5harathFounding Growth Lead, Willow Voice

Building Habits to Stay Away from Social Media - Undefeated Underdogs

13 Sept 2023 · 2 min

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1:39

In this segment of the "Undefeated Underdogs" video, Speaker A asks how to positively divert attention when feeling FOMO or the urge to check social media. Speaker B explains that effective habit change starts with a conscious choice of a desired way of being rather than reacting to triggers. He describes moving from a "below the line" state—where he felt activated and unable to sustain change—to embodying the quality of presence, cultivated through a decade‑long meditation practice. By recognizing what presence feels like, he can intentionally shift his attention away from the feed, using meditation‑derived presence as an entry point for habit formation.

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Are you building any habits when you feel like FOMO or when you feel like, oh my God, I want to go back to my feed? How are you diverting yourself positively, not forcefully?
Yeah. So, so a few things. First is because it came from a place of choosing a way of being, right? It's not like I was coming at this from the standpoint of, oh, I got, I mean, there were, there were plenty of months and there have been plenty of times where it's like, ah, I gotta get off social. I can't. Right. And so to use my, my, my teacher's parlance language, I was below the line. I was triggered. I was activated. It was very hard for me to create sustainable, lasting behavior change. When I am triggered and activated. So the fact that this time around, I started from this position of, well, what's the quality that I want to embody? And that was presence. And because I've had a meditation practice for almost a decade, when I'm on the cushion, or I know what the quality of presence feels like. Mm-hmm. And I know what it doesn't feel like. And so this is, this is, I'm saying this as an entry point into your question because when we're like, I knew the quality that I wanted, like I could feel it in my bones.