E25: Self-Doubt and The Consequences of Social Media

In this episode, I talk about the impact of social media on our self-esteem, how it makes us question ourselves at times, and how we can break free from that. Additionally, I give my tips-and-tricks on how to balance busy life schedules as mothers and career women!

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Everybody and welcome back to the Gemma Ma podcast, where we talk about all things pregnancy, postpartum, motherhood, tips and tricks and more, from a Senegalese, american perspective. I'm your host, issa Tugisei, and today's episode is going to be about the impact of social media and how it can really have us believing that we have to have our lives together at all times. A question that I've gotten a lot lately is how I'm able to manage everything when it comes to being a mom working full time, having a toddler and all my side projects. So, just to set the baseline, I'm going to tell you a little bit about everything that I have going on, and then we can go from there. So I work full time as a project manager for a company. I work from home. I have a 13 month old that also stays at home with me, so she's not yet enrolled in daycare.

Speaker 1: 0:45

I have this podcast that I'm hosting, usually by myself, sometimes I have guests, and then I also have a podcast that I co-host with my friend, so I've been doing that one a lot longer than this one. This one is relatively new, since becoming a mom is when I started it. So those are probably the four main things that are going on in my life. Wait, I forgot one of the most important ones. I am also a wife, so I live in Atlanta, georgia, with my husband, and so I have my home, my husband, my job, my daughter and my projects to take care of. I would say those are the five priorities that I have going on in my life right now, and the question around how I balance it all, the simple answer is that it's not easy and that is the worst answer I could probably give you, so I'm going to elaborate on that. I would love to be able to say that I wake up at 6am, I get the day going, I get all of my ducks in a row before the house wakes up. When my daughter wakes up, everything is smooth sailing, my husband goes to work and everything works out well.

Speaker 1: 1:46

But I would not be telling you the truth. I would be flat out lying if I said that. The first reason I can't say that is because I love sleep. Everybody who knows me knows that I love to get my sleep. So I am not a morning person. I just need time to really ease into the day. That's the kind of person that I am. I'm much more of an evening person than a morning person. The second reason is because a lot of what's going on and I think a lot of people can relate to this is that life is just unexpected in many ways. It kind of throws things at you and you have to adapt and really get yourself to this mind space where you feel like you have a good handle on everything that's going on. But that's not always going to be congruent with having this very consistent schedule, this very consistent day to day activity that you have. For people who have that routine and that schedule, I really commend them.

Speaker 1: 2:36

I think when we talk about motherhood and what we talk about working from home and balancing all these different things, it's a little bit more chaotic on my end and I'll talk about that in a little bit, but I just wanted to start off by saying that, because I don't want to make this episode a glorifying I have my life together and I do everything well and I'm the perfect wife and the perfect mom. That's not what this episode is going to be about. We're going to talk about the impact of social media and how that plays into that narrative sometimes, where we feel like we see others and they have their lives so put together and we get this anxiety within us that says why don't I have my life together that way? I really want to squash that before we even get deep into the episode, so that we can have realistic expectations of what all of those commitments look like on a day to day basis, how you manage it and when you fall short, how do you recover from it, because you will fall short. I found that to be just a very par for the course thing. You're going to fall short, you're not going to be successful all of the time, so how do you manage that? I think that's what that question is really getting at, and I think when people are asking me how I'm balancing it all, that's really what they're getting at. It's like how can I also feel okay about not being successful? And today I just want to have that moment of vulnerability to say like I don't have my life together. I don't know what I'm doing all the time, especially with this new podcast. It's such an endeavor for me. So, yeah, I'm going to stop rambling there and just get to the next point, because otherwise we'll go off on a whole tangent For me.

Speaker 1: 4:08

I'm in one of the situations where my baby is super attached to me. I mentioned earlier that she's not yet enrolled in daycare and that has had such a big impact on my day to day activities. So I work from home and she's also home with me, so you can imagine balancing my work and also taking care of her. We've built this really, really, really strong bond where she actually gets, I think, separation anxiety if I'm away from her for more than two seconds, like she literally starts crying and yelling and just having this fit because we're so attached to one another. Maybe I shouldn't put all the blame on her saying she's just attached to me. We're both attached to one another to the point where I mean we do everything together. I spent all day with her, so it's been like that for over a year and it's hard to break that cycle.

