In this week's podcast episode, "Social Media Evolution: Maturing Your Perspective and 'Pit' in the Digital Age," we answered a listener question about her personal challenge with "Friends" & Social Media. And it hit me deeply because it connected with a story I shared in the earlier drafts of my book, "Diamonds Beneath the Darkness," but I had to make the choice to nix it last minute because, well, I had to cut the book in half.
And so today, I'm dusting off this "untold story" of my own in hopes that it can help some of you connect back to your 'pit," as Meg liked to call it in the episode, and really trust your intuition more than the outside noise. Your mental & physical health are deeply connected—there is nothing wrong with doing hard things or making unfavorable choices to do what is best for you and YOUR life. The world needs you. So take it one step, one breath at a time & figure out what you can do to help your own self get back to truly living your one beautiful life.
Enjoy this story from the road, on my own journey in life.
XO,
Nicole
BATTLE SNAKES
(2022)
During the height of the pandemic, I had to learn how to combat the negativity that was being thrust into my life. The negativity was overwhelming. My mind and body were a hot mess. I needed an escape—that’s when I decided to start working with my personal trainer. In training, all the things bringing toxicity to my life surfaced, and the battle ropes became my weapon of choice.
At first, I was intimidated by the heavy ropes, but I grabbed them and stumbled the first few whips trying to get the hang of these snake-like things. I kept getting inside of my head, and not in a good way. That’s when my trainer told me “I don’t need your form to be perfect. Functional Fitness isn’t about perfect form, it’s about using your body to just do the exercise. So, I want you to whip those ropes, alternating one at a time and last 20 seconds. Let’s go.”
Ok, I could do this.
I held tightly to the ropes, one in each hand, and just focused on a dot on the wall in front of me. Up right, up left, up right, up left… Not only did I last the full 20 seconds but I crushed them. My trainer hi-fived me and complimented me on how great I did. While there was some struggle, I felt like I had been doing these my whole life. The battle ropes are intense but, shockingly, I was enjoying being at the gym again.
With a huge smile on my face, I looked at my trainer and said, “I like these battle snakes.” He was quick to remind me they’re battle ropes. I told him I liked “battle snakes” better because every time I snapped the ropes up and down, suddenly there were little wave patterns that looked like snakes. He took a liking to this idea.
In all our sessions moving forward, they would now be known as the “battle snakes.”
Where I didn’t uphold our end of the “in order for this to work we need to be personal” aspect is that while I shared the “battle snakes” part, I didn’t explain why I took to the battle ropes so easily. You see, every single time I whipped those ropes, every snap I was imagining a person or a time or a thought or an experience that hurt me or my husband or my kids. I was imagining things that weren’t fair or were “wrong,” or shitty comments made, or the faces of people I just really would like to punch in the face (namaste—we all have those moments). I just took all the toxicity in my life that came to my mind in the 20 second spurts of time, laid them all out there and attacked those damn battle ropes… which became me just cracking the whip at all the negativity shoved into my life over the past decasdes of existence on this earth. I was battling the "snakes" of my life, whipping them out one at a time.
I grabbed those ropes again for the next set and again, started whipping all these toxic things comign to mind, the shit I was carrying as though I was releasing
them and giving them back to the source. Every whip was the acknowledgement of something that wasn’t bringing good to my life, and with every whip I was getting stronger and stronger and I was becoming a fighter.
However, I found that even though I was putting it all out there in the moment, when I walked outside the gym I was still carrying the weight of it all.
Throughout my life, I’ve been challenged with how to combat negativity, but when the pandemic hit, the negativity started to challenge me to levels I hadn’t experienced before. I was struggling bad, feeling overwhelmed, drowning in just so much that was contributing to the downward spiral of my life. I felt like I was no longer in control of my life because my life was just constantly invaded by junk, by unimportant drama, by the endless news pumped through my tv and into my brain, by expectations, by unwanted texts, by spam phone calls, by the money quickly draining out of our bank account, by the endless piles of stuff just all over our house. Stress was just everywhere and it was consuming my life, secretly closing the flow of oxygen to my brain.
