Level-Setting "Wellness" in a Social Media Mind

What even is wellness, and how many pairs of yoga pants do you need to own to find it?

Photo by S Migaj on Unsplash

Wellness. We all want it, we’re not sure if we understand it, and we think maybe Gwyneth Paltrow can help us find it?

As we start off on this Positively Digital journey and explore ways to make social media spaces happier and healthier, I think it’s important to do some level-setting, and to establish a baseline for what I envision when I think of individual “wellness.”

The term itself is used pretty generously. It can mean anything from meditation apps to weekly massages to scheduled socialization to a $300 vibrator. It means good physical health. It means improving mental health. It means luxurious self-care. It means taking quiet time. It means having that extra glass of wine. It means making space for the yoga membership in your budget.

Maybe that’s why it’s such a popular term. According to Google Trends, search for the word “wellness” has been on a more or less steadily increasing trendline since 2004. Last month, it hit 71 on the relative index, a five-point increase over its popularity one year earlier, in September 2020.

But what, actually, is wellness?

In some ways, it’s a seesaw, a back and forth between what we put out into the world and what we allow ourselves to receive from the world. The fulcrum of this wellness seesaw is our natural state of contentment. We are, by some measures, innately content. Happiness is a challenging thing to quantify, but we do see evidence in studies like this one that suggests children tend to be rather innately happy, regardless of their macro- and micro-economic situations. It’s not until we age and mature and become integrated to the wider world that contentment depends on more than just our factory setting. Money becomes an important part of the equation, and so does access, and time and attention and energy fit into the balance, too. It doesn’t take long for our happiness to be counter-balanced by the political, racial, ideological, socio-economic inequities of the world. 

Our natural state bends toward contentment. But as the needs of the world are imposed upon our poor, aging selves, our natural state becomes burdened with Lack, and also burdened with Excess. Excess money opens up paths of greed and fear; excess access leaves us vulnerable to self-congratulation; excess tangibles exposes us to material loss.

Lack and Excess are both contrary elements to Contentment. We allow external forces to manipulate our happiness, and they’re powerful forces to reckon with.  

But the things that we lack or have in over-abundance can also be tools that help us build our contentment. Resources don’t have to determine our happiness balance, because they are inherently separate from the things that make us content. Money, access, and all the rest, these things aren’t inherently good or bad; they just are.  These resources are simply tools that we can use to balance out our scales. In the right amounts, they have the power to lift our happiness. But tip the scales with too much weight on one side or the other, and the imbalance drags us down.

Which is where our digital output comes into play.

The fact that our happiness is innate means that, at a base level, it is internally fueled. We generate happiness like the Earth generates warmth from its molten core. Sometimes we nurture it with external resources, but at its most basic level, our happiness is our own power. When we share that power, it spreads. And social media is a powerful tool for that. 

Sharing our joy spreads joy to others. But, conversely, sharing our negativity spreads anger through the world. 

So back to the original question: What does “wellness” mean? Well, it means a balance among these three components: your natural state, the things you consume, and the things you share with the world. Your natural state is the fulcrum; the words and thoughts you consume perch on one end of the scale, and the words and thoughts you share sit equally and oppositely on the other. The key is figuring out which external inputs are weights, and which are helium balloons; which internal thoughts are uplifting, and which are anchors that drag your scale back down.

Wellness means clicking the dial away from anger and sadness and helplessness. It means moving closer to mental harmony with your natural state. The same way that chemicals can be introduced to offset a chemical imbalance, content can be used to fill in the gaps in the line created by the sinking gravity of anger. Contentment is a base, and the things we layer on top of that base either enhance or obscure our happiness. Wellness means stripping away the layers that cloud the view of our happy selves, and it means building up the layers that magnify our contentment.

Balance your scale with goodness, and goodness will be the balance. Balance it with anger, and fear, and outrage, and that’s your new level.

Next time, we’ll start exploring specific methods for stacking your scale with joy.

In the Meantime, an Exercise!

Looking for a little wellness work? Here’s an exercise you can do to start conceptualizing your own personal version of wellness:

• Download and print this fantastic seesaw, illustrated just for Positively Digital by Steven Luna. (I mean, you can also draw your own, but look at that whimsy!)

• As you go through your week, take note of the things you share on your social platforms, and check in with yourself. Each time something lifts your spirit, add it to a balloon on your “Self” side. Each time something you say or share throws your happiness off balance, add it to a weight.

• Do the same thing for the content you consume. What sort of information lifts your spirits? What sort of content weighs you down? Add those to the “Other” side as appropriate.

• Think about the other resources you give to and take from the world, outside of the digital media space—money, time, attention, energy, etc. Where do they fit on your wellness balance? When is money buoyant, and when is it a weight? How does giving your time affect your wellness, and how does taking your time back alter your balance? Maybe there’s space on the seesaw for these thoughts, maybe not…for now, it’s enough just to check in with yourself on these things and approach them from a place of mindfulness. Understand that resources can both lift us up and drag us down, and it’s up to us to determine where, and how, we set those levels.

I’d love to see your wellness seesaw! If you share it on Instagram or Twitter, tag me @claytonsaurus on either platform!