Especially, when the world is overrun by everyone telling us what we should do and how we should look. If we fall even slightly below the mark, we feel intense pressure to cover up and hide.
Embarrassed in our own skin.
It seems like it's nearly impossible to feel good about anything these days with smack-in-the-face comparisons coming at us in nearly every direction. The pressure to keep up with the constant trends of whatever the newest rave is, is just as much exhausting as it is expensive. The internet brought us so many ways to expand our horizons but it also came with a hefty price. While it may be easier to keep our family and friends in the loop with our busy lives, we're also being exposed to the flip side of that convenience. As we turn on our phones we're also being hit with a plethora of updates and posts not just from our friends and family, but also from all the social media and apps we subscribe to. So much of the daily life of others that only a couple of decades ago we would have had to read about in a magazine or see on TV. We now have nearly unlimited access to whatever personal information we desire from people we've never even met before like celebrities, big-time entrepreneurs, flashy Instagram accounts, and constant Twitter'ers. Is that a word? We are being bombarded by so much information that it can be hard to even put our phone down anymore and well... here's why it needs to stop.
Much of the information we are filtering through is actually coming at a higher cost than just our precious time, it's coming at the cost of our own self-worth.
Every time we scroll past a picture or post we're comparing ourselves and maybe not even consciously. We look at the way people live, how they look, the clothes they wear, the jobs they have, the social media influences they attract, who they like, what they like to do, where they live, what their lives look like, and what they eat. Then we compare all of that information to what we have, what we look like, what we wear, how our lives look, what job we have, our contentment with our job, what we eat, how much we work out, etc... you get the point. All those comparisons end up feeding this worthless monster inside of us. We either feel bad or we feel worse, sometimes we pretend to feel better depending on who we are comparing ourselves to but it still makes us feel bad (even if we don't want to admit it), and whether or not we feel we've ascended the so-called 'social ladder' depending on where we are at on the social ladder we still don't feel like enough.
Even if we've got the eyelash extensions, breast implants, butt implants, liposuction, botox, lip filler, colored contacts, hair dye, hair extensions, skin dye, make-up, tattoos, more makeup...and the list goes on and on... all this to 'look good' or 'be cool' or fill whatever deep hole inside of us that doesn't seem to ever be enough.
Then after all that we do to our body to make it 'look good' according to these social standards, we take pictures and apply filters. Seriously. Not only can we not take the credit for any of those 'likes', at least not genuinely, but now that empty void just seems to get deeper and more vast. Our self-worth becomes desperately dependent on all of the things we've bought into believing make us a better person or more attractive or whatever it is we were looking for. Unfortunately, the second we leave our house we are this vulnerable magnet to whatever attention we get. Chances are that we'll attract the exact thing we're trying to hide from. That's how energy works. So, how do we stop feeding this worthless monster inside of us? Well, to me it means that we have to stop playing the worthless monsters' game. This means:
- Not wearing eyelash extensions every single day and if needed saving them for 'special occasions' only.
- Not comparing ourselves or our lives to trendy IG peeps. (Besides those are just snippets of their life anyway!)
- Not using a filter when we take selfies, we're beautiful and real... the world needs more of that.
- Not assuming other people have it all and we don't (besides...it's not true, even wealthy people have problems (they're just more expensive) and just cuz they got money doesn't mean it's any easier)
- Paying attention to how much social media we are exposed to in one day (try limiting the amount of time spent on social media and work down from there...)
- Stepping back into our own life and stepping away from our phones. Social media and apps can be super time-consuming, what else can we do with our lives?
- Limiting our overall screen time (start by observing how much time is spent on the phone and do less each day.)
These are only a few of the things we can do to begin building our own self-worth. There are so many things we can do to take our power back and start filling the void with something worthwhile. Those worthwhile things take time, effort, and patience. Most of all the big feelings we've been running away from will start to surface and we're going to want to take that time to really focus on figuring out what those big feelings mean and where they came from. The notion of not subscribing to the mainstream media-influenced trends might seem daunting and maybe even scary but what would our lives be like without it? What if we didn't feed the worthless monster? Is it possible that we could actually begin to heal and fill the void within ourselves with something even more amazing than the surface feeling of a 'like' to our posts? What about the genuine feeling of being good enough in our own skin, without having to pretend we're something we're not? That's gotta be better than this constant struggle, right?
If you're interested in learning more about how you can work on getting out of the web (pun intended) you're stuck in and thriving more in your own life contact me directly via email and let me know where you're stuck and I'll let you know how I can help you personally grow your self-worth.
Thanks so much for reading and may you find your way back to your soul.
God Bless!
<3 Jem