 I recently watched this incredible video and news article on what kids wish they could be when they grew up in the 1950s and 1970s, and now what kids wish they could be when they grow up. And it actually made me really sad. Now check this out. In one of the studies researchers did, here were the top 10 of what kids wanted to be when they grew up. Number one was YouTuber with 34%. Number two was a blogger or vlogger, 18%. Number three was a musician at 16%. And then actor, then filmmaker. And then only after that were there the traditional roles that we'd seen for 50 or 100 years that meant financial security, different kinds of prestige, helping people, and so on. But here's the problem. If these are your values, you are almost guaranteed setting yourself up for a life of crippling anxiety and depression, which is really what we're seeing now. Now in this video, I want to share a few stories about how social media and just the internet stuff has destroyed a lot of my mental health and what to do about it. What's up guys? Alex Hein, author of the book Master of the Day. Now one of the companies I've partnered with to help get over this kind of crippling anxiety and depression that can come from this is BetterHelp. BetterHelp, one of the cool things is that there's different therapists specializing in different things ranging from relationship counseling to LGBT, to anxiety, to depression. Now since I've partnered with BetterHelp, there are a few things that are really important. So it's not a crisis line. Like if you have something that's an acute mental health emergency, go contact one of those resources. And there's a lot of different ways to reach out to a counselor, your computer, your tablet, your mobile phone, which is really anywhere in the world that you need it, which is really cool. And all these professionals are licensed. So they're certified by their state's board. These are truly professionals legally allowed to provide therapy and counseling. So if that resonates with you guys, you can click the first link in the description, betterhelp.com forward slash monk. So the first trap I got myself into is that with social media, and if you're a content creator, especially, we train ourselves to create content that is popular over what is the truth. And this is really a bargain with the devil. If you go all in on only uploading what is popular, you have already lost your soul in a sense. Like if I'm creating any content on the internet, there's two things that have to happen. This is my livelihood. Like this is how I feed myself every day. This is how I'm paying off my student loans. This is how I'm eventually going to support a family and help my parents out. If I have a choice to upload a piece of content, one piece of content that's more popular is going to pay me more, whether that's in sales of my own products, views, advertising, then a piece of content that I think is raw truth that will impact more people, but only gets 3000 views versus 20,000. And so the devil's bargain is do you choose to go with the truth, upload the content that you think is the most impactful and truthful, or do you go with just what's doing popular? And I don't have an answer for that. The trap is number one, if you're consuming a certain kind of content that repeats a message, if you're consuming the Kardashians, and the Kardashians are either consciously or subconsciously communicating, these should be your values, that begins to infiltrate for lack of a better word, or maybe that's the most accurate word, that affects your values. And just like for me on the content creating side, I have to always check myself to make sure I'm not choosing what is the most popular piece of content, because that is not the primary goal. The second anxiety trap that I see is that we train ourselves train ourselves to value and get self esteem from strangers on the internet. Now this is really funny to me, because one day I when I started Instagram, I think I started it six months or a year ago. And one girl commented on a post and said something about my physical looks that she liked and blah, blah, blah, blah. And I didn't respond, because I don't like to respond to comments like that. And she was apparently so offended that she sent me this long drawn out Instagram message describing, you know, you should be more respectful as people way more famous than you that take the decency to respond and have the decency in time. And I was like, this woman's life must be a complete nightmare. If I a complete stranger that I don't know her, I don't care about her no offense, I'm not obligated to take care of her feelings. That she got so offended that I didn't respond. She put herself that much in a state of anxiety and depression. That's a very difficult life to live. That's a very difficult life because I'm not real. Like I'm real in the world, but on social media, I'm not real. I'm a hologram, you know, I'm virtual reality. To get offended by virtual reality is a sickness that we're all being part of. But the trap isn't thinking that positive feedback is great, and negative feedback is bad. It's all virtual reality. None of it is real. And to get any self esteem, whether positive, all these people saying you're so beautiful, you're so smart, this is amazing. That is just as toxic as the detractors that say, Oh, like you're, you're so fat, like you're so full of yourself. This is so stupid, I totally disagree. Getting the self esteem from this is really the biggest problem or getting hurt by it. Now the third anxiety trap, what I think is actually the bigger one is that with social media with content, this kind of era of human history, we get caught up more in consumption than in producing in our own lives. You know, when I started my business, I was reading all these case studies online because I wanted to quit my job about like, Cindy Lou who made $100,000 in the first six months of her business. And I was like, really, I could quit my job and make that much money in six months, never happened. And then all this time, though, like, I'm plugging away my business, I'm working my ass off, I'm working smart, working hard, reading every book, hiring every coach, action taking, and it wasn't happening. Like it just wasn't happening at all. And so there I am, like, what's wrong with me that she did this. And I'm not even getting the results I want working more working smarter. And I just came away from these articles, feeling like there was something deeply wrong with me, because I didn't get that result, even though I seem to be doing the same things. And the only thing that really mattered, though, that I should have focused on was creating my business. And to me, the whole thing is, the more time you spend viewing other content takes away from the time you could be producing content, or producing habits, goals, time for your you creating your exceptional life, and not watching somebody else and living vicariously through them. And so I think some of the deep soul level anxiety and depression do come from the fact that we're so concerned with other people's lives, 24 hours a day, that we don't even spend the time to improve our own and go after our own passions, goals, and dreams. So this is kind of like a rant slash soul talk that I think really had to happen. And again, one of the reasons why I did partner with better help, if you guys want, you can check out that first link in the description for the discount code there. Again, this is something that's pretty awesome in this era where you could just text somebody for the help, you don't feel well, or something's up. So check them out there in the description. And again, my last video is right there and right there.