I can’t place blame on the world for my life getting to that point. I can only blame myself for allowing the world to affect me so badly.
And it was bad.
When I finally opened up to my sister Demi about what I was struggling with, she told me she was going through a similar thing. I had no clue. I’m over here thinking I’m all alone in these feelings and there my sister was feeling just the same. It was her brilliantly wise self that smacked me upside the head with a hefty dose of wisdom when she said, “Nicole, whether it’s a person or a thing - if it’s creating “toxicity” in your life, remove it! If it’s adding negativity and not bringing joy to your life or lifting you up but instead bringing you down, stop it!”
Was it really that simple though? Nothing is ever that simple, right?!
But I wanted to give it a try—so, I thought to myself, “Let me take a look at my life and see what isn’t contributing positively. What can I change and not look back at or be made to feel bad about? What is no longer serving me or bringing good to my days and just contributing to making me feel bad?”
The first thing was super easy… emails! The amount of junk email I get every day is just so stupid. At that time, I had 1,362 unread messages across all my email accounts. It literally gives my husband anxiety just looking at my computer. He doesn’t understand how it’s humanly possible to not only have 1,362 unread messages but to be able to stare at that red dot all the time. In regards to the ridiculous email situation, I started attacking all the junk emails and clicking “unsubscribe” to the ones that didn’t bring anything good to my life. If I wasn’t going to be excited to see a reoccurring daily or weekly email from this source, UNSUBSCRIBE.
After unsubscribing from the overwhelm of junk email, the next thing I did was tackle the apps on my phone. Did I really need 7 pages of apps and wasted time with all this scrolling? Nope! So, I deleted apps from my phone that were no longer being used and condensed everything down to folders within just the main page. There’s always the “wait but maybe what if” hesitation, but the reality is if I end up needing to use an app I deleted, I can always reinstall later on. But it’s so much nicer to just have one, organized screen to work off of and immediately added more organization to not just my phone but my life.
I thought the next best thing I could do to just remove some of this stuff that was adding negatively to my life was remove clutter. Everywhere I looked in the house, there was just stuff. We definitely have a lot less “stuff” than most people I know but it was to an overwhelming point—everything was closing in on me. An overwhelming amount of stuff paired with an overwhelming amount of debt became crippling during the pandemic. Without jobs, we were living off of the business loan we got (that we now have to spend the next 30 years paying back) and yet, I was still spending money on stuff for other people because it was the obligatory thing to do. I’m a giver at heart but when the expectations start drowning you, that’s not a healthy space to be forced into just because no one wants to say “No.” In our quaint 1300 sq foot pool home—Crosby also took over the garage space, which was our office, with all his therapy stuff. Wylder took over the front room area with all his therapy stuff. I was using a tiny corner next to our dining room table as my personal space and Adam was using the couch—it was just stuff everywhere plus stuff for other people, stuff with other people, there was nowhere just to be to breathe and I needed all the stuff out of the way to make room for the experiences that were essential to bring into our lives.
At one point I counted and my kids had 300 books. THREE HUNDRED books and, at the time, they were 1 ½ and 4 ½. No child, even if the child loves books, needs 300 books in their home. The books were becoming a game to Wylder, just flipping through until they were all on the floor and there’s just not enough time in the day to pick those up every single day on top of the rest of Hurricane Wylder’s mess. So, I immediately cut the total in half and removed 150 from our home. Some went back to my mother-in-law (because they were her Dr Seuss Collection) and the others I sold or donated so other kids could enjoy them. Even 150 still felt like a lot.
Kids stuff is a touchy one to deal with because people want to buy kids things. But did they really need the Little People farm and the Little People tractor and the Little People dollhouse and the Little People treehouse and the Little People Zoo with 26 animals and the zoo helper and the Little People bus and the firetruck and the airplane and so on? No, they didn’t.
So week by week, bag by bag, I started eliminating stuff and sending it in the car with Adam to drop off at our local Goodwill or gave to some therapists who I was in touch with online that needed things to help their sessions with other kiddos. While we still have way more stuff than we need, just working towards eliminating the excess one piece, one donation bag at a time has been a step in the right direction.
