The insta gratitude mindset (PDF)

SARAH ROOCROFT

a
t
s
n
the i
e
d
u
t
i
t
a
r
g
t
e
s
d
min
a micro eBook on using social media
to cultivate gratitude and wonder in
your world

strike a pose

Imagine if social media could be used to
your advantage to rewire your mindset and
cultivate wonder and gratitude in your life.

Recent studies and press give social media
'#lemme take a selfie' a really bad wrap.

I disagree... I think it all depends on how,
why and when you use it...

So how can you use it to cultivate gratitude
and wonder in your world?

Whether you have 1 follower or 1,000,000, I think this micro
book is for you.

Some of you have become super clever at using social
media to build a brand or an empire, some of you are using
it to tell a story, to capture happy moments and some of
you think it is all just a bit weird. We all use (or don't use)
social media for different reasons, but does it make you
happy? Could it potentially make you more grateful?

I was an early adopter of Myspace, Facebook, Instagram,
Twitter, Linkedin, Vine, YouTube, you name it, I was across it
- not for any other reason than it completely fascinated
me!
I don't have 1,000,000 followers, but I am probably the most
prolific social media user I know (even Kim and Kanye
would be like dude, slow down)...

You see, I don't post for likes, for followers, for anyone else
at all really. I have kept a journal since I was 8 and love
capturing moments of joy, pain, excitement,
embarrassment. In my early 20s I had become too busy as
a working girl in the corporate world to journal anymore
and I found myself suffering panic attacks. 
It occurred to me one day that I should start writing again,
funnily enough, that helped. You see, when you put
something on paper, it always gives it a new perspective.
Just like when you take a photo, or share a story.

#gratitude
#sharing
#yolo

I've observed young kids and how they use social media to
create a perfectly crafted persona, switching between the
platforms, documenting moments, choosing the perfect
picture to share to instagram, taking it down if there aren't
enough likes and frankly it makes me really sad for them.

What they seem to be missing is that they are the lucky
ones. They walk around with a camera in their pocket, an
instant time portal, a tool to document their lives and
create their reality.

When you study photography at school (well in my day
anyway LOL) you first learn how to use a pin hole camera,
like our ancestors, you go to the dark room and hope you
haven't over or under exposed the moment. You wait
patiently while the image develops. There is nothing quite
like that moment when an image starts to develop in the
solution and you realise you did it... you captured the
feeling, that very micro memory that you were hoping to.
Then you may graduate to a slightly fancier camera, maybe
even one with the type of film that you take to the shop to
get developed.

I remember taking in dozens of paper envelopes, saving my
babysitting money and getting thousands of pretty terrible
photos developed. I never saw it as a waste of money, as a
visual learner, I always felt some thrill at reliving the
moment, even if the image was blurred, upside down or
over exposed.

These days, not only do we get an instant image, we can
change it on the spot. We can edit, whiten, crop, enhance,
saturate, reframe and filter the crap out of every single
moment, scary? I think the opposite, I think it is truly
wondrous and I'd encourage you to experiment with this
mindset too.

In NLP and Hypnotherapy, we spend time uncovering
limiting beliefs in the mind, photographs of moments that
the brain has filtered, cropped, enhanced or edited in ways
that don't serve us. We then attempt to help recreate,
recut, whiten, saturate and reframe or filter in a way that
serves the person and their greater good. Imagine if you
were using technology to do this in real time?

There are 1440 minutes in a day, 86,400 seconds, that is a
hell of a lot of images for our brain right? While the human
doesn't see in frames per seconds.... it experiences
constant and real time movement, information travels
incredibly fast from the eye to the brain at a rate of about
.15 of a second, the point of this is, if you're capturing that
much information over 1 day, how do you pick out the
highlight reel? How do you prioritise the moments for your
brain to code with excitement when you go offline
(meditate or sleep).

Of the billions of images
your brain could have
captured today, which
were the best ones?

Let's just (for illustrative purposes) imagine that your eyes
are like a camera and they capture footage for your brain
to process, prioritise and store, code as memories,
experiences and information... your life story.

How do you determine the priority of the processing?
Which moments are you focussing on?

10 years ago, I adopted a gratitude mindset. Purposefully,
intentionally and in a disciplined and ritualistic way.
I started writing down what I was grateful for at the end of
the day. Naturally, to begin with, this can be a little weird,
but you get the hang of it pretty quickly and after a series
of posts, you start to find gratitude in even the smallest
things... like when there is enough toilet paper left in a
strangers bathroom, when you go to your undie drawer
and realise there is 1 pair of clean undies left, when you go
to the fridge and there is enough milk left. You get the
point, it doesn't have to be big stuff, in fact the little things
are the best ones to notice! These are true wonder
moments!!

Ok, so where does social media come into all of this?
Thanks to facebook memories and a very long scrollable
instagram feed, I am literally able to go back in time
through my life in a series of detailed and energy rich
posts that spark all kinds of wonder. So here I am going to
explain why, how and what you could do to maximise your
wonder...

Let me take a
selfie.