Sanyaas - My Experiments involving Self Control

Follow my dormant page @scribbling_shutterbug for my clicks and quotes

Tyler Durden’s dialogue, “Things You Own End Up Owning You”(Fight club 1999 ), can be taken up in many ways but the gist revolves somewhere around the concept of avoiding addiction.

Being a strong advocate of self-control, my father embedded this within me right from my childhood. An anecdote will give you a glimpse of it.

I was in 7^th or 8^th standard and like a typical teenager, I too sought validation from others. This desire of mine was getting better of me. I was given a life lesson by my dad on why I shouldn’t waste my time, energy and efforts on what others would think and say about me.
The theory had been taught, it was now time to put it to test. So, my father asked me to prove if the wisdom poured on me has seeped in. To prove it, I did the most challenging thing a teenager living among a bunch of mockers could do. I went bald.

Yes, it was tough at first to be the victim of their scoffing, but it made me stronger from within, it made me feel powerful.

They were right, power is indeed addictive! Staying unscathed to the outer world’s attacks made me feel whole and that is why it became a tradition for me.

Whenever I felt that I was getting vulnerable to other’s validation, just to revive that associated memory of wholeness I went bald 
(Yes, even in my college).

This was one of the earliest practices of mine to strengthen my self control.

After feeling the wholeness and realizing that I can have the control of my life in my own hands, I started to identify and eliminate addictions from my life. And I defined addiction as something that isn’t in my control and isn’t benefiting me either (hence didn’t eliminate breathing, eating, etc.).

My father put forth a great example of getting rid of addiction when he came out clean from the clutches of the substance that majority of Indians are addicted to, which BBC claimed to be “the drink India can't live without”, milk tea. (Why shouldn't you drink milk tea? Well a blog from my father might suffice)

 

Since then, I always assessed every action of mine. If it were for any good or if it was just because of “what we have been doing”.

Thereby I soon left Social media, I stopped eating sweets, I stopped playing PC and mobile games, I reduced my phone usage time to real low. And started using the henceforth saved time in learning new things, playing physical games, reading novels, writing blogs, etc.

The feel of wholeness became strong due to removal of trivial habits, and was further heightened by incorporation of healthy ones in my life.

When you know that you are doing something good, a sense of achievement and hence a sense of pride grows within you which levels up your moral.

More about it in another blog. But here is a short description of my experience from my experiments.

My experience from my experiments:

Although as I mentioned earlier, I do have many experiments up my sleeve but let me brag a lil bit more about my Social media sobriety. (I might cover rest of my endeavors in subsequent blogs - lemme know in comments.)

Like most of the people of my age, I also joined Insta as soon as I joined my College. 

Being a scribbler and a shutterbug, I started a page (“scribbling_shutterbug”) where I used to flaunt my skills and received a lot of praise as well; it only took me 6 months or so to build an entourage of 1.5k followers.

When you start seeing numbers as your success, you start running for it!

I started creating content with the focus on increasing my followers and engaging with them.
Soon I saw myself running insanely for content, I used to think and dream about captions, pictures that I click and quotes that I can write.
Everything seemed to come to me, but then I had an existential crisis, I was indulging a bit too much and drifting away from the things that I should have been doing instead.

Content creation was not the only time consuming thing, the constant messages, comments and a never ending supply of posts, be it memes, sports or DIY videos; all these ate up the greater part of my day.

And that made me feel disgusted, I realized I had given up my steering to too many unknowns. To get back the control, I started taking short breaks, because I didn’t want to disconnect from all the “ONLINE” friends briskly, and after a long routine of coming and going off social media, I left it completely.
Now I don’t feel the need of seeing someone else’s glass of beer or sharing mine.

Soon I left facebook and reddit as well, I was disgusted to such an extent that I even muted all the stories on whatsapp. (I couldn’t get rid of whatsapp coz it was more of a messaging app and a requirement for college and workplace.)

This was soon followed by me minimizing my screen time by limiting my show and movie watching habit (I still have it a bit but I don’t watch it as a bot aimed to go through each series or movie just to be able to brag about it among my friends anymore).

Three questions that I was always asked when I told someone about this episode of mine:

1. So, you are blindfolded and don’t know what’s going on around the world?

-   No, I still read newspapers and follow news. I still am on LinkedIn so, I wouldn’t say I am disconnected with the world.

-   But now I don’t see unnecessary things and I have control over what I see.

 

2. Did you stop creating content?

-   No, I still create content, I have indulged myself in writing blogs, even though I refrain from posting them as of now, and I still write quotes.

 

3. Don’t you think that if you really were strong, you could’ve controlled your usage time instead of leaving it completely?

-   Well, I think the whole design of social media and the internet as a whole is meant to be addictive (I guess a conspiracy theory to talk about in a separate blog, lemme know). And breaking its spell is indeed a tough task it would have been a good challenge to my self control, but during the time off the social media, I realized that there wasn’t many good things to go back to.

-   And just going there to test my self control seemed to be more like taking your car to a flooded road just to prove that it has high ground clearance and that it can survive it, why not rather stay at house and enjoy the rain?

-   More so over, doing it would be so ironical; I would basically be doing it to prove to others that I can control myself to stay away from a thing that made me seek validation from others.(It is a blog, don't feel bad if you have to read it back 😂)

 
Fourth question that might be sprouting within you :

Q - Aren’t you Bragging about your experience and seeking validation by sharing this blog?

A – No, I am writing and sharing this to help others understand my learning, and motivate them to think about things.

Few clarifications from my side:

-   By saying don’t care about what others think about you, I don’t mean that go around naked or become selfish or damage everyone else’s properties or doing anything absurd of that sorts. All I mean is, think wisely, you don’t have to succumb to the outer validation if it is not getting you anywhere. (PS: working on one’s criticism can get you places, only if it is constructive and you take it as a constructive one.)

-   I am not against Social media as a whole.

-   I don’t intend on calling you weak if you are a addicted gamer or a social media influencer.

 

At last all I would like to convey is that I didn’t write this blog to explain anything to anyone, or even tell what is right or what is wrong.

All I want for you to do, is to take out time for yourself to think before you do anything and your wisdom will do the rest .