Working it for the likes?

If you scroll down your Facebook or Instagram news feed, within three seconds you will come across a workout picture or someone posting a healthy meal.

I’m as guilty as the next for these but I mainly keep them for my business page in the hope that it will inspire people. This is my number one aim but I’m not going to lie: I enjoy chasing the likes and comments too. A few years back I would have been thinking about how many likes a picture or video would get rather than how this was going to help others or even my business.

I found out that this wasn’t a very productive way of thinking for my own well-being. Thinking that a post would get X amount of likes and then fail to reach this target always had me asking was it the right content, are people sick of seeing this stuff from me or do people even care?

If you look at my personal timeline you will now see mainly stuff I share from my business page and around 90 per-cent of that is posted by my colleague Shaun.
disconnected

I know that social media plays a huge role in increasing my business profile and reaching our mission of delivering as many positive experiences of physical activity and well-being with everyone we work with.

The problem is thinking in advance of doing something, how it would look good on Instagram, rather than firstly thinking if it was something I really enjoyed doing. In a world where we can easily connect with people and let them know what we are doing, we are so disconnected towards the main reasons we were meant to be doing it in the first place.

Leading a healthy, active and happy lifestyle is my number one aim and I shouldn’t be worried about how good I look doing it or how awesome a picture or video will look on my social media. Those pictures and videos should be natural and just a bonus to the activity. I’m not against taking pictures or posting videos online – if anything I would encourage you to do it and help inspire others to follow suit in your active adventures.

But if your first thought is that it will look awesome on any of your social media platforms then it may be time to choose a different activity or re-evaluate why you are doing it in the first place.enjoy the moment If this happens don’t take your phone with you just this one time and when you do think, ‘this would have been amazing to stick up on Instagram’ then take a step back and just enjoy the moment for what it is.

You may find you take in much more by looking through your own eyes rather than through a screen.

The other advantage is that the people around you will be able to enjoy your company a lot more before, during and after your activity. You won’t be stuck on your phone searching for the right hashtag or checking your notifications to see who liked your post.

The same goes with meals as well. Yes, it looks awesome and healthy but if you are taking a picture maybe ask people to send you a message if they want the recipe or tag the chef. I really do enjoy cooking especially if it’s for others and when I sit down to eat it I don’t want my phone near me. This is sometimes hard to do but it’s something I want to stick to.

Eating gives me time to reconnect with family and friends or even if I’m eating on my own it gives me the chance to enjoy my food and slow down.

So maybe it’s time you left the phone at home just this one time and really get all the benefits that can be had without recording it on a device.