Phyllis Diller, the famous American stand-up comedian, had a
powerful practice I’ve used successfully for many years. Her advice? “My recipe
for dealing with anger and frustration: set the kitchen timer for twenty
minutes, cry, rant, and rave, and at the sound of the bell, simmer down and go
about business as usual.”
It’s wonderful and effective. Try it sometime. Meanwhile, it
recently occurred to me that her recipe could easily be adapted to other
situations in our contemporary lives where we get off track from our original
pursuit of success, joy, enlightenment—or whatever we’ve been exploring.
For example, social media. A blessing and a curse. A
blessing in that it allows us to benefit from information we’d otherwise miss
out on. A curse in that some of it is legit, some of it is not, and, most
importantly, it’s an easy rabbit-hole to go charging down at the expense of
what we are supposed to be doing, like living our own lives.
What if you set a social media timer (mental or actual) for
10 minutes? Allow yourself 10 minutes of fun playing with social media, then
stop. Yes, click off the site you were busily investigating, and get back on
track with what you were doing beforehand. Why 10 minutes? That’s about enough
time to peruse something interesting without getting so involved it would take
a direct bolt from on High for you to pry yourself away. Twenty minutes is
great for anger release, but a bit much for social media release.
Disciplining yourself in such a manner allows you the benefit
of social media, the “blessing,” as it were, without getting caught in the
“curse” of it. And that, indeed, is fun!
