EVENT: Social Media Gives me Anxiety! Here's how I heal it...

Amazing Event Alert: Come to the Social Media Gives me Anxiety Panel + Event on March 12 from 6-8 at the Rosedale Center in Minneapolis as part of @SomeGreatPeople’s series.

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I've been doing social media for myself and big brands like @saks, @edbyellen and @joefresh over the last 10 years. When I’m managing social for a brand, I’m kind of on 24/7. Even on vacation, I felt like I was still posting or monitoring social for a client or putting out unexpected customer service fires. On top of that, I had to keep building my own Instagram - curating content, posting and engaging. I have had a love-hate relationship with social because it has owned so much of my time.

7 years ago I discovered meditation, mindfulness and tools to lower my anxiety. This changed my life, improved my mental health and my life was opening up in new ways. I was proof that self-help practices work. I started this blog and wrote about my relationship with self-help and people became curious about what I did to better my life. I eventually started giving motivational speeches about anxiety and how to clean up your energy to feel better. This led to me teaching workshops and helping others. It’s like I was this social media and marketing guy who was becoming a champion for mindfulness and feeling good. However, underneath my good energy and big smile was social media overwhelm. I was juggling multiple clients, spending way too much time in social channels and then having to show up and be the happy guy on stage. I wasn’t always consistent about doing for myself that I was motivating others to do.

As I was growing, people were recommending to me that I should grow myself into a brand. I would ask for advice and what I got were a lot of opinions, which led to more anxiety because I felt like I was so behind or far from a magic number I needed to get everything I wanted. It’s like I was growing and great things were happening for me professionally, and instead of celebrating them, I kept focusing on where I wasn’t yet. I was missing the journey. When I was trying to get TV gigs on talk shows in 2014 and 2015, casting directors were like, "You don't have enough followers, a network won't touch you". I was told a network only wants people who can bring an audience. I would think to myself, if I was on there, I could create an audience. I've looked into writing a book and in 2017 I was told, "You don't have a big enough platform yet. Publishers want an author who has a strong audience of people who will buy the book as soon as it hits shelves.” Recently my book agent friend told me I’m getting closer, but not quite there yet. I can get defeated and take things very personally (definitely need to work on that), but then I see people who write #1 best sellers in a similar category who have under 10,000 followers and I have over 20,000. It surely can’t all be based on a social presence? There must be a way for talent to rise to the top without having 100k followers?

A year and a half ago a good friend told me, “No one would know you’re a motivational speaker on Instagram because you post so much about fashion and travel and what brands you are wearing.” I looked at my feed and it was true. I was trying to look like every other fashion influencer and prided myself on a few J. Crew collaborations, yet I had a message to share and tools to teach others to become happier that I wasn’t sharing. I shifted my focus and my content became less about the outfit I’m wearing and more about the life I’m living in that moment. I started turning a corner into the right niche - wellness/positivity and my following and engagement was on the incline.

A year ago on my birthday I had a full melt-down related to social media. I taught a workshop on tools to be more mindful and happy and it went so well. I posted an insta-story about how grateful I was when I was done. Minutes later I opened my instagram in my car to see I had lost 500 followers during the workshop. I started screaming and crying in my car. Less followers = further away from goals. I felt like a fraud after telling people how much I loved my life 45 minutes before. I fell off the beam and felt like absolute shit.

The next day I had a moment of clarity in the bathtub as I was meditating. I realized I can apply the tools that lower my anxiety to my Instagram. I was applying the tools to every part of my life, except for my personal social presence. I began meditating about my social media. I was doing cord cutting meditations to release the hold it had over my emotions. I started visualizing me blessing my followers and sending them love. I prayed to let go of my control over it and I prayed to free myself from the regular fomo I was engaging with at 11pm every night. I had been a very spiritual guy who had a lot of toxic thoughts and insecurities about his social presence. I was exhausted and it was in complete opposition to what I was teaching and it didn’t match who I want to be in this world.

I started letting go of metrics and stopped trying so hard to post pictures that were overly polished. I wanted to be influencing people's moods and trying to help them feel better. I couldn’t do that if I was feeling like shit. I started dancing and posting videos of it. I started posting talks I gave about meditation. I started posting about things that frustrate me. I got more real and transparent. I was a lot less filtered and what came in return, was a lot more love. My instagram was not only growing, but it was growing with followers who were bringing me joy and filling me up. I would get comments and direct messages from people I never met telling me how happy my Instagram makes them. It wasn’t about the content I was posting, they felt my vibe and my intention. I was praying for my followers and sending them love almost every day. I began disconnecting from what I thought my instagram was supposed to be and just acted as if my Instagram was my own reality show. What’s happening in the world of Doug is what I’m posting about. I do it every day.

When I shifted my focus, the love poured in.

After my birthday crash, I was guided to put mindfulness into my social media efforts to heal anxiety, limiting beliefs and my addiction to it. What happened in the last year is amazing. I hired a company to build my branding and I turned this little blog into a website. I feel like I’m right where I should be. Fashion brands stopped reaching out to give me free clothes, but people like Sarah Edwards or LAB Minneapolis asked me to be on their panels to talk about mindfulness or meditation. I started teaching workshops at lululemon and ModernWell. I was featured as a North Notable at Artful Living Mag and I began contributing on wellness/lifestyle and beauty. When I started being me on social, people wanted more of me.

See below a video I did with Sarah Edwards on Meditation for Beginners.

I'm learning how to love my social media from a new angle and I'm serving people in the way I am meant to. I now see that what was missing in my social was trust. I wasn’t trusting myself or the universe (which for me is God). The more I listened to people’s opinions, I stopped believing in my intuition and I was holding myself back. When I believe other people’s opinions too closely, I give away my power. I start worrying and anxiety takes over. Today, I’m betting on me. I’m posting what I love and when I think back to the crying fit I had in the car over the 500 follower loss, I feel grateful. That moment woke me up to realize I don’t want to live like that. It was an opportunity to redirect. The real plot twist: the next day the 500 followers were restored because it was a glitch on Instagram. I didn’t lose followers, the Instagram follower count went haywire. Pretty much everyone on Instagram experienced the same thing. What I gained was far greater: A mindful plan to heal my outbursts that came with the rise and fall of my social media.

I’m part of an amazing panel on March 12th at Rosedale Center in Minneapolis hosted by Some Great People + Sarah Edwards. Link to tickets is HERE.

Panelists include:
Falen KDWB
"Falen is real, flaws and all. She's known for her bold humor, quick wit and infectious laugh. She is the co-host on the legendary The Dave Ryan in the Morning Show on 101.3 KDWB. She is also the host of the Webby Honoree podcast "Heartbroken”."

Doug Marshall
"Doug Marshall is a writer, motivational speaker, TV personality and social media brand consultant. He has launched social media campaigns for many globally recognized brands including Saks Fifth Avenue, Lord & Taylor and Ellen DeGeneres' lifestyle line. Beyond the smartphone, Doug is a motivational coach and "good energy" expert - teaching Mindset + Meditation Workshops to groups, businesses and individuals to help them clean up their energy so they can feel good, be present and live abundantly."

Jeff Aguy
"Jeff M. Aguy researches innovation, develops innovators, and implements large scale innovation for mid-large sized businesses. He currently serves as the Chief Innovation Officer for NCXT, a Minnesota-based product launch &organization design company. Jeff enjoys fashion photography, cooking, and doing his best to leave this world in a better place than he found it."

Holly Vanselow