Don’t worry, the world is not burning down.

anger

I read this quote once,

“You are what you eat.”

Most people get that. If you eat junk every day, you feel like junk. If you eat clean, your body reflects that. Simple cause and effect. Nobody argues with it.

But the same logic applies to everything else we consume too.

The videos you watch. The accounts you follow. The news you scroll. The comment sections you read. The drama you follow between people you’ve never met and never will. All of it is going in.

All of it is becoming part of how you see the world, how you feel about yourself, how you walk through your day.

And most of it is poison.

Think about how you felt before you had a smartphone. The last time you went a few days without social media. There’s this quietness that comes back. This calm that you forgot was even possible.

Your thoughts are your own again. You’re not anxious about things happening on the other side of the world that you have absolutely no control over. You’re not angry at strangers. You’re not comparing your life to a highlight reel someone curated specifically to make you feel like you’re behind.

You’re just.. there. Living your actual life.

The problem with modern social media isn’t just that it wastes your time. It’s that it actively feeds you things designed to make you feel fear, anger and anxiety, because those emotions keep you watching.

The algorithm doesn’t care about your mental state. It cares about your attention. And nothing holds attention like outrage and fear.

And you consume it. So you become it. A little more anxious. A little more angry. A little more convinced that the world is on fire and everything is a threat and everyone is an enemy.

The antidote is simple, but not easy.

Stop consuming things that are outside your control and serve you no real purpose. That’s it. That’s the whole filter. Before you open an app, before you click on a video, before you read that article designed to make your blood boil, ask yourself one question. Can I do anything about this? Does this actually serve me?

If the answer is no, close it.

You don’t need to know every bad thing happening everywhere at all times.

Life before the internet wasn’t perfect. But people were calmer. Less anxious. Less angry at things they couldn’t touch or change. They dealt with their actual lives, their actual problems, their actual people.

That’s still available to you. Right now. Today.

You just have to choose what you let in.

Because you will become it either way.

Cheers,

Shivansh