Protecting Your Mental Health on the Booksta Journey

Welcome to the first episode of we need to talk about some really important shit and you need to stick around and hear it. I need you guys know I took a bit of a break to work on my mental health and it made me want to make this video to kind of make sure that you guys know how to take care of your mental health while you're growing your bookstagram because it's something I don't really see a lot of people talk about.

Also my name is Ruby, I run RubyCanRead, I'm an Australian bookstagramer and basically I grew pretty quickly and I wasn't expecting the impact that it was going to have on my mental health, so thank you for Violit Hour for giving me the opportunity to speak about this. I'm going to go through about five tips and you should really stick around until the last one because these are really going to help you.

The first step and probably the most important is being able to set boundaries with Bookstagram. This is something that I really really struggled with, it's something that I still am going to struggle with because I don't know when to get off and when to stay on but being able to make that distinction can be life-saving for your mental health, and if we aren't setting boundaries we are giving our brain a chance to lead to over consumption burning out and constant comparison. One of the ways that I'm learning to set boundaries with bookstagram is by basically setting out an allotted time that I'm going to be on bookstagram every day and setting an alarm for when I want to get off. Doing this allows me to actually, you know, do something wild like read my book.

Another boundary that's really important to have is know when you're burning out and actually take some time away from bookstagram. No one's going to die if you're not here for a little while. And it's so important for you to take care of your mental health rather than just doom scrolling every day, which is something that I've done and it's made it a lot worse. If you're feeling really overwhelmed, I would just walk away for a while. Your followers are still gonna be here when they get back, and honestly, they're gonna respect you more because you're taking that time to take care of your mental health. So take care of yourself or else.

My second tip is trying to not to be perfect. It's really really hard when there's so many beautiful curated accounts on bookstagram, but we need to learn that it's okay not to be perfect. Trying to be constantly perfect can lead to burning out so quickly and having aesthetic can be great if that's what you want to do with your bookstagram, but you can also not be you don't have to be perfect in every element of that as well. You can also be authentic and show up for yourself and people are still gonna like you, even maybe more because you're being authentic. Like, do you see the amount of shitposts that I make per day? Like, once I started showing up as being my authentic self and stopped trying to be perfect and stopped trying to make curated feeds that I didn't really like that much, actually, my relationship with Bookstagram improved a lot. And it's going to continue to improve once I continue finding out what's my authentic self and what's not.

So at the end of the day, just make whatever content you want to make. You're still going to get likes, you're still going to get followers. And if nothing works, don't worry, because we're all just specks of dust on a floating rock. Honestly, it's fine.

My third tip is to stop letting numbers dictate your worth, because this is something I struggle with a lot, and I'm sure a lot of people do too. At the end of the day, instead of focusing on followers, numbers, and that kind of stuff, which is really easy to do, don't get me wrong.

It's better to focus on why you started your bookstagram in the first place. I can guarantee that most of you, if not all of you, started this bookstagram because you love books and you want to connect with people. Yes, it's fun to set goals and reach those goals, but bookstagram is meant to be a hobby. It's not meant to be stressful. It's not meant to be a job. So at the end of the day, you just need to remember to have fun. Stop letting numbers dictate your worst. Stop letting your boundaries get broken and stop treating bookstagram like a job because it's not.

Thank you so much to Violit Hour for sponsoring this video. Honestly, I really appreciate them giving me the chance to speak about this. You should definitely check them out. They're an awesome website. They're trying to change the culture around romance books and they have so many other cool things happening on their website and coming up as well. So definitely check them out, give them a follow and have a good day or else.