After I took those few steps, I was feeling a tiny bit better—until the social media factor once again creeped into my day.
Why was I letting this stuff affect me by my own un-choosing?
It got so heavy that I felt I couldn’t control anything anymore. It’s not that I don’t care about people but I really don’t care about the actual shit that your sister’s best friend’s co-worker’s nephew’s kid took in the toilet that you felt the need to post about. The worst part of it all was allowing what other people projected to make me feel bad about myself when I had no control over it.
The sad but harsh reality is I was wasting valuable energy and time looking at other people’s lives, allowing it to affect my own life to the point I was missing out on precious time—time I will never get back. Personally, I want to fill my days with meaningful conversations about this one life we are given, not gab sessions about other people. I only want positive, uplifting, inspiring things to fill what remains of my choosing. And I certainly no longer wanted to be surrounded by gossip—because I’m wise enough to know if people will talk shit about other people in front of you, you better believe they wouldn’t blink twice before turning around and talking shit about you behind your back to other people. And I no longer wanted that energy in my life.
I care about people and true, genuine relationships and friendships—not the ones that are thought to exist simply because of “following.” Just because you’re “friends” with someone on a social media platform, does not mean they are your FRIEND. I wanted only the real, not the reel.
I didn’t want to feel bad about myself anymore because of the accounts I followed. If I even had time to login and scroll, I wanted to be flooded with things that made me feel good, that inspired me, that brought joy to my day. I wanted social media to help get me closer to the person I want to become, not shove me back into the person the world has made me be.
So, remembering how my sister said “if it’s creating ‘toxicity’ in your life, remove it,” here’s what I did:
1. I deleted my Twitter account. I never used it and I don’t tweet. Easy.
2. I didn’t want to delete Instagram because there was a lot of positivity that could come from it, but I did some major housekeeping! I unfollowed about 1/3 of the accounts I was following. If an account didn’t uplift my days during those dark times of the pandemic, I unfollowed.
3. I deleted my Facebook account. This one was the hardest because I had a lot of work connections and also, some valuable groups I was a part of that I relied on for work and Motherhood resources. But I knew I had to weigh the positives of keeping my account active vs the negativity it was contributing to my mental health. I didn’t want to hold onto something affecting me this deeply because of the possibility of “using” a connection in the future. And I really don’t care about suggested recipes that have no substance to them—how about you try and make the recipe and show that off and I’d gladly engage in response by cheering you on for trying. All of this shit is just suffocating. So, I deleted my Facebook during the pandemic. Enough was enough.
Here’s a scary truth—if you delete your Facebook account, the world is not going to end. You choosing your mental health as a top priority in your life is not a bad thing. We use the term “friend” so loosely on all of these platforms, but social media is not more important than actual human relationships. If someone or something on Facebook or Instagram or Twitter or TikTok or whatever is negatively affecting my life, that is not a “friend” to me, that is someone causing me harm. If you’re wasting your precious energy and limited time consuming content that makes you feel terrible, quit social media. There’s so many better ways for your limited moments to be spent.
My darling friend said it best when she told me a story of when she went to visit her sister’s family. It was her nephew’s birthday and she saw her sister struggling with the right words to write a very long post to her son on his birthday and Brooke said to her, “He’s right there. He’s right there in front of you, why don’t you tell him what your heart wants to say and stop worrying about saying it to people on Instagram.” The same with her Dad on Father’s Day, she said “My Dad isn’t even on Instagram. He will never see what I post. Why am I doing this just because of others? This is so stupid!”
She’s so right. While I try my hardest to be conscious of this very thing, I’m so guilty of it when it comes to Instagram. Here’s where I will always be big enough to admit when I’m wrong. I have fallen victim to social media too many times. I apologize to all of you who were on the receiving end of my own bullshit. My love letters to my husband and my children should be ours alone. Social Media doesn’t matter, human beings matter. Good people who lift you up in life, not bring you down, matter. Loving one another matters.
