CHARLOTTE – This is part of an ongoing series.

Set an intention. 

Expectations and intentions are important. So often our expectations determine how we feel about things and our intentions determine our expectations.

If you expect your social media feed to be positive and it’s not, you’re likely going to be more depressed by it than if you had expected it to not be positive.

Set intentions for social media so you’re expectations are less likely to set you up for disappointment and anger.

Define what it is you want social media to do for you. It’s ok if there are multiple answers, for example, you might want social media to keep you connected to friends and family, keep up with the news, and also learn new recipes and crafts.

For each separate purpose, you want social media to fulfill for you, chose a platform. It’s easier if each platform has one purpose only or at least related purposes. Facebook is great to stay connected with people, Instagram is a great place to be inspired, while Pinterest is a great platform to find new recipes and crafts on.

The purpose can be broad like for connection or news, or very specific like hiking. There’s no wrong way to define what you want from your social media feeds to create intentions. The only danger is in not creating those intentions.

Once you have intentions in place, it’s time to create boundaries to protect them, I’ll be talking about how to do that next week.