Sometimes, I find myself oversharing — sharing more than what I need to share on social media, with a friend, or with someone else. And one of the ways I instantly know that I just overshared is how I feel afterwards. I feel jittery, anxious, and not good about myself.
In my head, I keep telling myself — “I shouldn’t have said that”, “I should have kept it part out and left it for later”, or “I announced this thing too soon”.
Have you ever found yourself in such a situation? How did you feel afterwards?
I soon realized that oversharing isn’t just what one of us experience, it is something most of us experience. I’m also of the opinion that with social media — it’s so easy to overshare. How’s this?
Sometimes we see the people we follow sharing this and that about themselves, their latest purchase, their latest quest, etc. that we feel pressured to follow suit. I think we feel pressured to follow suit because we don’t want to be seen as “left out” or that we want people to know that we are also experiencing such pleasures in our lives.
We also overshare because we want to make a point. We want people to know that we know something, we are doing something, or that a particular thing is happening in our lives just because. The question is — why do we always have to make a point? Is it needed?
According to the Oxford Dictionary, oversharing is simply means, “to give more information than people want to hear about your personal life.”
I believe that part of being wise is to know what to say, how to say it, and when to say it.
Another thing to think about when sharing a piece of information is your motive for sharing it. Do you have the right motives or the wrong motives? Sometimes you might even have the right motives and it might just not be the right time to share.
Here are 3 questions to help you stop oversharing:
1. Is it relevant: is what you are saying relevant to the people you are talking to? Do they need to know what you want to say?
2. Will it benefit them? Will what you want to share benefit your audience or you just want to share it for ‘sharing sake’?
3. Is now the right time? What you want to share might be of huge benefit but is now the right time to share it? Is it still premature and needs to mature?
Please note that not oversharing doesn’t mean pretending or lying. That’s not what we are saying here. Our focus here is on saying what we need to say within the right frame of what we need to say and at the right time.
Above all, let God guide you.