You are good enough...

You see often I say ‘it begins with you’. You are the soul purpose of your own life. We learn to love and care for people and other things in life. We mould our lives around the things we learn and/or become involved with. This is your journey of becoming who you are and choosing what is good and bad for you along the way. You can build yourself to be the person you want to be however after a little while an obstacle will arise and you’ll have to choose how to react to it. You don’t react with a positive mind set every time and this is where the challenge of feeling good about yourself really comes in to play.

We unfortunately live in a very judgmental and comparative world now. Social media and ‘influencers’ have made it so difficult to really love ourselves, as we see others posting about how they are doing so well and how good they look etc. Compared to someone like myself who is just trying to survive and convince myself I’m doing well let alone show it to other people.

Social media progressed quite rapidly as I journeyed through my teenage years. The pressure to look as good as others and live a life as extravagant as what I see through my feeds everyday is a lot to take on and hard to shy away from. But I think the past couple of years as I grew in to my 20s it allowed me to have a clearer insight in to these issues. Especially as my anxiety and mental health became worse I saw myself the tricks I used to try and hide it from people and the things I did to try and feel better about myself. We’ve experienced people in the public eye unfortunately leaving this world due to not feeling good enough or struggling to keep up with the pressures of social media. Often these people have looked and have convinced their followers that they are happy living their best life. But it’s all a front…many people who suffer with their mental health know that you try hide it as much as you can because you don’t want the attention and/or don’t want to be a burden on others. You don’t want to maybe look weak or even face the fact that it is happening. The more you try convince other people that you’re happy and nothing is going on the more you start to believe it. I often try to do this which is unhealthy but I also see it as me trying to convince myself I can get through it at the same time. It’s about not letting it go too far and talking about it at some point through this journey so you’re not living a lie that you sink deeper into.

With regards to the social media aspect, there are many people who are jealous of others happiness and feel the need to be vocal about it to I guess make themselves feel better? “Why do they have all of these nice things and I don’t” “why do they look as good as that and I look like this”. It’s a constant set of judgment on yourself and others and these people will never change because they don’t believe the life they are living is good enough for them. Everyone is on their own journey, some like to share that time with others and others are a little more private about it. I can’t lie there are times I’ve bought myself something nice, gone on holiday or just felt good about myself and wanted to show people that by posting pictures about it. You don’t have to believe it but we want to let others see when we are doing well. We want those likes and we want to feel wanted. I’m not saying that’s a bad thing either! Feeling wanted is so important especially with how lonely the world can seem lately. But if you are going to post a picture of yourself for example when you’re feeling a little low and you maybe don’t get as many likes as you wanted or you don’t get the like from that one person you really wanted, please don’t overthink and make yourself worse. I have been a victim of this and have had to remind myself that I must have liked the picture myself enough to post it in the first place and I shouldn’t need a like for an approval of that. This is one of the ways I believe social media has brainwashed us in to thinking and you just have to be careful you don’t allow it to apply more pressure in your life.

I’ll look at it in a different way. Seeing people looking like they’re doing well or looking a certain way can be a good image to have on the right day. There are many times I scroll down and see all of these beautiful people getting on with succeeding in life and it motivates me. They have worked hard and just want to share that with others. I can do the exact same thing if I just put some work in myself. It does make me question everything about myself when I’m scrolling and seeing certain things but often I am happy for the people I see and I thank them for showing me how easy it is to make yourself feel good enough.

I used to hate the way I looked. As a kid I made very bad fashion choices and I’m sure I’m with a lot of people when I say I cringe every time I think about what on earth I was wearing or what on earth I allowed other people to witness me looking like. I blossomed a little late when it came to making a bit of effort for myself… but when I finally became a young adult and didn’t feel the pressure of people at school looking at me in every negative way, I then wanted to make more effort for myself. My freckles and my ginger curly hair were always big insecurities for me. I always used to hate my freckles as they’re all over my body and I just didn’t like them, I wanted perfect clear skin like a lot of other people. My ginger hair was the bain of my life as I didn’t like being different. There was a time when many hated ginger hair for god knows what reason and that was another thing for people to make me feel worse for. But I never changed my hair and I’m so glad I didn’t. I love my natural self as these features make me who I am. Why hide them when half the people now want my hair colour and even draw on freckles these days! Seeing so many people express themselves on the internet allowed me to feel good about what I had and that’s when I see the good side of the internet and how others can influence you to feel good about yourself.

For a long time I let past experiences justify why I wasn’t good enough. Why I was still single, why I don’t have nice things compared to others, why I don’t take many pictures of myself because I hate what I see. But looking back I was just holding on to past peoples opinions or actions that did not matter for my life now! I’m a hopeless romantic and my insecurities of allowing myself to be happy have allowed me to push a lot of potential relationships away. But it has also allowed me to choose the wrong people in the first place as I didn’t set myself a good enough standard. People like you or they don’t and that is their issue. Unless I’m a horrible person consistently making others around me miserable or I’m hurting others which, as far as I’m aware I’m not that person. Then I can assure myself I do not need to change for anyone and I must be doing something right. I don’t feel it everyday but lately reminding myself of how far I have come and how my mind set has changed does make me feel so much better. Its good for me to be confident in myself without being too egotistical about it because it shows the best side of me. This is what I want other people to see. Everyone around me can be happy, I can keep my relationships happy and focus on my life with a clearer head because I am good enough.

Look how far you have progressed in your life, how far have you journeyed and what have you done to change how you feel about yourself. You ARE good enough even if you don’t see it today. You make the changes you want to but you also need to see how good you are before you can allow others to see. Always remember it starts with you! But if you don’t see this for some reason then you’re allowed a gentle reminder from a friend or someone who knows you’re just having a down day!

Work on those better tomorrows

Jade x