Hello,
I wrote this for me, not you.
So if you want to leave, you’re welcome to. But if you choose to go ahead and read, please bear this in mind.
I am in a phase of life where I am experimenting with my identity and sense of self. I believe your 20s are the years that cement your consciousness of yourself and your place in the world, and because my temperament is quite given to complacency, I have been worried that if I don’t try to figure out who I am and what I want from life now, I will wake up one day and be well into the years of my life, completely lost and clueless.
Disclaimer: there is nothing wrong with figuring things out later in life. Life is a puzzle and at every stage, there will be something to figure out. There is also nothing wrong with starting over as many times as one needs to. Success does not have an identity tag with the words (age:, name:, occupation:,) written on it. It could mean very different things to different people at different points in time. This essay is just an expression of my desire to grow and better myself, and documentation on why I chose to post on Instagram for 30 days and what I learned from that experiment.
Mid October, I had a mini-meltdown one night while staring at the ceiling of my room. I realized that I was constantly working for others, but I didn’t seem to be growing. Why? Because I lacked intention. The people I admired were people who had decided on one thing they wanted to focus on and were passionate about it. Their growth was vertical because they were not spreading their efforts across several interests at the same time. In my case, I had many passions (a reality I doubt will change anytime soon) and as a result, I felt I was spreading horizontally and wasn’t building or solidifying on any of them. I told a friend about it, and together, we brainstormed on how to figure out my life.
In the race to success, talent plays a 10% role. The other 90% is based on your effort. Effort here consists of grit, determination, strategy, hard work, connections, etc. and this made me realize the value of intention in creating results. A lot of change happens naturally, like the transition from an egg to a chicken. But a chicken would not become fried & glazed with bbq sauce without the express intention of an individual to alter its state through cooking.
From this brainstorming session, I started a process of elimination of everything I felt was holding me back from establishing myself. I realized that my lack of consistency was a big issue, and I harboured a fear of doing things in the public eye. Passion comes easy for me, but staying power is usually hard to conceive and I didn’t want this to hold me back in any way. I was in dire need of a reference point. Something to hold onto whenever I began projects or tasks that were daunting and required resilience. Something to tap me on the shoulder whenever I felt like giving up, to tell me, “if you could do that, then you can do this as well.”
I wanted to practice an activity consistently and publicly for a period of time and Instagram was the best place to attempt this, for a number of reasons:
- It is the social media app I had the biggest audience on.
- I tend to overthink the content I put out and I knew that if I had to post every day, I would not have the time to think too much. I felt such challenging terrain would make my experiment more interesting.
- I felt posting consistently on Instagram was a great way to challenge my self-awareness and figure out the areas of my personality that still pandered for public acceptance and approval.
- And of course, I wanted to grow my audience.
So I began. Posting was easy for the first week. It didn’t take much effort and the engagement with my audience was good. I really enjoyed the process of figuring out what to create and post daily. By the second week, I started to worry that people had gotten tired of seeing my face on their timelines, but I kept posting regardless. My engagement started to drop slowly, but I tried not to let that deter me. I reminded myself that I wasn’t really posting for everyone else. I was doing this for me, for my character development and growth. Lao Tzu, the Chinese philosopher once said: “care about people’s approval and you will be their prisoner.” So I tried not to allow the numbers to affect my desire to put myself out there, and it got easier. I was busy with work while doing this, and used my work opportunities to create content as well. By the third & final week I got a lot busier with LMUN, a conference I was a staff member for, and at some point, I didn’t even have the time to engage meaningfully with my audience, via comments and stories, but still, I showed up every day.
Today is the final day of this challenge, and looking back, I didn’t think I would be able to pull this off if I were being completely honest. It’s crazy because this has been the busiest month of the year for me (aside from exam month) and I had several opportunities that could have easily served as excuses for my giving up, but I didn’t, and so I am very proud of myself. The external results were great. I grew by 400+ followers, worked on several projects and solidified some connections. But the internal results were even more valuable to me. I was able to stick to a decision I had made and pull through with it. I also was able to get rid of some of the fear of public approval I had, and tried new things, like making reels and inspiring content. I now have the reference point I need for future projects that would require consistency and a lot more clarity on what I want to do with my life. I want to grow, in any capacity. I want to keep improving, no matter how little. To do this, I must remain intentional about myself, my art and my growth. I must audit myself on a timely basis, and implement changes where necessary.
My father once sent a ted talk to me on the power of grit. I would leave it here, because sometimes it feels like the more the world develops, the harder it is to focus and get things done. There are too many distractions, and being cognizant of this fact could be helpful in finding the solutions we need. I really believe that the people who are able to focus and show up every day are the people who will see the proverbial Kingdom of Heaven. I don’t think I can keep on posting every day. Instead, I would like to channel this consistency into other projects I am working on currently. I think approaching my life this way, like a cooking game, taking things step by step, is really fun and I want to see where next it takes me and what else needs to be solved. I have come to terms with the fact that I may not be the person that finds one thing and sells their soul to it, but I want to be able to do the several things I love to do really well. And I know I can, as long as I show up for myself every day. And so I will.
You can check out my Instagram here.
