It's really easy to get caught up in what we see online. Every day, established social media figures are posting content telling us how to think, what to do and how to do it. Don't get me wrong, I am a huge fan of a lot of them, but sometimes it can make you feel as if you are never doing enough.
All of these mantras about working when everyone else is sleeping and how you have to demand more of yourself and be better than everyone else can really have a damaging effect if you don't know how to interpret and filter this type of content. This is especially difficult if you really look up to the people who are saying these things.
Since leaving school, I embraced all of this type of content immediately. I knew I didn't have the work ethic, the practical skills or knowledge to do what I wanted to do. I began seeking out content to motivate and brainwash myself into being a different type of person; the type of person that all of these figures talk about:
Someone who lives and breaths their work and has no time to sleep because they are so committed.
I replaced the music in my ears with inspirational and motivational speeches. Unfollowed FuckJerry and TheFatJewish on Instagram and started following people I looked up to. Slowly, I began to feel a slight feeling of inadequacy in the background of my days. As time went on, this slight feeling turned into a general and constant buzz of.... I guess you could say... Not being good enough.
Although I had made goals and was working toward them, I wasn't living and breathing my goals like I had been told to do. Hell, I was even sleeping so well that I woke up feeling refreshed and ready for the day. How dare I...right?!
This feeling of not being good enough lingered for years.
Was what all of theses successful 'gurus' were posting online all bullshit?
No. In fact, nothing was wrong at all with what was being posted online. The speeches I listened to were intense and exaggerated, and there was nothing wrong with them either.
The problem isn't what these people are putting out there. The problem was how I was receiving and interpretting this content in my own mind.
I was taking everything I was listening, watching, and reading, at face value. I didn't have the life experience or mental experience to know that I should be putting this type of content (and everything else for that matter) through my own filter. I thought that everything that was being said was fact.... and I became consumed by it.
The turning point came when I had grown enough to realise that all of this information is great, but it can be harmful if you do not develop your own opinions and personal judgement. If you just take on board what everyone said as truth, then it will actually have a negative effect on your life. Even if what you are being told IS the truth, by not stopping to think about it first before believing it you are depriving yourself of developing a crucial and very important life skill.
You must learn to develop your own personal judgement. This is an extremely important skill to have.
When I realised this, I was FREE from the constant feeling of not being good enough. I decided that maybe I agree with some things that were said and perhaps I disagreed with other things. Just because a successful person said something or thinks a certain way, does not mean it must be correct or that I have to conform to it.
If you do not develop your own personal judgement on things then you will be a follower for life. There is no right or wrong and it is OKAY that you might disagree with certain things because at the end of the day they are completely different people who have had completely different life experiences. What worked for them might not exactly work for you.
I still look up to all of these people and follow their content, but I now form my own opinion rather than immediately agreeing and taking what they say as law and I encourage you to do the same.
Thank you for reading!
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