Story by - Rameesha Siddiqui,21
Since the lockdown has started, everyone is spreading the quotes of 'stay positive' which is good of course but unless you practice it, it's worthless. The same happened to me. Initially, in this lockdown, I had nothing to do so I always end up scrolling my Instagram hopelessly every day and at some point, it started disturbing me. Almost everyone was posting stories of their quarantine diaries and here I had nothing to do, apart from liking their pictures. In all this chaos I had a thought that ' am I using Instagram or Instagram is using me? Because this so-called Instagram had developed greed in me for more approvals in form of more likes on my pictures and I just realized, in the end, it's just an application, which knowingly and unknowingly is controlling me. So I challenged my self called " change in 40 days" under which I totally cut down my Instagram for the first 20 days and decided to use Instagram for only once in the remaining 20 days. Initially, it was really tough for me to just cut off social media with the random thoughts disturbing me like " what if I lose my followers, what if my page goes down". But as per the challenge, I took hold of myself. In this first 20 days, I never thought that I will change my mindset up to another level. I realized that if I am losing my followers that means they never had been my real followers because the real one will never leave. I let my happiness depends on this virtual world but fail to realize that the real world is much more welcoming. By cutting off social media, I developed my hobbies like calligraphy, painting, cooking, writing, and especially writing my own poems and quotes, I also did some online courses and of course talking to parents is not less than therapy. The 2nd phase started and now losing the followers doesn't affect me anymore. Because now I am doing a thing for my own growth. And till the 2nd phase has arrived I figured out so many constructive things to do that now I barely use my social media. Here the message I want to give to everyone is that this worldly life is an ocean and your heart is a ship. Unless the ship is upon the ocean, you can cross the ocean successfully. But as soon as you let the water come into your ship it will only destroy you. Inhabit your life completely. Sink Fully into the wealth of your existence. The power to manifest is in the fearless owning of who you are so that you can shape where you're going.