Hey friends! Before I launch into my whole tirade about the things we consume, I kind of gotta highlight something special. To me, my twin brother, my cousin, and whoever else was born on this day, Happy birthday! I hope this day treats you well and that love is all around you.
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I’ve become tired of it. The almost nonstop consumption, the “Curation Culture,” the way we are never satisfied with enough. These days, from the ads on our TVs, to the way we shop, to the books we read, we are constantly consuming something.
You know when you’re taking a break, and on your break, you’ve decided to do “something relaxing”, and the thing you’ve decided you would do is to scroll Instagram. We wonder why we’re always tired.
The word consume has grown to include a variety of things, a mix of food to entertainment. The thing is it’s not that we’re consuming food at all hours of the day – it’s that our eyes never seem to rest from one thing to the next. We’re all guilty of it. Binge watching Stranger Things season 3. Spending hours on Amazon looking for home decor. Drowning out boredom watching influencers on Youtube. No matter what age, all we seem to do is consume.
Like how food gives us energy when we eat it, the things we consume have an effect on our well-being. With technology, there’s this hit of dopamine every time you get a like or someone texts you back. Netflix spurs us on with “watch the next episode,” and somehow we leave our stupor with tired, dry eyes and hours gone in the day.
Despite what you may believe, the things we consume have a deep effect on our desires. Ice cream, for example, as a sweet treat is amazing, but when we indulge in it, we always want more. Whenever you’ve had a cup of soda, somehow your hands always find a way to reach for the next one.
This goes beyond food or technology. When you get up at 7 am every day, on the day that you don’t set an alarm, your body wakes up as near to that as possible. When you exercise every morning, the morning you don’t exercise, it seems your body is having an off day.
Our bodies are drawn to our rhythms and long for the cycles to be completed.
That said, we can control what we crave. If you feed yourself motivation and support, you will find yourself keeping your ears perked for whatever sounds similar to that. If you continue scrolling and comparing yourself to whoever is on Instagram, you can easily find yourself there tomorrow, repeating the same behavior over and over again.
If you desire to stop feeling discontentment, do yourself a favor and stop complaining. Stop completing that habit loop and try something new. Instead of seeing all there is to fear or to be worried about right now, think about all the reasons you have to be joyful and content.
Whenever you are low, it’s easy to reach for that 4 am playlist that makes you feel all the feels, and get caught up in a mood. When you are happy, everything within you seems to reinforce that emotion. You look around with wonder. You smile at strangers and they smile back to you. Your joy seems to grow and grow and grow.
While it is 100% healthy to go through feeling down in the dumps, it’s not necessary to feed that emotion through sad songs and crappy food. Feed yourself some happiness with gratitude. Things may be crappy but that doesn’t mean you need to be.
Focus on what you’re consuming and how it makes you feel. Because, essentially, you are feeding yourself that emotion. There are some TV shows that make me laugh and bring me joy. There are other TV shows that make me stressed out due to the drama people are experiencing. Likewise, there are some content creators who bring me joy and I genuinely seek their content as inspiration. However, there are some influencers whose lifestyle fills me with envy and disgust.
The crazy thing is we all have things we desire to crave, desire to enjoy and we can’t because of the way we’ve consumed entertainment or food or technology before. Maybe you’d love to design a clothing line, however, you are stuck in the habit loop on online shopping. Perhaps you’d love to travel but instead, you’ve ended up scrolling on Instagram for travelers to follow.
The hard thing is that we have to own up to the ways we’ve been consuming, and how it has affected our desires. When you crave it, it’s hard to change what you consume. But that just means you need to start over. Take a tech break. Stop watching Youtube for a month. Do a spending fast and decide how much you want to save to travel.
We all choose what we consume, and sometimes it’s healthier to say no, “I won’t consume this.” Saying no is easier now when you haven’t consumed so much that you crave it.
Signing off,
Gigi
What have you been consuming lately? What have you craved?
This is another insightful post Gigi. I admire that you are so aware at your age. Keep on shining your light and wisdom.
Thank you!