Two years ago, I shifted my mindset around social media and transformed the way I showed up online.

Several months into my unplugged year, I noticed that one area of my life wasn’t improving. That one area? Social media. The more and more unplugged I became, the more my disdain for social media grew. I would feel this anxiety forming in my chest every time I would step on the app, knowing I needed to post something but not feeling like I had any energy, stamina, or steam to post another thing or give another update.

At that moment, I made a crucial decision. I realized that I needed to step back and address this issue. I was prepared to leave the platforms for good if I couldn’t find a way to use social media without it draining me. This decision brought a sense of relief and freedom, knowing that I would finally take control of my online presence and the way it made me feel at the end of each day.

I stepped onto social media over a decade ago because it was fun. I loved engaging with people and sharing writing, thoughts, and pieces of my life. 

So, how did it become this mind-sucking scroll? And was there a way to reclaim social media?

Many of us have to use social media for our businesses; for many of us, it feels like a necessary evil. Some have said goodbye to social media for good, announcing their departure in a single post and never looking back. I greatly respect these people, but don’t believe I’m one of them.

I don’t know how to explain it fully, but I’ve always felt called to the Internet. While others were being called to stages or cities, books or universities, I always felt God calling me to show up online—to be a light and an encouragement in what can be a really dark space.

As a young believer, I felt that call tangibly and have never deviated from it. So long as I still feel that confirmation in my spirit, I will be encouraging and a light on the Internet. So, I had to find a way to do it without draining myself or losing myself.

How Did We Get Here?

When I think about how I got to this place with social media, it was a combination of many things. Where social media used to be about connection, it became about building a following. 

It started to feel like a competition. I always had to be creating something to keep up. Every time I would step on the app and see everybody else posting, and I would immediately thrust myself into this anxious place of trying to create something on the spot. 

Posting became a default setting for when I felt lonely, when I needed validation, and especially when I felt overlooked or like I was becoming a “has been.” I posted to stay relevant.

I’ve since learned that this can’t be the posture of my showing up online for many reasons. 

It will never fill you. 

You will always feel like you’re stuck on a hamster wheel. 

You will give unnecessary time and precious energy to an algorithm you can’t control. 

Everything changed when I took a step back and reclaimed how I was showing up on social media. I felt lighter. My numbers even grew after years of being stagnant or losing followers post after post. My engagement went through the roof. And, even more surprisingly, I was spending less and less time on the apps. This new approach to social media not only improved my mental health and overall well-being, but it also had tangible benefits for my online presence. I was creating more engaging content, connecting with my audience on a deeper level, and feeling more satisfied with my online presence. 

Here are the practical strategies and mindset shifts I made to reframe my relationship with social media:

001. Make Social Media Fun Again

This became my mission. I decided that if social media wasn’t going to be fun, I would no longer give hours of my day to it. 

To make social media more fun again, I had to stop viewing it through this all-or-nothing mindset. 

I had to stop thinking that every post I created had to be gold. I had to be willing to experiment. Experiment is the keyword. I started treating my social media presence as one big experiment, vowing to get more curious about what was resonating and what wasn’t.

I started digging into analytics and learning what my audience loved and then started serving them more. 

While I still posted to share writing and parts of my business, I treated my social media profiles as a complete body of work—a portfolio anyone could scroll through at any hour of the day.

I posted what I wanted– what brought me deep satisfaction. The pictures of my daughter brought me joy. The images of spots in my home and cookbooks and rhythms made it a space I wanted to return to again and again. I settled on a combination of encouragement and practical wisdom. I did giveaways just because it was fun to give things away. The more I experimented and committed to curiosity, the less I cared about the numbers or how a post performed. The experience was fun again, and I was excited to try new things.

002. Make Engagement Intentional + Genuine

Ultimately, my purpose on social media is to connect with others. While I could view it as a tool for business or personal branding, I’ve always seen it as a unique opportunity to connect with readers daily. It’s a joy to serve others through these platforms, and it gives me a sense of purpose and fulfillment. 

