Let’s face it. There is a tonne of pressure on us these days to have our lives sorted, our careers CV perfect and our kids kitted out in the latest mini-me outfits, so there is a little surprise what when we think everyone is ahead of us, we start to doubt ourselves. Today, we are given comparison markers all the time thanks to social media and unless you go off-grid, it’s hard to stop that from happening. Natalie Trice, an award-winning PR coach and publicity guru explains why its time to get over the use of filters and just do you.
Samantha has the perfect hallway complete with Farrow and Ball painted walls and beautiful peonies in designer vases, while ours is strewn with trainers, cats and a Picasso reproduction thanks to a crayon wielding toddler, who is now a teen.
Claire always looks size six perfect with her silky hair free – from kinks – as well as matching red toe and fingernail polish – free from chips. Exercise seems to make Laura glow, her white gym gear is whiter than white, she almost there curves glide and her ponytail is as bouncy as her bottom is perky. In Jane’s garden, the furniture is splinter-free, the fizz is drunk in crystal glasses that match, and the grass is so, so green it hurts our eyes. And there we have it, the grass always looks greener on the other side, especially if we aren’t feeling tip-top ourselves.
What we will forget that this is what people want us to see. The best bits. The highlights.
In so many cases, life is being curated through a lens of perfection impossibly. The shadows are blurred, the pain is erased, we buy into the pretence and our hankering feeds the beast of comparisonitis and fuels feelings of not being good enough.
You might see an image that looks like it’s taken from Country Living, but you might not know that the only thing Elephant’s Breath in Samantha’s house right now, is her husband’s breath after another night on the beers with ‘the boys’.
If Claire can keep her hair looking shiny and her body sleek, she can hide the shame she of losing her job during COVID and not being able to find a new one as all hiring has been frozen. Laura is secretly binging on Ben and Jerry’s at midnight due to the stress of the pandemic and exercising the next day is her way of battling her fear and the extra calories.
Jane’s garden might look like it’s from the National Trust website, but it’s the one place that she feels free and safe from the nightmares of her ex-boyfriend that haunt her and stop her from sleeping. Yes, these examples seem like far-fetched stories, but they are the same stories we tell ourselves about other people’s realities that stop us from moving ahead on our path.
How about if we stop once in a while and look at what is really going on? We have all pushed aside the dirty plates and pans in the kitchen to take a fully filtered snap of flowers that were sent to us as a surprise.
That super cute photo of our kids looking at us adoringly cost us a fiver and was a battle we weren’t prepared to lose. Yes, we got that smoky look totally right in our new profile photo, but getting the mascara wand in our eye really hurt, but for 101 likes it was so worth it.
No one wants to show warts and all reality of life because it’s, well, a bit embarrassing, but no one is perfect all the time. Just like the cool girls at school, it’s a part of our story, detail of our reality and the more we embrace the crap as much as we push out the good, our feelings of being good enough can be realised and we can adore the wonderful, real, eclectic people we really are.
Look at who you are, how you feel and if you are being true and authentic, let the rest of the world carry on their own way.