I’m not saying there aren’t upsides to social media. Having a presence online is crucial for success in many lines of work. But crying if someone “unfriended” or “unfollowed” you and stomping your foot like a damn asshole if someone didn’t like your post… if that is the kind of thing you think is important in life, that’s just sad.
If it all just magically went away tomorrow—guess what, we’d have to go back to just living in the real world and having real friends. So, how about we all just start working at being better at that—rather than just scrolling mindlessly through a screen that will never, ever love you back.
But do you know what is more toxic to our survival than any of those things? More toxic than bad connections on social media or an overabundance of stuff or unwanted expectations of others or too many unread emails? Snakes! No, not real snakes. Not even battle snakes. Snakes. Sneaky people who are out to hurt you.
Years ago, one of my producing partners and I got really far into developing one of my original ideas. There was a lot at stake, her father was one of the main reasons the presentation was funded and that was always a hefty cloud over my head. In the beginning, someone was brought in who was in the position to be able to pitch it to other people but the kicker was, he wanted a pretty hefty stake. I didn't like this person from the get-go nor did I trust this person and by no means was it worth partnering with this person and giving up half of our ownership stake to make this happen (him getting half and her and I splitting the other half). I think Crosby gets his intuitive side from me—we can always sniff out the snake in the room.
I believed in this project, but I had to ask myself at what cost? The project went pretty far but then the production company we were in agreement with kinda just dropped everything when shinier diamonds were dangled in front of their eyes. So, everything was just gone.
Years later, after Crosby was born, out of the blue I heard from my friend and old producing partner. It had been years since we had a real conversation and I was excited to hear all the things she had been up to. The main thing she was reaching out about was to let me know the guy who was originally interested in our project and who wanted to help pitch it had reached out to her, having remembered our project all these years later. Turns out, he was once again on the hunt for shows to pitch.
This smelled like desperation on his part, but my initial reaction was like, “fuck yes!” because new-mom-me needed some sort of validation (this was before I signed on with the devilish clothing business) and it would have been nice to have any check written with my name on it, at that point. She took the next step to talk to him more and communicate it all to me. We sent an agreement around for all of us to sign and then… I slammed on the brakes.
I was out on a walk with Croz and it just hit me—it wasn’t even so much about the money, I just couldn’t do it. I couldn’t allow him, that suspicious, desperate person, to be a part of it. This was a really, really hard thing to tell her because I knew it was only going to cause disappointment and I couldn’t stand the thought of me being the one to disappoint her. But if I didn’t trust him the first time around when I met him, I sure as hell couldn’t trust him now when I have a baby and family to think about. No amount of money could validate the gut feeling I had inside.
It’s obvious to say she wasn’t so happy with my decision and I completely understood why. Sometimes, we just want a payday and she really wanted to recoup the initial investment we received.
Her response was, “You’re never satisfied. Nothing is ever enough for you.”
That was a pretty harsh statement to say, especially years after having a real conversation with a person. I couldn’t shake her comment. Am I never satisfied? Is it true that nothing is ever enough for me, when I have spent most of my life believing I wasn’t enough for others? Why couldn’t I sacrifice my gut feeling to just do it? Why couldn’t I agree to let him take my project and try to make something of it? Why couldn’t I just suck it up, knowing any payday was better than none at all? But for real—Am I never satisfied?
You always hear people talk about removing what is “toxic” from your life but I think some degree of toxins can be removed easier than others. Snakes… these people are poisonous, they are deathly to your physical and mental well-being, they present a deeper threat to your existence at a higher surface of existence and are easy to want to get rid of. They slithered in when you weren’t looking. You didn’t welcome these people into your life, someone else brought them in and told you that you have to let them be there.
These are the most dangerous people of all. These are the ones you need gone.
Just like when I held onto those battle ropes, when our well-being is suffering because of the shit we didn’t bring into life on our own doing, sometimes the only thing to do is focus one whip at a time knocking those suckers out.
The thing I couldn’t wrap my head around at the time that is now so perfectly clear to me is… It’s not that I’m never satisfied.
I just don’t trust snakes.
Comments