The other day I had my brother’s phone for a while and ended up scrolling his Instagram. His explore page looked nothing like mine. Completely different universe. Cars, football highlights, gym memes. Meanwhile, my own explore page feels like a mirror of whatever mood I’m in. If I linger a little longer on some sad video, next thing you know, the whole feed is drenched in melancholy. If I’m in a playful mood, it flips. And in that moment, I laughed at how much that resembles life itself.
Like, what exists and what doesn’t is really just about what we feed attention to. What we watch, what we believe, what we give time to, it becomes of us. It shapes reality, very quietly, very minutely, until you wake up one morning and realize your world looks totally different than it did a year ago.
I guess that's why motivational speakers deeply believe that you can change your life by practicing some little habits consistently.
That thought hasn’t left me since.
Because if the algorithm of social media can rewire itself so easily based on where I pause and where I scroll past, doesn’t it make sense that life does the same? That what you choose to stay with, what you let your mind chew on, grows louder and more present, until it feels like the only thing.
I've been thinking of changing my phone for over a year now. But that's not even today's story. Before the thought of that occured to me, I never took note of whatever device anyone was using. Suddenly, after contemplating changing mine, I started noticing what phone models people were using, and all of a sudden, what wasn't so obvious to me before (that I was using an outdated version of iPhone) became glaring.
There’s surely been a pull in me lately, toward something deeper. Toward listening more, noticing more, trusting myself more. But at the same time, I still feel a little lost. Like a child in a candy store who doesn’t even know what their favorite flavor is. There’s this subtle “you can have it all” voice constantly threatening the “just start from somewhere” voice. And it leaves me hovering in between, wanting everything, committing to nothing.
That’s the frustrating part of transformation no one talks about: it’s messy. You don’t just become a new person overnight. You wobble. You question. You say, “this is it” one morning and then “maybe not” by night. And I think I’m still in that wobbling stage, learning what I want to keep feeding and what I need to stop giving attention to.
But one thing is clear: perspective matters. The same glass of water, half full, half empty, or just there. I’ve lived too long calling it half empty. That mindset drains you without even realizing it. So now, slowly, I’m trying to shift. Not because life magically got better, but because I see now how much it matters to call it half full. To decide it’s enough. To say, “yes, this is real and this is mine,” even when the voice of doubt is louder.
Perhaps reality is less about what’s out there and more about what we choose to see. Perhaps the feed will always reshuffle, depending on where I rest my eyes, my energy, my belief. And maybe that’s the point, that I get to choose. Even when I feel lost. Even when I don’t know my favorite flavor.
I don’t have it all figured out, but maybe the point after all is that I don’t need to. I think it’s enough that I’ve noticed the shift. That way, I’m learning to pay attention. I’m starting, however slowly, to see the glass as half full. And I'm beyond grateful for this shift in perspective.
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All images are mine
