De- Clutter Your Brain

Though Multitasking is one of our superpowers, busy moms get fog-brain as a disease from time to time… sometimes for quite a while. This happens to me often, then I have to reflect back to the following principles and afterward I feel like I want to sing “I can see clearly now the rain has gone” from the rooftops.

If you are reading this blog you are probably a social media lurker like me… yea not very easy to admit but we have to be honest with ourselves, if we don’t watch out we can spend a lot of time on social media without really doing anything, when we should have been doing something else like get that load of laundry done while the baby is sleeping.

We have to give it to ourselves that we mostly enhance our brains by learning something parenting related… I mean thats what I do for a living now… but nonetheless.

Im a bit sneaky with Facebook because I accept all invites but only follow a few. I like to have followers as I would like to have a positive influence in as many lives as possible but some people really don’t add any benefit to my life. That may seem a bit prejudice but hear me out…

Social media has become a frustrating endeavor because of annoying posts that really fill our brains with brainless activities. Some of it are even terrible things including photos of dead children, abused-to-pulp animals or weird groups that want to “kick a ginger” or “ban breastfeeding” I mean, come on!

Some of the most annoying time consuming posts for me on Facebook are:

Cryptic posts like, “You don’t know how it is…” I really think everyone must hate this so I don’t get why people still make posts like these. No one gets what you are saying so what is the point in posting?
Self-Promoters. Don’t get me wrong, Facebook is a great tool for doing business and thats exactly how I’m using it, but if you’re using Facebook as a marketing tool you gotta show people some sign of life going on in your profile. If your whole wall is filled with your own marketing it shows that you are not engaging in other people’s lives or their businesses, which means you are dead weight on their walls.
Details of your life… we don’t want to know what people had for breakfast or that they are going to work now.
Crabby People gets up my nose. If you read enough negative comments in one day, you will become negative. I’m not talking of the odd negative thing people really want to share from time to time, I do it too sometimes but there are people that basically just have a cranky wall.
The Quiz-taker. Some people, after taking random quizzes think they really are geniuses or that the 20 questions they answered can really give them their life changing career choice. I hate to burst your bubble but they they simply don’t.
Game invitations. Need I say more?

… Brainless activities that fills our wall with time consuming spam.

There are of course people like from school or university you haven’t seen in ages and those are the people I love to keep on my timeline to see how they are doing on a regular basis even if it’s just to see how their kids are growing or where they are traveling. Others I really enjoyed having meaningful conversations with once or twice in my life so when their posts don’t fail to deliver I keep them on my timeline too. Keep the positive and informative in your life.

So how do you de-clutter your wall in order to de-clutter your brain?

I went on my page every day for a week and scrolled through my whole wall and unfollowed every person who committed any of the crimes above continually. I also unfollowed all moms chat groups and acquaintances, so that I can just go on the group twice a week or so to learn, catch up and offer support. Unless they really post useful inputs in your life generally, but if someones posts continually cause damage, UNFOLLOW. Some groups are goal orientated and don’t allow any one of their 10 000 (of which some are weird) followers to post on the wall, they’re great cause they have a cause or add value to your life so if you support that cause, keep it.

The object of the game is to fill your life with information and other things that enhance it like for instance exercising regularly. I did a pilates trainers course a few years back and give classes twice a week and exercise as much as I can because it will enhance my life for the rest of my life. I believe exercise should be a daily or at least weekly ritual for everyone, for the rest of their lives!

To broaden my mind and share the thoughts that begs me to share, I also blog about about what I learn from parenthood and especially my toddlers, because we need to learn in order to enhance our lifes together and by sharing that, i make it my job to parent. Do something that blows off a little steam every week, your brain needs it to re charge!

I wrote an article 10 Things I’ve Learned From Parenthood and one of the things I’ve learned was to “sometimes just sit”. Try not to grab your phone to check FB every time you stand in a row at the bank, your brain needs time to filter and digest information and probably also just to heal.