#513: What Leaving Taught Me

The Mark Groves Podcast

Mark Groves

Society & Culture, Relationships

4.9 • 5K Ratings

🗓️ 25 May 2026

⏱️ 11 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In this episode, I share the story of quitting Instagram and what that period of separation taught me about endings, growth, and what it actually means to return to something. What started as a personal reckoning became a much bigger conversation about what these platforms are actually doing to us - how they're designed to hijack your nervous system through shock, rage, and dopamine hits, and why the anxiety so many of us feel might just be a normal response to a very abnormal relationship with technology. And at the root of all of it is one simple question: if you can't put your phone down, is your yes actually a choice? 00:00 - The Power of Choosing to End Something 01:10 - Learning from Mistakes and Moving Forward 02:50 - The Toxic Psychology of Social Media Platforms 04:11 - How Algorithms Exploit Human Attention 08:02 - Your Phone's Impact on the Nervous System 09:44 - Anxiety as a Response to Extractive Technology Resources: Need a digital detox? We've put together a free, science-backed protocol with everything you need to reclaim your focus, sleep, and attention — download it here. Get My Book! Liberated Love - Release Codependent Patterns and Create the Love You Desire: https://markgroves.com/book —Explore My Courses: https://markgroves.com/courses Follow me and my work here: —Subscribe to my YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/markgrovestv —Subscribe to my Substack: https://markgroves.substack.com —Instagram - @createthelove: https://www.instagram.com/createthelove —Facebook - @createthelove: https://www.facebook.com/createthelove Have A Question?—Have a Question For Mark That You’d Like To Hear Answered on the Podcast? Leave us a Voice Note Here: https://www.speakpipe.com/TheMarkGrovesPodcast Drop us a note at podcast@markgroves.com for sponsor product support, questions, comments, guest suggestions, or just to say hello! This episode is sponsored by: Cozy Earth: Use code CHANGE for 20% off sitewide at http://www.cozyearth.com Organifi - High Quality Superfood Supplements To Keep Working Toward Your Goals - Use code CREATETHELOVE for 20% off www.organifi.com/createthelove Instagram, Endings, Breakups, Boundaries, Anxiety, Dopamine, Algorithm, Healing, Growth, Mindfulness, Depression, Detox, Relationships, Consciousness, Nervous system, Discernment, Technology

Transcript

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0:00.0	When my wife and I were dating, we broke up and I thought it was over for good.
0:04.3	And nine months later, we got back together. When I was 19, I quit this job. I got a different one. I worked there for about a week and I realized I didn't want to work there. And I missed my old job. So I went back to my old boss and I said, I want my job back. She said, welcome back. And then when June of
0:21.1	24, I left Instagram
0:22.9	and I thought I'd be
0:24.4	gone for good. But while I was away, I learned so much. I realized that Instagram wasn't the
0:29.6	problem, although it does have problems. I was the problem. And I came back. And when all of those
0:35.9	things required was one, the decision to leave, the decision
0:39.5	to be done, the decision of an ending. And that without those endings, I wouldn't have realized
0:44.7	valuable information. And listen, whenever you let go of something or someone, not only do you
0:51.0	realize its potential value, but you can also recognize the weight you were carrying.
0:56.0	And that's why making a decision to close something doesn't mean you can't go back to something.
1:01.8	And really, you're never going backwards to get back together with it.
1:05.1	You're actually meeting it moving forwards as long as you're in that forward trajectory of growth and change and possibility. But it also
1:12.5	requires the humility to realize that you made a mistake, which isn't a mistake because you
1:20.5	wouldn't have realized it without the decision to go. Do you get it? And a lot of us think that we
1:26.2	made mistakes when things end. And that might be the
1:29.5	truth based on the lens of how we see what has happened in our life. But the reality is,
1:35.1	is that you're missing a great possibility of a future because you're holding yourself hostage
1:40.1	to doing the best you could at the time. It's like when we make decisions that are poor decisions,
1:46.1	those decisions are being done at a time
1:48.9	with a level of consciousness,
1:50.4	that now we have a different level of consciousness
	...

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