a waste of time because I was not creating anything, not producing anything, not learning anything, not developing, not earning money, not increasing my well-being, and my time and energy were being wasted, and that could lead to depression. So I began to “block” this habit with my programs. I told myself: “Stop whining. Get to work! If you have time to whine, you’re not busy enough.” I don’t know who that whiner is inside of me, but I’ve noticed that it’s not my voice that whines and complains, but when I tell myself clearly and distinctly, “Alex, stop whining, get to work,” — this is my voice, and my body obeys, and the whiner shuts up. It’s just gone. All the voices in my head are gone when my voice speaks.

Experts have researched bad habits and found that a tiny percentage of people eventually get rid of them. Perhaps the rest don’t think about the risks they face. But scientists believe that the reason is different: many of us are used to living in the moment, here and now, without thinking about the future and the long-term consequences of our actions.