Beyond my often exaggerated enthusiasm, which you’ve probably become accustomed to, the topic of social networks seems very important to me. This is because we live in a world where fewer and fewer people are interested in getting to know themselves and embarking on a journey towards self-improvement through better relationships with themselves and others. We avoid spending time with ourselves, and this is where social networks immediately come to our aid. However, we fail to realize that by giving them all our attention, we are avoiding the difficult conversations with ourselves that would help us evolve and lead to a better and more fulfilling life, one in which we find meaning.
Paul Conti addresses the topic of time spent online and says something we all know: navigating the online world is essentially navigating the world itself. It’s about understanding and choice, ultimately. If we strive to understand ourselves as best as we can and make good choices for ourselves, then the online world becomes extraordinary and elevates us, helping us evolve.
What does this digital world mean to me? A lot. It’s an opportunity for learning after learning. Take, for example, this series. I wouldn’t have had access to such dense and well-explained material without Huberman’s podcast, which I’ve been fascinated with since it had very few subscribers.
So, it all boils down to understanding and choice. If we gather around petty, ugly ideas that fuel our hatred and make us worse, then that cannot be a path to something good. At the end of a day spent simply going from one online video to another without learning anything, you can’t expect a raise or a better life. But if, for several months, you take a course that develops a new skill, your negotiation power increases considerably. Similarly, your freedom to choose a different job where your skills are valued increases.
Somehow, many people end up using social networks daily for hours to vent their frustrations and anger. I realized this after drastically reducing my online presence, from about six hours a day to just 30 minutes. Not only do I have more time for reading, learning new things, spending time with my partner, and helping others, but I also noticed that I am less nervous, upset, and burdened with negative thoughts.
Regarding this state, this anger that social networks are designed to fuel to keep us captive (remember, our attention is their product, that’s what they sell for big money), Paul Conti says we need to understand three things and gives an excellent example.
If you accidentally spill coffee or tea or anything on the floor, how do you react? If you have a short fuse, as Conti says, you’ll have a tantrum, right? “Oh, darn it (or much worse), I spilled this, I’m an idiot, a moron, I always do this, I’m incapable, I can’t do anything, stupid, imbecile.” Okay, many of us have had such reactions, and the intensity varies depending on our current mood. Conti says that we can’t control our immediate reaction.
So, what affects us stirs us, and we can’t control what stirs us.
But if I’m a person who works seriously on myself, if I’m a person who not only takes care of my external appearance but also what’s happening inside, if I’ve learned to control myself, to be kind to myself, to have spiritual well-being in my life, which leads to gratitude, then I’ll generate less anger. How do I do that? Conti says, take that feeling of anger and connect it to myself, to the kind of person I’ve become. What happens is that I can transform it into an emotion I can easily control. So, my reaction when I spill something will be: “Well, I wasn’t careful, I spilled this, it happens.” I’ll even be amused by my lack of attention and clumsiness.
On the other hand, someone who doesn’t work on themselves, who doesn’t take care of themselves and hasn’t cultivated a good relationship with themselves through humility, gratitude, empowerment, and capability, will not only not control their reaction even after several minutes but will immediately try to blame others for what happened. How many times have you encountered people who blame others for something that is clearly their fault?
Mastery of this mechanism also helps immensely in sports. You know I’m interested in the field, and I would like to give athletes this food for thought. When I started doing triathlons, I often noticed similar reactions in myself, typical of those who have been involved in sports since childhood. Reactions that indicate an unresolved conflict with oneself.
I used to berate myself in every way when something went wrong. And I was very upset when I lost. You’ve seen this often in top athletes. And often, these outbursts of frustration affected performance entirely, triggered by a weak move, a missed start, a failed transition, or wrong reactions during competition.
I quickly decided I wouldn’t do that anymore. That it’s ugly. That I can’t be that bad. No matter what happens, I don’t quit the race, I don’t give up, I don’t blame nature or the opponent’s luck. And I only speak to myself constructively. This led to a series of increasingly amusing moments. Hearing your opponent say to themselves after losing a sprint: “Come on, buddy, come on, handsome, smart, capable, come on, you can do it, you’re good, you’re the best…” you can’t help but have fun.
What did I notice over time? That this approach pays off. I can get back in the race, I can gain positions that seemed lost. All because we are kind to ourselves and transform this journey, with every race, into a celebration of joy, movement, learning, and self-improvement without demanding more from ourselves than we can give on that particular day and always focusing on feeling good. When you change your perspective in this way, everything changes.
Life is a journey. To navigate successfully through the world, you need a good relationship with yourself, something many don’t have and don’t aim to have, turning them into a problem for those around them. Too much aggression or pleasure leads to envy. Too little leads to demoralization, says Conti. To achieve inner peace, joy, and fulfillment, we need to master both the structure of ourselves (character, conscious mind, defense mechanisms) and its functions (behavior, self-awareness, hope, resilience). Then, as you already know, let’s say it together: humility, leading to gratitude, empowerment (in terms of the accumulation of skills, knowledge, and confidence necessary for better control of one’s existence), leading to capability.
Then, you need to take good people with you on this journey. And I’ll leave you with this food for thought, after you’ve analyzed yourself and the relationship you have with your own self, possibly using the framework that Conti provides to everyone and which you can find in the descriptions of Huberman’s videos: Have you taken good people with you on this short journey that is your life (which is a miracle in itself)? Each person answers that for themselves and acts accordingly.
Be loved!
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