Take Those Pictures From Your Phone And Put Them On Your Walls!

During a play date at our house some time ago, the mom of one of my son’s friends remarked that we have really good “picture game”.

What she meant, of course, was that we have a lot of good physical pictures of our family posted throughout the house.

At first, we thought the compliment was a little odd. Doesn’t everyone have family pictures all over their walls?

I guess not.

Our pictures span years and they chronicle every step of our life. We have baby pictures of my wife and me. We have pictures of our various vacations. We have pictures of us and just our dog, before the boys were born. And, of course, we have pictures of the whole family as it is now.

I remembered this interaction with my son’s friend’s mom because I was thinking about how we interact with pictures nowadays. It’s amazingly convenient to be able to snap a picture with your phone whenever you want and it has ensured that many more special moments get captured now than before when you had to have either a real camera or one of those weird, disposable, cardboard ones.

But while it was inconvenient to have to wait a few days to get your film developed, it meant you actually got photos to hold in your hand. Sure, many people just put them in the drawer or in albums (and then in the drawer) but occasionally those photos made it up onto the walls of your house!

The number of photos you had was fewer than today, but you got to see each of them more and remember them better.

With all the thousands of photos we take on our phones, how many of them are primarily intended for the walls? Hardly any, I would wager. But how many are earmarked for social media? Probably most of them!

And that’s where our relationship with photographs has gone wrong. I was looking through my own Instagram page the other day (@father.style, by the way!) and I was thinking that if someone were to look at my page, they would get a pretty accurate idea of how I like to dress and the things that are important to me, like my family.

The pictures show me in things like tweeds, flannels, leather jackets, and cool hats. I’m at the beach or out to a fancy dinner with my wife. I’m chopping wood and drinking a beer by a fire.

But where do all these pictures live? On the little machine in my pocket and on someone else’s website.

And who is seeing all these pictures? Mostly a bunch of people I don’t know.

Who is not seeing most of these super cool pictures of me?

My kids.

My kids are too young to be on the internet so they never see this carefully crafted online persona of mine. They see the actual me every day, sure, but the pictures of me they see are the ones we have put on the walls.

Other than what I show them in person, the pictures on the walls are what they’ll remember of how I looked at various times of my life.

A cool picture of yourself doesn’t benefit or impact your kids in any way if they never see it. And they’re not going to see it if it’s only on social media or saved in your phone’s photo library.

That’s why it’s important to get those pictures out of your phone and up onto the walls of your house!

Thankfully, my wife is quite good about doing that and our “good picture game” is all thanks to her. There are some times when we snap a shot of ourselves or the boys and we know that that’s one that needs to be up on the wall.

Like the one of my oldest son watching a July 4^th parade wearing a rakishly cocked Panama hat.

Or the one of my youngest son bursting out of the bottom of a playground slide with a huge, bright smile.

Then there’s the one I took of my wife relaxing at a little bistro table when we visited Paris before the boys were born.

And, of course, there’s the best picture of me ever taken.

A physical picture that is on your wall is far more valuable than a digital version sitting inside your phone. Because people can actually SEE the physical one without you having to specifically show them.

If you’re spending a ton of time managing how you look in pictures for social media, you need to redirect that energy. Pretend the walls of your house are your social media pages and curate an image of yourself that makes you look great and feel proud.

We all have a certain “online picture persona”. Some of us want to be known as “suit guy” or “fun loving guy” or “fitness guy” or “family man”. But the only people who really see that are a bunch of randos on the internet. The people who matter most (your kids) don’t ever see that side of you if you’re not putting some of those cool pics on the walls of your house.

The great thing about putting up pictures is that you can swap them out or move them around if you want. The image you’re trying to convey can be refined over time.

And don’t worry about putting them in the exactly right place. Just get them onto the walls in any which way, in any ‘ol spot! They don’t need to be completely in line with others. They don’t need to be the same shape or have the same color frame. It actually looks better if it’s a little disjointed because it will look like the picture collection was created over time instead of all at once. It’s the same as building a good wardrobe over time. You don’t do it all in one shot. It’s a process and the results change and evolve.

We need to get out of the habit of putting all our energy into our digital selves. Look, I get it. We all spend hours each day staring at our phones, so to US that digital version is the “real” version. But it’s not true. And the most important people…the ones for whom we strive to be better people… are not experiencing any of that.

You try your best to dress better, for example, so you snap a shot and post it on Instagram for some likes. Great… but did your kids see how you looked that day? Will they see that outfit every day for years like they would if that same picture was sitting on your mantel?

When your kids draw pictures of you, how do they depict you? If it’s in sweatpants while sitting on the couch playing video games then you need to put more work into your real-life persona compared to your online persona.

So, if your walls are looking a little bare, go through your phone and select half-a-dozen pictures that you feel represent you the best. Display them proudly. The funny thing is that seeing great pictures of yourself all the time will make you feel happier and more confident because you’ll be reshaping YOUR OWN mental image of you!