Speaker 1: 5:02

I'm trying to get her enrolled in daycare. Have to wait a little bit until she's able to independently walk, but you can imagine when you spend every single day with someone, pretty much every single day. I don't think I've spent more than like two, three days away from her. I had a work trip once, but other than that we've spent every single day together. We co-sleep, so she's just very used to me and I'm very used to her. So it's really hard for me to balance my day. Like, realistically, what it looks like is I have to plan to get her to try to take a nap if I have a really important meeting that's coming up. Otherwise she's gonna be in that meeting with me. And I've kind of set the expectation with my coworkers like, hey, I have my daughter at home with me. Luckily, they're very understanding and they love her. Sometimes I'll flash my camera on and they'll say hi to her, but otherwise, like she's part of my workday. It's not that I have my workday here and I have her here Like no, we work together. She is an employee of the company that I work for. Is why at this point? But in terms of trying to balance everything, I'm understanding of the fact that I do have to get her socialized with other kids. So, like I mentioned, just waiting for her to be able to walk so she can get into daycare, even if it's just a couple of days a week, that will help her from a socialization perspective. But it will also help me to free up some time during the day where I'm not 100% dedicated to just playing with her and entertaining her and sitting with her and all these things. So hopefully I can get that incorporated into our schedule in the next couple of weeks or months and that will free up some more time to 10 other priorities that I have as well In terms of recording for either this podcast or the other one that I have with my friend by the way, it's called Jockel J-O-K-O.

Speaker 1: 6:43

I've been co-hosting it with my friend for four years now coming up on four years and we absolutely love it. We always talk about how we wish we could do it full time. We wish we had more time to dedicate to it, because it truly is one of those times when we're able to sit down and reflect on a lot of things. On this podcast we talk about motherhood and all things related to motherhood from the Senegalese American perspective, but in that podcast it's much more broad. We talk about all topics any and all topics from the Senegalese American perspective, and it's really nice to have someone to kind of go back and forth with.

Speaker 1: 7:16

But that also means finding the time is a lot more challenging, because she also works, I work. So just trying to balance our schedules and find the time and being flexible with one another. It's a challenge. So when you layer that on top of this podcast now here, it's really.

Speaker 1: 7:34

It's not easy, like I don't know how to describe it, except I just have to try to find the time and capitalize on certain moments. So, for example, if I'm home and my daughter is taking a nap and sometimes I can tell when her naps are gonna be a little longer than others If I know she's gonna be in for like a two hour nap, I try to hurry up and get something done. So I don't know, it's hard, that's all I can say, because it's like when she's napping I can either hurry up and cook dinner or hurry up and record. I can hurry up and clean up or hurry up and cook dinner. Like there's just always something to be done within the house, and so it's really hard to balance all of that, and I'm gonna talk at the very end some tactical tips that I've taken. But it's not easy and everybody has to kind of find the solution that works for them.

Speaker 1: 8:19

So I'm gonna shift gears a little bit and talk a little bit about social media and the impact that it has on us. Social media is one of those things where we see just so many accomplishments and we see so many success moments that it really plants these seeds of doubt, in my opinion, that make us question whether we're on the right path, whether we're moving fast enough, whether we're successful, and really makes us compare ourselves to other people and, like we've we've known about this, we've talked about it before like it's not, you know, caps out the bag. Everybody knows social media has detrimental side effects, but I think in this day and age it's leaving like it just keeps going up and up and up, more prevalent, more relevant, and we have to talk about it. You know, when you're scrolling you're gonna see someone you know doing a baby announcement and you start to wonder when am I gonna have a baby? You start seeing someone graduating. You're like damn, she got her masters. When am I gonna graduate? You see someone with the you know the love of their life going on a vacation and you're wondering when am I gonna have that?

Speaker 1: 9:23

So there's always these questions of applying what we see on social media to ourselves and really putting that undue pressure on ourselves to compare. It's not healthy, it's not easy and we all do it like I would be a hypocrite to sit here and say I didn't see people on social media or I didn't see things on social media that made me question whether I'm doing well in life. But that's something that I'm gonna challenge myself and challenge you the listener and the watcher to really, really try to get out of that habit. It's like they say, comparison is a thief of joy, and it's so true because you might be doing something in your life that is very successful or, you know, even if it's not successful like I don't even want to use that word but you might be doing something in your life that is very fulfilling for you and you feel content with where you're at the minute.

Speaker 1: 10:09

You get on social media and you see somebody doing something different, you start wondering, wow, my, my thing is now less of an accomplishment, because look at this person, they have all this going on, they're doing all of these things. So you start really stealing your own joy. You start comparing yourselves and getting in your own head and that that is only gonna set you back when it comes to accomplishing the things that you want to accomplish for yourself. I can't emphasize that enough for yourself. We do so many things for other people, we do so many things for this external gaze and we have to get back to making ourselves happy first before we try to, you know, show off to the world that we got it going on.

