THE PRESSURES ON YOU
Life is hectic. There are always so many moving parts and spinning plates that it can be tough to identify what your priorities are. The expectations to getting it all right, maintaining a prosperous career, family & social life, staying fit, eating healthy, looking good - it might all matter to you. And you should absolutely set yourself high standards. However, this is the part where we tell you to GO EASY.
Getting caught up in societal expectations can sometimes cloud your true judgement of what is important. Life may be going swimmingly but as humans, we experience certain amounts of neuroticism. Negative emotions filter their way through and we become infiltrated with doubt and insecurity; this is contagious and with the prevalence of social media, we can bury ourselves deeper down the envious rabbit hole.
So let’s point out some of the societal pressures that have a big influence on you:
1 Body image
The perfect body image DOES NOT EXIST and I’ll explain why - fashions and trends are constantly shifting; from curvy, to size 0, to being lean and muscular. The media perpetuates body image issues by using glamourized images and editing software that falsely represents both men and females. With a constant moving target of what looks best and mass media displaying picture-perfect people all hours of the day, we as humans are bound to compare ourselves.
What is there to aim for if not the pictures in the magazines? The best way to navigate your body perception in such a superficial world, is to work out how your body image effects you and impacts your way of living. Your health is what matters and you should take care of your body to sustain a long, mobile and injury-free life. We can improve our confidence in feeling good about ourselves, and your body image can influence our level of self-love. Many of us can hold our hands up and would love to say, we want to look good naked - but to look good we must feel good.
We are obsessed with numbers and fixate on targets that have no other context than being recommended - ‘how much should I weigh?, what’s the perfect body fat percentage? how many calories should I consume?’. The health organisation are there to give guidance but again, out of context there are so many variables from person to person where numbers can be only be referenced, rather than gold stated fact. There are better ways to measure progress when it comes to weight loss or fitness levels than just one metric. The scales lack detail so if you are going to use them to track, you might want to use tape measurements or something tangible to to record progress. Overall weight may stay the same but your body composition could be very different.
Last but not least, remember what was discussed earlier, we are expected to look a certain way, weigh a certain weight, and behave a certain way - all based on what is shaped by society. Those expectations can promote a fair amount of pressure on a person, and trying to live up to each one is only going to end in dissatisfaction causing negative emotional & behavioural consequences. So being comfortable with who you are and wanting to be the best version of yourself for no one else but you, for no other reason than it is what you want.
2 Social status
Ever heard of ‘do it for the ‘gram?’ - this slogan was influenced by people taking pictures that are beyond their normal circumstances but want the world to see and believe they’ve experienced it. It happens so often now that it’s just become bragging rights. People stop living moments and make sure the moments captured on tech to tell their followers that they had THE BEST TIME. This is not to say don’t capture memories, just remember to live them.
Social media is the host of personal profiling. People are quick to upload their best images and just as quick to discard the evidence of anything that represents otherwise. Comparing yourself based on others’ profiles, especially portrayed through social media is reinforcing negative self-worth to something that is highly likely to be false. No one has the perfect setup. Remember what you see is just a fraction of them that could well be sensationalised, so waste no energy on envy - concentrate on you.
3 Emotion make-up
Happy on the outside, miserable on the in. Poor mental health, including depression and anxiety, is exacerbated by our temptations to hide our feelings. We only show the emotions that we think people want to see. According to the experts, we have six distinct different emotions that veer off to hundreds of thousands. Learn to listen to yourself to better understand, what it is you want and remove the pressure of pretending. - that way, you’ll resist getting led by emotional/unwanted decisions and quickly learn that instinctive choices have better outcomes.
Meditation or some form of self-reflection is one of the best strategies to become more self-aware. Being able to recognise emotions and more importantly how to action them - is far better than relying on impulse and saying/doing something that you regret. Time away from social media and screens can also be beneficial to this process, removing the temptation to scroll and compare and focus more time on what you really value.
Enjoy your bodies, embrace the good, shut out the pretend and lift the weight from your shoulders.
