Feb 11, 2021 · 2 min read
Why Consuming Less and Creating More Matters
Scrolling through our feeds deteriorates our mental health if we are not matching our 24/7 consumption-input with nearly the same amount of creation-output
Kerati Apilakvanichakit
There might be too many things to pay attention to and we are consuming at an all time high: over-abundance of information, over-abundance of food, unlimited access to porn and a variety of people to hang out with on a basic surface level.
Is it because you aren't compounding and going deeper?
Consuming less and creating more matters because because consuming provides instant satisfaction no matter the form, an easier rush to achieve that usually doesn’t last and needs to be continuously reupped whereas creating provides more of a prolonged, sustained joy.
The first analogy that hits me is snorting a line of cocaine that lasts 15 minutes and having to constantly reup versus taking acid that lasts hours.
It may be the case that we are creating and expressing less because we get discouraged. We get discouraged because we inadvertently almost always compare ourselves to the cream of the crop.
Localized talent doesn’t exist anymore because technology centralizes attention to the most entertaining creators and most seductive players. There is only national and global talent because technology allows the best to do it for everyone.
- Why would I do this when there is someone better doing it already?
- What’s the point of this if nobody is going to watch..
- I’m so nervous about the amount of likes and views I get, forget it, I’m not going to do it…
We all get this and it happens to every single one of us. Our minds attack us before we can even get started, telling us that we are not as good as Chad or as pretty as her so why bother.
Creation is a form of expression and not expressing ourselves enough while simultaneously devouring every crumb and pixel in sight may be deteriorating our mental health because our monkey-brain naturally succumbs to what’s quick, easy and comfortable.
I am definitely not a licensed psychologist and I can for sure tell you that expressing and sharing something you made from food to crafts feels good.
More than half the time when the light bulb idea flashes in our heads, our monkey-brain attacks us, telling us why it won’t work when we should instead develop auto-pilot habits to figure out ways as to how and why it will work.
For most of us, the default train of thought is pessimism when it should be optimism.
We are so fixated by the number of views and likes that we forget to just express ourselves in any which way. We come up with excuses that we’ll get to it later or that we don’t have enough time when in actuality, the real reason is because we are afraid of what others will think.
Who cares who is reading. Who cares who is watching. Who cares who is listening. Who cares about someone criticizing you, the haters hate because they are too afraid to express anything themselves. Realize this, what people think of you and their opinions of you is none of our business anyways.
We shouldn’t waste the limited amount of time we have worrying about what others will think about us because everyone is really just concerned about what others will think about them.
We are all just in our own heads, playing our own games, on our own paths, consumed by our own thoughts and sometimes it paralyzes us.
It’s time to consume less and create more.
It’s time to record that podcast you and your friends have been talking about forever. Bake that new recipe and share the finishing-touches through your online personal bakery portfolio. Start that project you never got around to because there is no time like now. Entertain your friends & family with goofiness they haven’t seen in a while. Build that new app you think will change the world because we can never have enough cat videos. Keep posting photos of yourself because the people really want it, they just don’t want to admit it.
It doesn’t matter who is peeping, it doesn’t matter who is watching and it doesn’t matter if anyone is liking. It just matters that you are building, making, doing, expressing and creating. The truth might be that the less we consume and the more we create, the happier we become.