Speaker 1: 10:48

One thing social media is good for is really making you feel like you haven't done anything. There's this one-up aspect of social media. So, whether it's the number of followers that someone has, the number of likes that people have, the number of views that people have, it's never ending and I feel like, especially if you don't have that high self-esteem to begin with, if you get on social media, it's going to knock you down so many notches and you're gonna start comparing yourself, not even just like from a holistic perspective, but down to those metrics, down to they have more followers. They mean, wow, they're real. When viral, wow, they did this and they did that, and you really get into this moment of like am I enough? I know that's happened to me, not to a grave extent, to the point where I'm like re questioning my whole life, but I definitely do get in those moments where, for example, I love, love, love doing this podcast and it's something that I enjoy, but also I feel like it's helpful for people. So, and that's in the most like non cocky way ever, like I am not.

Speaker 1: 11:54

When I when I set out to make this podcast, it was to share my experiences when it comes to pregnancy and all these things, because I didn't feel like the community existed before and I didn't see it as I must be the one to do it. It just was something that I'm passionate about. Like I mentioned, I've been doing podcasting for four years now, so for me, it just made sense to launch this endeavor and really get into it because I have the passion for it. It also is an added bonus when I get messages of people saying, hey, this was so helpful for me, thank you for doing that. I love the scene to the podcast, etc. Etc. Etc. It's not a boost to my ego, it's just a reinforcement for me that what I'm doing is killing two birds with one stone. I'm, you know, fulfilling my passion of doing something that I love, but other people are also finding use in that.

Speaker 1: 12:38

But getting back to what I was talking about, sometimes it can be discouraging when you feel like it's not getting to as many people as you want. So that's those views, those likes, that count. You know those followers, and I really had to get out of my head about that, because the first and foremost reason why I was doing is because I enjoy it. I can't let that joy be taken away due to the simple fact that it's not Getting as much reach as I would like it to. I have to number one understand that it is a journey, it's a process. You know you, you have to build that community around it and and have that organic growth. The other thing is not everybody's interested in the same thing and that's okay. Like I can't expect to have the same Reach as someone who's doing makeup videos, I can't expect to have the same reach as someone who's doing workout videos, because everybody is different and and everybody has different Priorities in life. So, depending on what stage in life you're at, that's, that's really what you know.

Speaker 1: 13:37

I don't know how to describe it. I don't know and I think I feel like I'm rambling and I don't want to ramble, but I'm trying to drive this point home that everybody has, like, their spot within the world today. You can open up a coffee shop and have your customers. You can open up a yoga gym or yoga studio and have your customers. You can open up a Horse riding business and have your people like there's something for everyone. The same way that that exists from the consumer perspective, that also exists from the people who are putting the content out there, people who are putting themselves out there.

Speaker 1: 14:13

You cannot compare your success to somebody else's success, and that's really the point of it all, is it looks different for everyone. So I'm going to clean up the mess that I just made with that word vomit and say I'm going to say this Don't let social media dictate your life. Don't let the people that you see on social media, the accomplishments that you see on social media, the trips that people take on social media, don't let those things fool you into thinking that you have to do those same things. Find what makes you happy, do what makes you happy and stick with what makes you happy. If you are in something for fame, if you're in something for notoriety, if you're in something for money, I mean, eventually it'll fizzle out, because that passion is not going to come through the way that it would if you were doing something that you really truly loved. And there's a saying in my language that I really like and that basically means you know you keep at something, you keep at something long enough you're going to reap what you sow, and so I think that's really important when we talk about balancing everything.

Speaker 1: 15:20

So, going back to the overall topic of this video balancing everything that you have going on you have to just stay consistent, keep going, do your best, prioritize. Sometimes certain projects are going to be more important than others, so you just really have to always be thinking about what do I need to be putting my energy into today, this week, this month, this year? Think about life from that perspective. Try to progress based on your parameters and not what the world is setting out for you. So measure success based on where you were last year and where you are this year, versus where somebody else was last year and where they are today. You guys are on two different journeys. You're doing two different things. You're living two different lives. So it's okay to not have exactly what other people have, because the same way you're sitting there looking at someone and wondering why don't I have what they have, or I wish I could be doing what they're doing, somebody is looking at you wishing that they had your life. It's just a cycle and in order to balance it, that's just what you have to do is keep a level head, be realistic, be passionate and just stick with what you want to do.

Speaker 1: 16:29

I did say I was going to give some tactical tips on how I manage my day to day. The tactical tips that I want to give. The first one is I mentioned it in the previous episode it is a luxury, it is a privilege to be able to do it, but I do outsource sometimes the cleaning of my house. I have someone that comes about monthly to clean, like doing the deep clean, because day to day I can get to a lot of things, but there's just like that two hour cleaning session or that three hour cleaning session that I'm not going to be able to have with the baby. Like I mentioned, she's attached to my hip, like she literally is attached to my hip and the only reason I'm able to sit here right now and record is because she's sleeping. So I do have that cleaning lady.

