3 Lessons When Your Post Falls Flat — Mental Health Awareness
I check back for the third time, and my post still has no likes or comments.
I have a few thoughts:
- “I must not be worthy of a response.”
- “My post was not interesting, and therefore I must not be interesting.”
- “I will be forever ignored and unseen.”
You’ve heard the phrase, “Think again.” So I think another thought until the story I tell myself feels good.
If the former thoughts are familiar, you can install the next thought into your own thinking.
4. “Lack of likes isn’t personal. It’s feedback. What can I learn?”
With this thought, you no longer experience a personal attack of loneliness or unworthiness.
In fact, there is a lot to be learned from circumstances found with social media and practiced IRL.
-BTW That’s me in the photo. We all fall flat.-
Any time your post is ignored, you tell a joke that falls flat, or you’re not invited to the party, the following lessons will empower you.
You can let go of humiliation and carry on as a happy, go-lucky being instead of a disillusioned human.
Lesson 1: Take nothing personally.
Every encounter is a feedback loop of communication, whether something is verbalized or not.
When you experience feedback as a personal attack, you miss the opportunity to redirect down a smoother path that is moving you toward your highest goals.
Please take it from me. The feedback I’ve received in my life has felt personal!
I am someone who faced bullies, mean girls, and trouble with the cops as an adolescent. As an adult, I struggled to fit in with my peers, ran into conflict, and faced rejection again and again…
I had best friends who met and married through me, then turned their backs.
I had clients who blamed me for their purchase defects after being thoroughly guided through a professional experience.
I grew up with a mom who still takes feedback personally.
I blamed her for years because she absorbed my adolescent behavior to attack her own character.
My behavior was not personal though. It was very likely normal and the fault of no one except those who chose to take the blame by taking it personally.
Others’ reactions and comments are not personal!
You have the choice to decide.
Lesson 2: The story you tell yourself is up to you.
When you take feedback personally, you’re telling yourself that you are the problem.
Alternatively, when you receive feedback as an opportunity to learn, you’re crediting the complexity of humanity (and technology).
The story you tell yourself will dictate what happens next.
If you’re concerned with what others expect, you are more likely to say/do what you think others want. This way of thinking leads you away from yourself and toward a dark night of the soul.
My “dark night of the soul” began after meeting my first coach.
I had become afraid of people because of the things I told myself about myself.
Despite my extroverted personality and love for socializing with strangers, I had developed social anxiety.
At some point, I decided that people generally did not like me nor want me around.
Then I met my coach, who helped me take a closer look. She woke me up to my thoughts, feelings, and curable demons. I learned how to review and revise my stories; an ongoing practice.
Today, my friendships and relationships are evidence of how wrong I was and how unproductive it is to stress simple feedback and complicate the story.
Suppose you are frequently unhappy or concerned. Suppose you are living methodically to cope. You are living a life based on limiting stories.
But you are beginning to ask questions about how to get somewhere that feels more like you.
It’s time to learn new practices; to get in touch with a different routine.
Lesson 3: Follow your flow.
Take the art of yoga. Whether you see yoga as a practice of mindfulness or fitness, we can agree that yoga is a repetitive set of motions meant to wake you up.
Flow happens when you trust the next movement and reach for the proverbial sky or literally down for your toes.
Get into your flow to improve the feedback.
In the morning, do you wake up with a stretch?
As you put on your pants, do you see your toes?
You move similarly every morning. You know these motions well.
When you allow yourself to be present while getting ready for the day, you can enter your flow state.
Feel into the mornings, just as you feel into writing a post or selecting an image. When you’re present, you’re more likely to hit home!
Your flow begins with routine and continues with uncertainty toward fulfilling all you seek if only you are brave enough to follow.
When your focus moves away from worry and you replace it with trust, you can receive feedback as guidance to achieve all that you were worried about in the first place.
Rest when you’re tired and eat when you’re hungry instead of estimating your needs in advance.
This isn’t to say you don’t plan and prepare, but you do so only when you are called to focus on the task at hand — one thing at a time.
Flow is the spirit of energy that lives within your deepest being. Did you see ‘Soul’ on Disney Plus? “Flow” is what Moonwind Stardancer enters when he spins signs street corner.
It’s the parts of you that come alive when you play music, write, or move in the way that you were designed to move.
Think about dreams and desires that fell away when you were younger. Can you remember your hidden talents deemed not worthy in the past?
Leaning back into these parts of yourself will lead you to be the person you are designed to be. It’s your magic!
And when you fall out of flow, try again!
Falling out can look like rushing out the door because you’ve lost track of time (as if time dictates your happiness).
Often, we feel urgency because we’re in a rush to avoid pain or fear.
To get back into the flow, I remind myself to listen to the wind’s sound outside of my window and look at the trees alongside the road.
I remind myself to be present with my feelings and notice when I’m avoiding them by eating, scrolling, or filling the space somehow.
Our minds prefer comfort to change.
Being YOU is new. It’s going to take practice.
Bonus lesson: Have grace for yourself.
For example, I can be clumsy.
Clumsiness feels like the epitome of being out of flow.
I scrape my knuckles on the fridge drawer as I reach for another tortilla.
I have a couple options.
- I can degrade myself with judgment and spiral.
- I can give grace and make a choice to slow down.
Instead of exasperating myself by equating the scrape to mean something about me, I get the opportunity to practice compassion for being human.
I trust that being clumsy is not engrained in me and that it will shift once I have awareness and forgiveness for the behavior which is already evolving.
Joe Vitale, master of the Law of Attraction, says, “Love transmutes the stuck energy and frees it!”
Grace is loving awareness and forgivenesss for yourself and others.
The sooner you give yourself grace and “love the extra fat, the addiction, the problem child, neighbor or spouse,” the sooner the behaviors will shift.
When you are kind to the version of you who wrote the post that flopped, you are more likely to write a post that flies next time!
When I practice compassion, it’s a straight shot back into the flow.
So the next time you post something that others don’t respond to or you receive less than glittering feedback, remember:
- Take nothing personally. Receive the communication (or lack thereof) as feedback instead of beating yourself down.
- The story you tell yourself is up to you. Choose a story that inspires you.
- Follow your flow. Slow down to enter your awareness and refocus on the present moment.
- Have grace for yourself. Be kind! By loving yourself immediately, you step into a more authentic version of yourself, and authenticity is magnetic.
The power is yours. Follow your heart.
Note from the author: Writing is my art! Personal discovery is my passion! I have been on a conquest of “self” for many years with stories abound to make you laugh, cry, and not feel so alone.
