A new way of doing Instragram

Hello hello!

I’ve already talked in a number of previous posts about the pros and cons of social media in general, and Instagram in particular.

All that rambling eventually led me to run a test last year and deactivate my Instagram account, which was quite abandoned anyway since I moved houses and stopped posting yoga content.

Instead, I created a new one, which only focused on a little hobby of mine: flower photography.

Ever since I started walking more, I started noticing the beauty surrounding our streets, and taking pictures of these everyday little gifts. You can see a few examples of such beauties in the gallery at the end of this post.

Anyhow, the thing is that I decided to share these little gems under the mantra “Beauty is everywhere”.

Who I followed

This new page was not about following the coolest celebrity, or the happiest mum of three, or the sexiest model, or the most flexible yogi. It was about admiring the natural beauty of plants and flowers. That was it. Simple.

No competition, no comparison, no jumping from one page to another, no being sucked in for hours. Ironically enough, going back to square one and simply keeping my Instagram feed with content that enriched my life for the better, was a big win.

Did I fancy seeing some beautiful nature photography? I logged in. Did I have enough beauty for the day? I logged out.

Flowers and plants is what does the trick for me. But you can try anything that you like, is low-key and would have a positive influence in your day.

Who followed me

Another big difference when running this little experiment was that I kept myself anonymous and just focused on sharing what I really felt like. Instead of worrying about the “likes”.

The magic of keeping yourself a secret is that there is less pressure to be popular. You don’t officially exist and this account is only for pleasure, not for pumping your self-esteem via virtual (and mostly unknown) “friends”.

I didn’t have that many followers, neither I really cared. But it was nice to know that the few who chose to follow it, did so based on a similar philosophy: enjoying the everyday beauty above the “persona” behind the camera.

If you feel social media sometimes brings more negative than positive feelings and habits in your life (ie. time wasted looking at the life of people you don’t even know), I encourage you to run this little experiment too. Either deactivate your account temporary, or create a new simply focused on a life little pleasure of yours (let it be flowers, animals, architecture, gardening, stamps, food…).

Before I say goodbye for now, here is a summary of my social media posts to date: