Why I Left Facebook

This post is about why I left Facebook. I deleted my Facebook timeline, where I had about 3,000 Facebook “friends” – people I know, many I’ve never met – all of whom post their thoughts, ideas, feelings, images, videos, and sometimes private messaged me.

I left Facebook because I want to feel good. I want to feel good as much as possible because feeling good is key to living your most successful life. Feeling good and success dovetail, as I recently told employees at a large company who hired me to speak to them about the nature of success.

Success equals feeling good. >Tweet this!

When I feel good about who I am, when I feel good about what I’m doing, and when I feel good about how I’m doing it, I feel successful.

True success is not the condo, the car, the money, the job, the status symbols, the material goods. It’s feeling good.

However, when I feel good and therefore feel successful, I then manifest / attract / allow all the above cherries on top into my experience. Things that many people are chasing mistakenly thinking having them equals success, come.

It’s not: Let me get a big paycheque or car or condo or It bag – and then I’ll feel successful. 

It’s: Let me feel good first so that I feel successful – and then I’ll be a match for the paycheque and car and condo and bag.

The reason success works this way is because we are vibrational. You are vibrational, I am, the Universe is. Everything is vibration. (I love this Quantum physics Pinterest board on the subject.)

It means, as I told the audience at my recent talk, we have to ask ourselves this question: How far am I willing to go to feel good, given how important feeling good is? How responsible are you willing to be about the energy in your day-to-day experience – both the energy you offer, and the energy others emit that you accept and often even allow yourself to marinate in?

Along my journey I try my best to stay conscious of these energies. I’m imperfect but I make it my dominant intention. I look at what patterns of behaviour are working for me or not, what habits of thought are uplifting or hindering me, what people are a positive force in my life and which are draining me. I make the choice to live deliberately instead of by default.

Doubtlessly you’ve guessed where all this is leading.

This is why I left Facebook.

My Facebook timeline didn’t make me feel good. In spending time on it I was being irresponsible about the energy of my experience. I was choosing to be somewhere that didn’t serve me, marinating in the thoughts, ideas, feelings, images, videos, and content of private messages, which altered my vibrational state in a way I didn’t want.

There is a lot of negativity on Facebook. A recent study done by the Department of Behavioral Science at the Utah Valley University claims the heaviest of Facebook users aren’t the happiest people going. The researchers also found that just using Facebook makes one view life more negatively.

Negativity wasn’t exclusive to my timeline, there were lots of lovely people posting amazing things, but negativity was dominant.  Many people don’t consider the vastness of their network – that they have a platform – before blurting out their latest unedited bon mots (“I was just called POISON! What does that even MEAN?!?!); many broadcast from Facebook without realizing the power behind what they are doing.

Especially for a guy like me. I’m sensitive. Five minutes on my timeline was usually enough to make me feel off, vibrationally imbalanced:

• The picture of a newly dead cat posted by it’s horrified, distraught owner.
• The man so upset about someone’s death he was offering $3000 to anyone who would help him exact revenge.
• The endless sharing of bad news from newspapers.
• The private message sent to me at 2 a.m. one weekend – a diatribe that made no sense but was so full of angst and upset that I felt angst and upset reading it.
• The woman who doesn’t seem to like me much writing me several threatening emails.
• Oh and look! More on Rob Ford!

Indignation, hostility, anger, bitchiness, complaining, arguments, those horrid “this is AWFUL!” sharing of suffering animal videos… It all became a lot – for me – to marinate in.

The catch is, everyone on Facebook is off the hook – post away as you see fit.

No one is responsible for how I feel. That’s my job. >Tweet this!

I know I could have blocked people, made lists, unfriended people, highlighted those I wanted to see more of, hidden those I did not… but that felt like work, trying to control my exposure to the output of 3,000 people on my Facebook timeline.

Leaving, however, felt like way less work, more like a clean start, although it also felt – oddly! – like a big decision to make.

I made it. I downloaded the content of my many years on the site; the zip file now lives on a USB key in a desk drawer.

The immediate result was a bit of a rush. Some elation.

Days later, I do not miss my timeline.

It feels good.

I feel good.

Successful.

This isn’t a post encouraging you to leave Facebook, of course. It’s a post encouraging you to look at what you might do in order that you feel good – more good – than you already do. I’m encouraging you to look the components of your life and be honest with who and what elevates you, and who and what does not.

Are all your daily practices working? Are you catching yourself stuck in negative habits of thought? Are all your relationships worth the investment you’ve made in them, or is it time to say goodbye to some under-performers? Are you seriously going to try and rock those busted shorts again this summer? Are you still punishing yourself with guilt and judgement every time you let your hair down and have some fun? Are you entering another year doing a ‘job’ instead of enjoying your passion? Are you going to book that trip, or just keep worrying about how you will afford it? Are you going to your mother’s again this weekend because she’s your mother? Are you talking to yourself like you are your worst enemy instead of your best friend? Could this be the day you go out and change that haircut you’ve grown tired of wearing?

You’ll know when you hit on a change worth considering further. For me it was the red hot moment of seeing the picture of the dead cat. The ultimate over-share was the ultimate signal my Facebook timeline and me were no longer a match.

You’ll feel it, like I did, if you open up to allowing yourself the opportunity to. It may or may not feel like a big decision.

The only thing that matters is will you make the change because you are that committed to successful living? Even if it feels like a billion other people are doing the opposite, how far are you willing to go to feel good?

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