That was then…

The year is 1993.  You wake up in the morning, you brush your teeth, take a shower, and get dressed.  Before settling in for breakfast, you retrieve the newspaper from the patio of your home and glance at the above-the-fold headline.  “Huh,” you think, “Rodney King… I wonder who that is.”  You set the paper down on the table, make a cup of coffee, and pour yourself some cereal.  You hand your partner the business section and settle in with the front page.  A few minutes later, as is your routine, you swap.

You drive to work.  Maybe you check out the latest on NPR, but after a few minutes, you switch to a music station.  Yes, that’s how you want to start your day!  You roll down the window and sing along: “All that she wants is another baby, she’s gone tomorrow boys, all that she wants is another baby, yeah, yeah!”

When you get to work, you dive in.  For the most part, you have a pretty productive day.  A few coworkers interrupt you, and your phone rings just when you’re getting into “the zone,” but you check most of the day’s items off of your to do list, attend scheduled meetings, and head out shortly after 5, because you and your partner are meeting another couple for dinner.  You drive home, sing along to more music (“And IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII will always love yoooooooooooouuuuu!”), change your clothes, and meet up with your friends.

You get to the restaurant and sit down.  You’re all having a great time until your partner says, “so hey, what do you guys think about that new Supreme Court nominee… Ruth Bader something-or-other?”  You kick them under the table.  Everyone knows it’s impolite to talk about politics at the dinner table!

You head home.  You put on the 9:00 news, which plays in the background while you’re changing into pajamas, brushing your teeth, and turning down the bed.  Every so often something catches your ear, and you stop what you’re doing to tune in.  At 10, you turn off the television and tuck in for the night.

 

This is now…

The year is 2017.  Your alarm goes off on your cell phone.  You roll over, grab the phone to turn it off, and notice you have some emails.  One of them is your morning update subscription email from the New York Times, so you click it and see what’s going on in the world since yesterday.  “Wait, Donald Trump signed what executive order??”  You check the rest of your emails, and you get out of bed.  Carrying your phone with you, you walk to the bathroom.  While brushing your teeth, you idly scroll through your Facebook news feed.  Mindy got engaged?  That’s nice…  And man, other than that, it’s mostly links to political articles.

You put down your phone for a few minutes to chat with your partner while you’re having breakfast, but you’re distracted by a vibration.  You glance at your screen, then turn back to your partner.  “That was a text from Frank.  He wants to know if we’re going to the protest this weekend.”

In the car, you opt for a music station instead of the news.  “Uptown funk you up, uptown funk you up – say what!,” you sing.  Then your phone buzzes.  You know you shouldn’t check your phone while you’re driving, but you can’t resist.  Oh, it was just an NPR alert.  You glance at it, and it’s inviting you to tune in live to a White House press conference they’re airing.  Staying informed is important, so you switch your station to NPR and listen to what’s going on in the world.

You get to work, and you know there’s a lot you need to get done for the day.  Mostly you’re pretty productive, except for an hour where you get sucked into a social media vortex.  You have a lunch meeting with a potential client, and you decide it will be easier to take an Uber than to look for parking downtown.  You have a 10 minute conversation with your Uber driver about how, as he put it, “the world is going to hell in a handbasket.”

As you’re leaving the office for the day, you get another NPR alert, and your first thought before you open it is, “what fresh hell is this now?”

 

What’s the difference?

Right now a lot of people are feeling overwhelmed, pulled in lots of different directions by a nonstop stream of information.  Every conversation is about politics, and the information is endless.  Anxieties are running high.  Here’s what I’m hearing a lot of in my office right now:

  • I feel frazzled and overwhelmed.
  • It’s too much, too fast.  I don’t know which way to turn.
  • I really need to stop looking at Facebook.

These are tumultuous political times, and we all need ways to ground ourselves and survive this.  After all, if we burn out, who will be there to fight the good fight?

 

Redefining Self-Care

When we think about self-care, most of us imagine bubble baths, massages, and long walks on the beach.  All of those things are a kind of self-care, but there’s more to it than that.  Self-care is taking actions to make sure that you feel refreshed and able to manage the challenges in your life – so another vital piece of that is boundaries.  Usually when I write about setting boundaries, I’m talking about being assertive – standing up to someone in your life to kindly ask to have your needs met.

But boundary setting is actually much broader than that.  Boundary setting is the act of deliberately choosing what to let into your life, and what to keep out.  When you ask your neighbor to call before coming over, that’s setting a boundary.  But it’s also setting a boundary to not take on more projects than you can handle at work.  It’s also setting a boundary to choose to have just one piece of cake.

And it’s also setting a boundary to decide that you’re going to limit when and how you get your news.  This isn’t just a good idea; it’s vital to your mental health.

 

Improving Your Media Boundaries

Setting media boundaries is different from being uninformed.  In the example at the beginning of this article, you’ll notice that people in 1993 made efforts to stay informed, but they had the agency to choose when and how they got their information.  This is still possible – but you need to be very deliberate about it.  Here are a few things you can do:

  • Turn off all of the news app alerts on your phone.  Yes, all of them.  You can always check those apps on your own time, and you don’t have to know what’s happening the moment it happens.
  • Ask yourself seriously why you are spending time on Facebook.  Is it because it’s your primary source of news?  Choose something more reliable instead.  Is it because it makes you feel connected?  Decide who you want to feel connected to and reach out to that person specifically.  You don’t have to stop looking at social media – just know why you’re doing it, and see if it’s the best way to meet that need.
  • Choose chunks of time to seek out information.  Instead of mindlessly scrolling through news articles on an elevator, decide that you’re going to spend 30 minutes a day catching up on the news.
  • …and schedule those chunks of time when you’re not feeling emotionally vulnerable.  I used to get the NY Times morning edition, and then I realized that was a difficult way to start my day.  Now I get the evening edition, and I look at it when I know I have 30 minutes to really digest what I’m reading.
  • Decide what your primary 2-3 trusted news sources are, whether they’re a major newspaper, a radio news show, a YouTube vlogger, or a late night comedian.  Consume what those news sources have to offer, and set boundaries around everything else.

Featured photo courtesy of m01229 – CC 2.0