Well I’ve been thinking about it for a while now and today I finally took action. I deleted my Facebook account for good.
How do I feel? Pretty great actually. I found myself updating from my phone a little too much and I wanted to live my life more deliberately and be present more in the moment.
I didn’t want to deal with friend requests, see updates all the time, see stupid photos or what other people had liked. I want to start reading again, going for walks and spending quality time with my kids. It’s funny because I should have been doing these things even if I was still on Facebook but I wasn’t. I don’t blame Facebook for that, I blame myself. It’s just I see Facebook as a distraction.
Being more of an introvert myself it was great to be connected with so many nice folks from all around the world but I felt like I was still missing out on real connections. A simple walk in the park with a real person and it’s been months since I’ve sat down at night outside and looked up at the stars.
Lately life has been hectic in all areas. Spiralling somewhat out of control, work life balance, goals have been changed, peace has gone out the door. Deletion of Facebook minimises that in a way. It’s a big thing for me because I actually used it quite a lot.
I needed space as we all do at some stage and I recall a great book and course I did a couple years back online which has always been at the back on my mind. It was a free 10 week online webinar series on Oprah and her guest was a guy called Eckhart Tolle. I learned so much from this 10 week course and have not forgotten the importance of his teachings. It’s just that I haven’t actually implemented them fully!
Wherever you are, be there totally. If you find your here and now intolerable and it makes you unhappy, you have three options: remove yourself from the situation, change it, or accept it totally.
I think life without Facebook will be better. Sure, I’ll miss my friends updates and miss out on photos and things like that but all in all I think I’ll be a healthier person because of it. I still have email and I’m on a couple of other social networks like Google+ which I’ll check on every day or two. I remember Tim Ferris of The 4 Hour Work Week talking about how he drowned out the noise by going off the radar. Emailing once or twice per week and only between certain times. He didn’t have time to do that. He was off learning how to make Sushi in Japan or talking with his team of virtual assistants who were managing his business while he was off exploring the world and living life to the full.
Though I don’t have a team of virtual assistants managing my affairs, I do think that by being more present and in the moment, the things I have asked for – will come to me much more easily. It’s a matter of being shown the way through intuition, feelings, getting out and about and following the signs. If you get too caught up in the mind, wondering how many likes you get, who’s eating what, who’s promoting what – the mind gets cluttered.
Here’s to being sober of Facebook. Cheers everyone 
