Why You Never Feel Good Enough Despite All Your Effort
Vanity vs. Humility with Yoga & Social Media
Quieting the ego is a central element of yoga, yet we can’t help being swept helplessly away by the cross-currents of vanity and humility in our social media culture. Our dependency on digital interconnectedness has morphed our psyches towards self-obsession and inflated egos. This is why it’s easy to feel inadequate, like we are not doing or being enough.
Ah, the Ego — the bottomless pit of desire that is never satisfied and always wants more. The voice of entitlement and impatience that takes it all so personally. Social media kindles this ego, giving us the perception that our lives are more interesting than they actually are. Truth is, who cares what we ate for lunch and whether or not we can nail that Pincha Mayurasana — we usually are the only ones who do. We are drawn to showing the world something about ourselves and our lives to prove its significance — seeking approval and validation via the number of followers, views, likes and comments we have. Every engagement received offers a dopamine hit that leaves each of us wanting more. This is the beginning of narcissistic behaviour — an inflated sense of self-importance and seeking recognition from others.
Social media created the need to constantly post content in order to impress others and fill a void. Yet this void — that empty hollow feeling that there is nothing interesting or worthwhile about you or your life — this is what humankind has been seeking to fill since the beginning of time. The internet companies just found a way to make money from mankind’s eternal quest to find meaning, targeting our vulnerable ego.
Social Media Self-Reflection
It’s important to become aware of the emotional hold that your social media accounts have on you and call yourself out on the vanity. The next time you check out your Facebook or Instagram, approach your social media browsing as a meditation practice. Watch your emotional reaction to the number of views, likes and comments you receive. Can you identify the roller-coaster ride of emotions that flutter through your mind as you browse: jealousy, judgement, approval, disapproval, desire, and most importantly comparing yourself to others? It’s shocking what you discover and how you feel energetically at the end.
Acknowledge the Verbal Delusion
The algorithms behind our profiles know our minds better than we know it ourselves, and it feeds us mind candy to stay engaged. Verbal delusion — a type of Vritti or thought / mental impression that does not have reality as its basis — is what makes social media so addictive (e.g., touched up selfies, fake news, the list goes on). These platforms are a place where the whole world can offload thoughts, opinions and nonsense. Look at the quality of your feed. This is merely a reflection of your mind. If you can see the patterns of emotions that come up when you browse, you have the capacity to do something about it.
Practice Pratyahara: Sense Withdrawal
Master Sivananda, founder of Divine Life Society, tells us to be in this world and not of this world. Just like a tortoise withdraws its limbs, so too does the person of steady wisdom. Disconnect digitally in order to reconnect internally — and do this daily. In this space, you are no longer comparing yourself to anyone or anything and you have the opportunity to be real with your thoughts, your emotions and your opinions. Sitting quietly with yourself allows you the safety and privacy to come to terms with any feelings of inadequacy, jealousy, and negative emotions. Removing yourself from all of the chatter allows you to connect with your values and simply be.
Cultivate Humility
Humility requires courage to fully accept yourself as you are — embracing both strengths and vulnerabilities. In this space, you know your intrinsic value as well as your personal capacity. Humility requires you to be bravely human — no pretences, no puffery, no self-abasement. If it’s irrational to believe that you are superior to those around you, it’s a similarly flawed framework to assume that you are inferior.
Ways to cultivate humility is to acknowledge that while your experiences and perspectives have value, they are placed among others’ experiences and perspectives that also have value. Your place in the world is part of a much larger context. According to a 2016 Washington Post op-ed piece by Ashley Merryman, a genuinely humble person “knows he isn’t the centre of the universe… both grounded and liberated by this knowledge. Recognising his abilities, he asks how he can contribute. Recognising his flaws, he asks how he can grow.”