Speaker 1: 17:11

Come identify those aspects of your life, if you can, where you can outsource. Those are things that you can do to really alleviate stress in some aspects and free up some time for you to focus on other things. So that is something that I do and it has helped me tremendously to not have to do it myself. So another thing that I do is I really encourage daddy in me time whenever my husband is off work whether he's getting off work that day or it is off day I really just try to take a step back and let them have their time without me trying to interject as much, and this is not only good for them to bond and have their fun, but also for me to free up some mental space and some time to do other things as well. So it's really important from a tactical perspective, whether it's you going out of the house physically and leaving them by themselves, or you going into a different room or just not budding in the way that we moms tend to do all the time.

Speaker 1: 18:05

This next one is so helpful when I'm home alone with her and that's the boto. So boto, boto, that's it, or did I say that word? So, like boto, no boto, I put her on my back. So basically, this just frees up my hands. It allows me to do what I need to do. In those moments that she's being really, really fussy and non cooperative. I just throw her on my back and she's usually out within 10 minutes, and that really helps me to get things done without having her just like grabbing at my feet all the time. And the last thing is mandatory mommy me time, mommy alone time, whatever you want to call it.

Speaker 1: 18:46

Sometimes I'll go and get my nails done. Sometimes I will, like I said, just go into another room. Sometimes I'll take a nap and leave the baby with her father because I just need to step away, like I don't want at all for you guys to think you have to be perfect all the time. You have to get it done all the time. Sometimes your body just needs to rest. Take advantage of those moments, embrace those moments. Don't think that you're failing if you're taking a break from your own child. You're not. You know your body needs to rest. Sometimes you need that nap, sometimes you need that alone time, that hour, two, three, four, that you're just away from them and really to take care of yourself because, as they say, you cannot pour from an empty cup. That's what I had in terms of tactical tips. I'm sure there are more out there. If you are listening or watching and you have tips that you'd like to share with the community, I definitely encourage you to do that.

Speaker 1: 19:37

Drop in the comments and let me know what are some things that you do to balance your day-to-day activities, whether you have kids or not. How are you managing it all? How are you dealing with the stress of social media? For me, I think it just really comes down to not comparing so much, which is easier said than done, but you have to identify what are those triggers. If it's a certain page that's always making you feel like you're not accomplishing anything in life, maybe mute that.

Speaker 1: 20:04

There are some features in social media. I guess maybe that could be an additional tip. That's very tactical, something you could do right now. I love, love, love the mute feature on Instagram If there's a page that I find triggers me and it doesn't have to be in a hateful way, but it's like I don't want to have to get into that comparative space that I was just talking about. So if I don't want to do that and there's a specific page that makes me do that, I might mute or unfollow. I don't want to see anything that's going to cause me stress or cause me to have self-doubt or feel like I just have to get into this space of feeling like I'm not adequate. So utilize the mute feature.

Speaker 1: 20:46

Unfollow pages that are making you feel like you're, you know, not successful in life because you are, you matter, you're important. Don't let anybody take that away from you. It can definitely be the difference between having a good or a bad day. Imagine, you know, you just came off of a meeting with your manager and they praised you for a job well done and you're feeling like, oh okay, maybe I got this, maybe I got this. And you get on social media and you see somebody announcing that they got a promotion at work and all of a sudden, it starts to diminish what you have going on inside your own head, like that's not worth it. So definitely, protect your peace. Set those boundaries for yourself. Limit your social media consumption. You can still be on social media, but be more responsible about it, because, at the end of the day, it really is our responsibility to curate the lives that we want, and what we consume in this digital age is a huge part of that. So that was a lot.

Speaker 1: 21:41

Hopefully there were some coherent thoughts throughout this episode. I just really wanted to get on here and share my experience when it comes to balancing all these things, because I do get the question quite a bit and I never had the perfect answer. I still don't think this is the perfect answer, but it is a start to a conversation that I think is very important for us to be having. I hope that you will share your experiences with me. It's just as helpful for you to say, hey, I really enjoyed this podcast as for you to come on and say, hey, could you talk about this, or I didn't really like how you talked about that, so give me the feedback.

Speaker 1: 22:12

I really enjoy hearing from you guys, and that's another indicator that I have to latch onto is the private messages. So it may not be a comment that I'm getting publicly on a post that I make or a comment on YouTube, but when I get those messages in my DM saying, hey, this really helped me during my pregnancy, thank you so much, that is just as much, if not more, meaningful to me than these metrics that people are chasing after all the time that's not to say the metrics wouldn't be nice. I would love for this page to grow and be like a million followers one day or have a million downloads one day, but you know we'll get there and do time. But in the meantime, I want to say thank you for listening to this episode. Thank you for being part of this community and thank you for telling your friend about it. I really appreciate you guys, and I can't say that enough. So thank you, thank you, thank you. That being said, I will give you a round of review for the next episode.