When I was growing up, the only way you could engage with an author you loved was through mail. Yes, like snail mail, with a stamp and an envelope. Even with that way to contact your favorite author, there was never a back-and-forth dialogue. I think it’s such a privilege that I get to engage with readers and learn about them through what I write. And the best way to do that is through social media.

I stopped feeling like I had to respond to every message and every comment, but I set a few goals for myself:

• When I’m on social media, I make it a point to engage with the people who support me, rather than mindlessly scrolling. This engagement is not about me but about valuing and appreciating the online community I’ve cultivated over the years.
• Whenever possible, I will reply to most of the comments left on my post.
• Whenever possible, I reply to messages. Often, I will just send a voice message to followers. It’s a personal way we can dialogue, making me feel like I’m not just stuck on my phone keyboard, which I hate. 

I think we get so numbed out to social media that we stop engaging and become lurkers in others’ lives. How do we fight the lurking? We engage thoughtfully. We cheer one another on. All you’ve likely ever wanted from the post you put out there is engagement, but do you engage with other people from a genuine and thoughtful place?

The experts say you must be willing to engage with others to grow, but I don’t engage with people on the app hoping to expand my accounts. I engage with others because people deserve to be engaged with, and social media is meant to be social.

I look forward to the updates of people I admire, my friends from college, and creators who inspire me and I make it a point to engage with their content to encourage them and push them forward. We all could benefit from more encouragement, and we can give it to one another.

003. Creation Over Consumption

This is a big one. I make it a point to only go onto social media when I have something to do, like post something new or engage with a past post.

I’m no longer on social media just to consume. Think about social media as a dinner party:

When you get invited to a dinner party, you bring something to the table. You don’t just show up empty-handed and mooch off of everybody else. You are a participant. So, I keep that same mindset when it comes to social media. 

• I prioritize creating over consumption. 
• I consume more consciously.
• I avoid scarcity and believe “there is enough room for everyone, enough to go around.”
• I live for creating things rather than consuming them. 

I’ve gone through different seasons where I’ve placed a boundary on myself, making a rule that I cannot consume anything online until I have created something myself. This is a great rule that has worked wonders in the past.

It doesn’t mean you have to create a piece of art. There are so many ways to create in your daily life. You can create an outfit, spend some time journaling, or make a meal. All of these things are forms of creation, but I prioritize the creation of my own life over the consumption of other people’s. 

004. Flip the Funnel

This concept is something I talk about with my writing students all the time. It has been an absolute game changer for me, and the reason why I can show up with so much content on social media. 

In the past, I would go onto social media to look for something to inspire me to post. This method never worked. It always left me comparing myself to others and posting in the moment, which never felt good. 

Flipping the funnel means that I took my eyes off of creating for social media, and I got my butt back into the writing chair to start creating in that space. 

Instead of dedicating myself to content creation, I dedicated myself to writing hours. I started to see so many ideas and pieces of content coming to the forefront. I would catch them in my notebook and dedicate time each day to writing. 

From that overflow, I created content for social media. 

Many writers in this digital age waste a lot of time building a social media presence, forsaking the most essential thing: your writing hours. 

By reclaiming my writing hours, I suddenly had more than enough things to post, and I watched my readership grow because I wasn’t posting threads of my life– I was taking the time to write and invest in what I wanted to share: my words. From the moment I started doing this, I haven’t deviated. 

My writing practice is my one thing in all seasons of life, a concept I learned from Jay Keller and Gary Papasian’s book The One Thing.

Out of that consistent writing practice, I build my content calendar.

005. Buy Real Estate 

Instagram will likely change its algorithm tomorrow. You can beat your head against the wall about it or start investing elsewhere. 

Social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok are rented spaces. You pay for them, sure, but you don’t own them. The landlords can change the rules at any point and kick you out.

To avoid relying solely on Instagram for my writing, I started directing people to the spaces I actually owned. In a nutshell, I bought online real estate.

• I sent people to my blog more. 
• I asked them to join my newsletter. 
• I created newsletter series like the Monday Club or Advent so that I could meet people regularly.
• I invest in intentionally marketing via my newsletter rather than hoping the algorithm will favor me on Instagram.

