Kick Your Facebook Habit

Or at least spend less time on Facebook. But… but… but… I might miss something important. Someone may get away with some total B.S.! Here’s the thing. Your opinion doesn’t matter. Yes, I said it out loud. Nobody else cares enough about you to tell you this. First of all, your opinion is wrong. It is not based on reality. It is based on a million mental maps built in your neural pathways. Mental maps, built when you were a child, the purpose of which were to help you survive childhood. The only reason we made it out alive was because our lizard brain built reliable strategies and wired them in to make sure we avoided getting killed or humiliated or yelled at by our parents. Thriving was not even a small part of the lizard brain’s job description. I have a list of strategies that your brain concocted that got you out of Lord of the Flies alive. These are the strategies that worked to keep you from being slaughtered when you were a kid, but they are a disaster for you now. These strategies not only left scars that have demolished your self esteem, your confidence, and your ability to have a healthy intimate relationship, but they also feed your opinions and cause you to defend them with aplomb on Facebook. Just say no. Stop checking Facebook every 5 minutes. Stop responding to statuses and comments that do not support your opinion. Remember, your opinion is WRONG. And, anyway, so is the other person’s opinion who you disagree with. And nothing you say will change their mind or your mind anyway. So,


Ok. I know you’re going to do it anyway. So here is one of the lizard brain strategies you can at least notice when you’re using it. Remember, it is for surviving as a child, not for thriving as an adult.

Horrible Strategy No. 1: Stick to your story at all costs. Once you have identified yourself with a path, a candidate, a position on abortion/healthcare/war, a diet soda brand, a sports team (i.e. once you have expressed an opinion about anything), your brain locks in. Studies show that you will stick with our opinion even in the face of overwhelming contrary evidence. When Lance Armstrong was winning all of those races, there was clear and compelling evidence that he was cheating. But I had cast my emotional lot with him. I bought his lies and stuck with him until George Hincapie admitted that they cheated together. It took someone who I identified in my brain as beyond reproach to snap me out of my stupor. Is my current opinion right that Armstrong was a cheater and a liar? I don’t know. The evidence seems to be pretty clear. But, I know that my opinions are wrong, so I am not going to argue with anyone about it just because their wrong opinion is different than my wrong opinion.

In other words, nothing you hear is true.

This entry was posted in Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink.

Leave a Reply


You are commenting using your account. Log Out /  Change )

Google photo


Twitter picture


Facebook photo


Connecting to %s