Last month, while traveling with friends, Isabel caught herself looking at her phone instead of being in the moment enjoying what was right in front of her. This prompted a conversation about Instagram during which Isabel reflected on the negative feelings she noticed arising as she would scroll through the application. In response, one of her friends shared a hack that was working for her, only looking at Instagram from the computer. Inspired by an experimental solution and the possibility to shift a habit while traveling, Isabel decided to do the same, delete the application off of her phone, so she too could only log in through the computer.

In taking space away from the application Isabel realized that the negativity she was feeling was based on comparison. The constant bombardment of what others were doing, what they had, was making her feel that what she was doing, what she had, was not enough. Isabel found that by removing herself from the headspace of that application she was better able to appreciate the abundance of her life.

As the social media manager for our business, hearing Isabel’s experience gave me pause. I too have felt the negative effects of comparison both personally and professionally and I never want what we share as a business in the Instagram space to make people feel less than. Instead I hope that what we share inspires the appreciation, celebration, and support of what you do have, your relationship with yourself, with others, and with the world around you.

As Isabel and I were having this conversation I was working my way through the introduction of Jenny Odell’s How to Do Nothing. This excerpt felt particularly resonant to the conversation and to our Current Invitation:

One thing I have learned about attention is that certain forms of it are contagious. When you spend enough time with someone who pays close attention to something (if you were hanging with me, it would be birds), you inevitably start to pay attention to some of the same things. I’ve also learned that patterns of attention—what we choose to notice and what we do not—are how we render reality for ourselves, and thus have a direct bearing on what we feel is possible at any given time. These aspects, taken together, suggest to me the revolutionary potential of taking back our attention. To capitalist logic, which thrives on myopia and dissatisfaction, there may indeed be something dangerous about something as pedestrian as doing nothing: escaping laterally toward each other, we might just find that everything we wanted is already here [my emphasis].

With that, we hope you’ll join us in the practice of reclaiming our attention, of extending care for what we do have with presence.

P.S. Isabel has since added Instagram back to her phone, but doesn’t look at it much, “I kind of forget it’s there.” If she opens it, it is strictly for inspiration, and she is finding that Pinterest is a much better, less comparative space for that.

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