Do you know what happened? I became a much happier, less disgruntled human because I acted on my turf, cultivating my own space. Yes, I was still taking care of my rental properties, but I was ultimately using them to send people to places where we could actually build a sustainable connection that wouldn’t be banned by the government at some point in the year. 

If you don’t have an email newsletter but you’re thinking about building one, check out a few of these resources:

• How to Create an Email Newsletter from Scratch
• Tips for Writers in the Digital Age
• Why You (as a Writer) Need a Newsletter
• Why You 100% Need a Blog If You Want to Be a Writer

006. The Power of Generosity

It’s easy to get on social media platforms and think about ourselves: how we want to grow, how we want to be seen, and how we want to be perceived by others.

But can I be honest? This much focus on ourselves is not doing a single favor to our mental health. I don’t know about you, but it’s constantly exhausting to focus on myself in the way social media wants me to.

So, I flipped the script and decided to show up on these platforms to give instead of take.

I began sharing in ways that were helpful to people, solved their problems, and encouraged their souls. 

I chose not to gatekeep information and started to give as generously as I could.

The results have felt beautiful because I no longer step onto social media thinking, “What’s in it for me?” Now, I ask a better question: How can I serve today?

Out of that desire to serve, I post. I don’t expect these platforms to give me anything at the end of the day. I’m thankful for them because they allow me to reach others with my words, but I am no longer frustrated by them when they don’t serve me the way I anticipated. 

These social media platforms don’t serve; I’m not beholden to them, so I use them strategically to serve others.

007. Consistency > The Outcome

This was the most significant mindset shift for me. In the past, when I felt creatively drained by social media, I would create a post, put it out there, and then invest all my energy in its performance. 

If that post performed well, then I would be happy.

My emotions would have been everywhere if that post had not performed well. I would suddenly be irritated and angry and snap at my husband. Nothing has changed in my life; it was just that this digital little square of content didn’t do exactly what I thought it would do. This is a recipe for disaster; if this is you, I suggest changing things immediately.

The truth is, I needed to change my form of currency: the thing I was measuring. I had no control over how the post would do. (Evidence of that would be that in the decade I’ve been posting on social media, the most popular post I have ever produced has been literally about Passover lambs.) 

We have zero control over what goes viral. For that reason, virality and post-performance can’t be our metrics. Or they can be, and we can just be miserable the whole time.

I started focusing on consistency. I asked myself:

• How many times do you want to show up this week? 
• How many pieces of content do you want to build this month? 
• What are the content pillars that you want to highlight? 
• What would feel like a big and scary thing to post this week?

These new metrics allowed me to take my eyes off the numbers and fix them back on what mattered to me: creating an online space that left others feeling encouraged and less alone.

The same goes for any discipline you’re building. You can’t control if you lose 20 pounds, but you can control the number of times you go to the gym this week. You can’t control the outcome of your prayers, but you can measure how often you sit down with your prayer journal this week. 

Consistency trumps the outcome. I have a working theory that consistency eventually leads to the most beautiful outcomes. 

Whenever I post something, I immediately move on to the next thing. It became less about babysitting the stuff I was creating and more about being fueled and excited for the creation process. 

It was a combination of all these things: the willingness to experiment, the reclaiming of my writing practice, the building of a space that wasn’t on social media, the beauty of giving over getting, and evidence of consistency. These things allowed me to change my mind about social media, where I no longer get on the app and feel anxious. 

If I do, I take that as a sign to immediately get off the app and do something else. But most of the time, I’m excited to post, engage, and cheer others on in their journeys. 

I have reclaimed the beauty and power behind social media, and I’ve revived my creative spirit in the process.

Was there a point that struck you or inspired you? Share below!

p.s.

You might also love:

• 5 ways to shift the focus from “me” to “we” on social media.
• Three “pandemic habits” I’m absolutely done with.
• Reclaim your life: 3 solutions to limit social media burnout.
• When media stops being social. Pt. I
• Let’s face it: why my relationship with social media is changing.