Out of these two options, which one would you most likely post on social media?
- A selfie of you when you’re having a really bad day because your alarm didn’t go off so you didn’t have time to put on makeup and you have to go to school to take a test that you didn’t study for
- A selfie of you on a Saturday afternoon (with the Mayfair filter) when you’re all dolled up to go hang out with some friends in your favorite outfit
There’s no shame in your response, but I’m guessing you chose option 2. And so would I! Let’s be honest, all of us go through our phones and pick the best moments out of everything we do to show the rest of cyber space and delete the remainder of our messy lives in our mental trash bins for no one to see.
Now think about how many times you have looked at someone else’s social media and been jealous of their life. How everything seems to work out for them. How their clothes are cooler than yours. How they get to travel or seem to always run into really cool people. How many hearts or thumbs up they have.
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How many times have these thoughts made you feel like less of a person because you know the darkest parts of your life, deep down that no one can ever know because heaven forbid, if they saw your life unfiltered, you wouldn’t be accepted?
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These are the thoughts I sometimes catch myself thinking and maybe they sound familiar to you too because you know you’ve thought them once or twice yourself. But remember that people most often choose to only post the best, most glamorous parts of their life on social media; everything else gets filtered out so you and me only get to see the highlights.
Don’t believe the perception that social media tries to make you believe that everyone else’s life is perfect.
All we see are the good parts of people’s lives and jump to a conclusion that their life is perfect, but we forget that there is the whole rest of the pie that we are only seeing a slice of.
We compare someone’s best and brightest days with our dark and lowest moments. Then we decide that we don’t measure up because our life isn’t as “perfect” as theirs.
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Now I’m not saying that we should be negative on social media and start proclaiming to the world every time something goes wrong or we mess up, but I do think it’s important for us to realize that what you see on social media is merely a portion of life (most times the good stuff) that someone has chosen to post. You have NO IDEA what other things they go through, or what they are struggling with or what happens in the moments they choose not to post.
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Trust me, you are not the only one going through something hard. Actually, probably more people than you think are going through something really challenging the same second they are posting a smiling picture with a happy, inspirational quote.
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So don’t beat yourself up by feeling like your life won’t ever amount up to the picture perfect, “happily ever after” life that’s sometimes portrayed on Facebook and Instagram. No one’s does or ever will. Life is messy and life is hard. Life is also great and really exciting and likely, that’s the percentage of life you are going to find on social media.
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You’re life is awesome and you are right where you are supposed to be. Keep trying and keep failing. Love the life you have and the journey you are on. Celebrate the good and embrace the bad, using it to make you a better person.
Encourage others on their journey’s as well, because behind the filters that make you think they have it all together, you might find that they really don’t and sometimes what they need is someone like you, to show them you care.
Nicole xx #DoStuff #BeStuff
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