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Better than I was perhaps 🙂 Hardly expert
Quite a noticeable difference! Whatever drugs you're on, they're working 😉
... kind of...?
We're initially influenced a lot by our family and environment growing up, so we can pick up unhelpful behaviour patterns.
Later on in life with more knowledge and perspective, different circumstances, better role models, we can to an extent change how we react.
For me it took a lot of reading up on the details (+1 for the Steve Peters book). Then boiling what I'd learned down to a few simple things.
Get enough sleep.
Stop and think first.
Don't be a dick about it.
If you can't say anything nice don't say anything at all.
The best way to influence is to set a good example (and even then it makes bugger-all difference)
Life is too short.
Etc
Seems you have 2 areas you'd like to see change, the food/winter thing and the online/interpersonal thing.
Both - assuming you've gone beyond "I shouldn't..." and arrived at, "This stops. Now." are stuff that can be changed and I've done changes in both areas.
It perhaps helps with both that I've lost people I love to "poor life choices". The least I can do in their memory is make *different* mistakes. And knowing that any of might not be here next year, I manage to cut folk more slack.
It can help (I still do this sometimes) to have venting outlets. A diary, private posts on some blogging platform, someone very close and down to earth and non-judgy that you can go, "Can I have a ten minute whinge about X who is being batshit again?".
Also a +1 for realising that media/internet consumption is 99.9% optional. You DON'T have to watch tv/read papers/listen to the radio/read FB if it doesn't improve your life. Your blood pressure is precious so think about "I'm not doing this right now" at the very least. Can really recommend - you end up paying so much more attention to the life you're ACTUALLY living.
TL;DR
Yes: get more sleep, read some books, treat people as if they've got terminal cancer & only 3 years to live.
Honestly it sounds like you need to step away from social media rather than change your personality.
I think this might be the answer but I as a self-confessed social media addict (forums, FB, IG) I'd find it extremely difficult.
That said, maybe changing your habits might help or taking it in small steps. I was the admin on a vehicle specific facebook group with ~80k members and I was finding that I just thought that 99% of the people on there were utter tossers. Could honestly do without it so said thanks but no thanks, gave up the admin thing and since I was getting very little from the group itself, left that too. Honestly feels so much better.
I deactivated facebook a couple of weeks before lockdown for two reasons. The first was I was checking it all the time and felt I was becoming quite bitchy talking about what people had posted etc. The second was I could see how it was going to go with COVID 19 , some of my mates were getting quite vocal about what we should and couldn't do . With the news being 24/7 about the virus I knew it wouldnt be good for my mental health. I have actually had a couple of disagreements with mates over the phone since.
Id happily delete FB if it wasn't for using messenger , marketplace and losing lots of good family pics from them growing up and holidays etc. I'd start by ditching social media and take it from there. That said I still use Insta but its only really for following friends and seeing where their riding. Good luck.
To add to the above about FB, if you can't leave it (checking on family etc), if you find particular people just post stuff that winds you up all the time, unfollow them. Stay friends but their verbal diarrhea doesn't fill your timeline, you can't see it and as such you don't find yourself replying to it / going down the rabbit hole.
80% of my family are unfollowed on facebook for that very reason 🙂
I'd love to be alot more outgoing. Never been much of a talker as I have aspergers and although I am more confident now I am older I chat alot less to new people than I used to.i cannot think what to say and think better of talking.
I’ve never gotten into any negative stuff on FB but I got rid of it a year ago just because there is very little of any merit on there.
Trumpton, you describe me before I went traveling round Oz for a year.
I mostly did it on my own, one mate was moving about the same pace as me. It put me in the situation where if I didn’t talk to people,people wouldn’t talk to me.
Perhaps now is the wrong time for moving to Oz but you can chose to change if you want to. Start small, work your way to different situations that are closer to were you want to be.
Thanks
I’m genuinely surprised at how many folk can’t “manage” Facebook. Maybe I’m just lucky but I don’t see all this ****tery. Could be my choice of friends and groups of course. The worst I see is in some of the local/community groups and from folk I don’t know in real life so I pay them no more attention than random drunks in a pub.
This
I see almost no ****tery unless I seek it out. Be ruthless. Unfollow or unfriend folk who irritate you. Leave groups full of ****s
Another thing - some folk don't realise that FB will prioritise feeding them stuff they interact with. Don't get dragged into commenting on clickbait - you just get more of it. I see some of my friends doing this, not realising the effect.
Unless you are young and still growing up, your personality doesn't fundamentally change. What you can change is the situation you are in.
When I was in a miserably unhappy marriage I was irritable and argumentative, now that I'm in a marriage that works really well I'm a much nicer person to know and more relaxed, so much so that I’m now good friends with my ex, she’s a much nicer person to know too, because she’s no longer miserable.
I see almost no ****tery unless I seek it out. Be ruthless. Unfollow or unfriend folk who irritate you. Leave groups full of ****
I recently left an annoying local group (full of moaners) and joined a cat lovers group where it is all cute cat photos and positive comments. Makes a v relaxing 2 min break from work to scroll thru my fav cat breed photos rather than hear about how the bins haven;t been collected on the correct day 🙂
I follow "daily otter"
Each day I get a cute pic