B L O G  P O S T S

Of all the social media outlets, Instagram might be my favorite. I like documenting my day with a single photo, and I like seeing how others capture theirs. It's a virtual scrapbook where we can express ourselves visually or in writing, or both.

I'm not gonna pretend I don't edit my Instagram pictures. I do. We all probably do, and I don't think there's anything wrong with that. I don't think adjusting a picture so it's more clean, vibrant, or eye-catching is dishonest.

I decided to start the "Finding Your Spark" series to shine a light on different types of people who are following various paths – their OWN paths, whatever those may be. The whole idea is that there's no single way to live life and a person doesn't have to be "famous" to inspire others. These individuals have found what inspires them, motivates them, makes them happy. And they've run with it. Read all posts in this series here.

I've heard that the five people you spend the most time with influence you the most. I've seen it on Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest, worded different ways and attributed to a few different people, but the idea is always the same: We become similar to the people we spend a lot of time with. And it's true. We start to pick up some of their habits or quirks, use the same expressions, absorb their energies, whether we realize we're doing it or not. We can't help it. It's natural.

Because of this, it's important that we're careful about who we surround ourselves with. It's important that our friends are good, driven people with big hearts and a sense of humor, so we can be good, driven people with big hearts and a sense of humor.

We know this.

I think what we forget is that the people we follow on social media are "people we surround ourselves with" too.

Earlier this week, I read a post about the importance of complimenting ourselves.

We want other people to feel good. We highlight their achievements and express our admiration, but rarely do we give this sort of kindness to ourselves. We are much quicker to tear ourselves down rather than build ourselves up. (And we should be gentle, kind, and fair to ourselves, remember?)

In her post, Fern listed out a handful of things she likes about herself. It was heart-warming to read. Genuine love for oneself is precious. So today I'm going to follow her lead. It was awkward and honestly pretty difficult to focus on my good things, but I did it. I nailed down a solid five. And I encourage you to take some time to do the same.