Three months ago I created a challenge that I called Genial January. The idea was to spend the entire month without posting anything negative on social media, in either my own posts or comments.
I don’t know how many people participated. Maybe I was the only one. But I found it to be an extremely worthwhile exercise. Which is why I’m going to repeat it, for Affable April.
We don’t realize just how much time we spend complaining, criticizing, and insulting. I’ve worked very hard to become someone who does that far less often than most people, and I spent very little time on social media in January due to being crazy busy at work, yet I was still shocked at how often I had to stop myself from writing something negative.
There’s a saying in sports: How you practice is how you play. Every time you write something negative on social media, you are training yourself to focus on the negative, which is training yourself to be unhappy. Whereas when you refrain from complaining on social media, you’re building the habit of shifting your focus away from the bad things in the world that you have no control over. Or even better, you’re shifting your focus away from merely whining about bad things while feeling helpless, toward actually doing something to improve your life or the world.
Additionally, your posts and comments have an impact on the people reading them. Focusing on the negative doesn’t just create your own unhappiness; it pushes that negativity onto your friends and loved ones as well. Instead, you could be cheering people up by posting kitten photos, or hopeful news, or a funny joke, or updates about your life, or picking up the phone and calling someone just so they can hear the sound of your voice.
Now, when we’re grieving over a global tragedy, suffering from a lack of human connection, distraught over the loss of meaningful events we’ve been looking forward to, going through devastating financial troubles, scared for the future, and uncertain over how long this will all last, is when it’s most important for us to band together and encourage each other to foster positive attitudes and focus on what’s good in the world. We’ll get through this by supporting each other, not by dragging each other down through negativity.
And just to clarify, a request for help is very different from a complaint. If you’re feeling down and you need someone to talk to, you absolutely should ask for help. But maybe don’t rant about the obnoxious thing a politician did, or the coworker who was chewing too loudly on a zoom call, or how you can’t find stuff at the grocery store.
Below is a repeat of the original Genial January article:
What if I told you there was a quick and easy way to significantly improve your happiness, that would take absolutely no time out of your busy day. In fact, it will even give you an extra bit of free time.
One of the most common pieces of advice in happiness literature is to keep a gratitude journal. That’s not what I’m talking about here. (I do recommend a gratitude journal – it only takes a few minutes a day. But that advice is hardly novel, and I promised you something that takes no time at all.)
Let’s talk about why gratitude journals work. When you build a habit of sitting down every day to think about someone or something you are grateful for, you are training yourself to focus on what is good in your life. This shift in your perspective will make you happier overall.
By contrast, many people treat social media (especially Facebook) as a sort of ingratitude journal. They write about things that are upsetting, frustrating, contemptuous, or infuriating.
This has the exact opposite effect of a gratitude journal. Those who engage in this behavior are training themselves to focus on what is bad in the world. And by doing so, they are making themselves unhappier. (Along with their friends who read their posts.)
This is a big factor in one of the biggest paradoxes of the modern age: The world keeps getting objectively better, yet people keep getting unhappier.
Changing your behaviors and habits is hard. It wouldn’t be realistic for me to suggest you give up all negativity on social media forever.
But why not try a short-term change? Many people spend one month a year going without alcohol, or meat, or doing some other sort of cleanse. That shouldn’t be too difficult.
This is where I get to how to improve your happiness without taking any time. Because you don’t have to *do* anything. You have to *not do* something you’ve already been doing.
I’ve created what I call Genial January Affable April.
The rules are simple: You try to spend all of January April without writing any negativity in your Facebook posts or comments. This includes complaints about your day, traffic, stuff that happened at work, politicians, your crazy uncle/roommate/neighbor, the general state of the world, and other people’s opinions.
But what about important issues that need people’s attention? Well, you can frame those in a positive way, about what actions people reading what you’ve written can do to improve the situation.* Instead of saying “People are suffering from abject poverty,” say “Here’s how you can donate to help people in poverty.”
If you can’t frame things in terms of positive action for people to take, either wait until February May, or don’t post it. That’s the point of Genial January Affable April.
You may slip up. That’s okay. Nobody’s perfect. If you find yourself writing a negative/angry post or comment, you’re allowed to just stop and not post it. Nobody will know, and you can even pat yourself on the back for doing a good job of self-editing. Or if you’ve already written it, you can go back and delete it. Or just ignore any responses, turn off notifications for that post, and try to do better going forward.
Try this for a month. And as you do, monitor how you feel. Are you happier? More relaxed? Suffering from less anxiety? Do you have a more positive outlook on the world? Are you spending less time on social media and more time doing productive stuff? And is the time that you do spend on social media more pleasant?
If you do find that Genial January Affable April is improving your level of happiness, you don’t have to stop after one month. You can continue on to Friendly February, Malice-Free March, and Affable April Moanless May, Jolly June, and Generally-Pleasant July. Or even Charming Twenty-twenty, or Loving Lifetime.
But start with a month-long commitment at first. If you don’t like it, you can always go back to your old ways.
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