Are You Happy Now?
We are living in an era of social media. Every day, every time, we always want to check how’s someone else life. We can’t deny the temptation to open Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, etc. and check stories, photos, statuses. And what we get? Sometimes we get anxiety, sometimes we get envy, sometimes we feel our life is nothing compared to our friends. Then, we might think we should do the same things as they do on social media to make our life as happy as them.
I’ll give you some examples to make you understand what I’m trying to say. First, we open Instagram and check our friend stories, we found out that now our friend is on their vacation in Bali. We see them walking on the beach happily, a photo of their exquisite dinner, and lots of selfies in gorgeous places. What did we feel? Be honest, some of us (maybe most of us) may feel like our life is so boring and to makes us happy, we should do the same thing, we go on vacation to Bali too.
Another example, we open Facebook / Twitter and found our friend post a status/tweet that (s)he just bought a brand new Apple phone and (s)he looks so happy with it. Now, every status and tweet (s)he made will be tagged as “sent from iPhone”, his/her Instagram story video now so crystal clear, etc. What did we feel? Maybe we feel like our phone is so old now, can’t bring happiness like these brand new iPhones. And now we started to think if we want to be happy, we should get a brand new phone too.
So, what should we do? Should we mute all of our friends? Or just uninstall all of our social media apps?. There’s one mantra I believe in my life to makes what someone else does, doesn’t affect my life. And that mantra is :
We can’t control what people do. But, we can control how we respond to that.
Everyone has a right to post whatever they want to their social media, and we can’t control them. They have their own life, their reason, and their references. Admit it, The world isn’t only about us. Try to focus on what we can change, what we can control, and that thing is how we respond that. So, how we should respond to that?. The answer might be different to everyone. But, I’ll share mine as your reference(if you want to).
We need to focus on “what makes us happy”. Sometimes we only care about what someone else feels, not us. That’s why some of us often do/buy something not because that’s what we need, what makes us happy, but just try to impress, to makes someone else envy. So, how to know that something is what we need to makes us happy?. After we see someone else’s stories, post, etc. and we started to feels we need to do/buy the same thing, ask yourself this question:
If the whole world doesn’t know I do/buy this, If I didn’t post this to my social media, am I still feeling happy?
This question will make us focus on what matters, our happiness. If we are not feeling happy if we didn’t post it on social media about what we are going to do/buy then don’t go for it. You are just trying to impress someone else. Otherwise, if we don’t care whether we post it to social media or not we still do/buy it, then go for it. We deserve it, that thing is what makes us happy.
I’ll give you an example to makes this more clear. After seeing your friend’s Instagram stories about his/her vacation in Bali, Ask your self “If I going on vacation in Bali like him/her and didn’t post a single Instagram story about it, am I still happy?”. If the answer is yes, then you can go too. Going on vacation to Bali is something that makes you happy. Otherwise, If the answer is “No, I must post a story about it, whatever it takes!”, Then you shouldn’t go, you are just trying to impress someone else.
So, this means we shouldn’t post anything on our social media?. No, of course not. This ‘method’ just to make sure this is what you want or not. After you sure this is what you want, then you can do anything (like post thousands of Instagram stories).
So, are you sure you are happy now?.
