Good Vibes Only - Why staying positive online can be so damn hard!

Positivi-Tea!

For me mentally it comes from a place of lack, I focus all my attention on what I don't have, what I have yet to achieve and where/how many times I've messed up. We welcome Auntie 'Comparison-is thief-of-joy' with big open arms to help us tally it all up and it equals a big fat fail. Meanwhile, in the back of our minds we are well aware that it's not an accurate score of our real lives, so whyyy do we do it?

First things first, we're not crazy y'all, there's a name for this *laughs hysterically* - It's been identified as the social media comparison trap. We're grown, we know the lines about social media, with all its pretty pictures are highlights and blahhhdy, blah blah, and yet here we are. Trapped. Perhaps you've moved to a new home and fixed it up to a standard that's comfortable for you, you finish and take a step back. You could think to yourself "Wow a few months ago I was dreaming of a new place to live, now here I am this is amazing!" Instead, of following this our good friend sense, you finish all of your hard work, take a step back, pull out your favourite tool of comparison (looking at you Instagram and Pinterest...) and say "Look at this rubbish, I've worked so hard and it's not good enough! Look at X,Y, Z their's is so much better than mine. Mine will never be good enough!"

I did this for a very long time, and to be perfectly honest it's something I have to mentally fight all the time to stay away from. It's why I've been so inconsistent with my YouTube channel in the past, it's why I shut up shop with Bowë back in 2014 even through things had been going well. I took my eyes off my own lane, went to shine my eye on everyone else's and decided mine was below par. Closed the online store, stopped selling at markets and pop up shops. Just stopped everything. Seriously, like seriously!

There's absolutely nothing wrong with swooning over aspirational content on any platform, aspiration is a big part of what pushes us forward. Gives us the nudge to keep going, keep trying and give life our best. The problem comes in when that energy moves from positive encouragement to negative comparison. And the switch can happen almost seamlessly, especially now where we're consuming more content than ever with #StayAtHome. We can spend hours on end mindlessly scrolling through content that has been curated and edited to perfection, when we look away from the screen real life doesn't have the pretty preset and featured music for every moment. 

I have to make a conscious effort to stay on the side of positive encouragement, some days are harder than others, but these days it's a battle that I'm on the winning side of *fist pump* - A big realisation for me is that having big, lofty goals and leaving it as that is a big no-no. It's like having a glorious vision board on your wall and doing nothing with it. Imagine looking at that board day after day, yet taking no action towards making those visions a reality. It's like a neon sign screaming at you "This is what you don't have bih!" I look at the big goals and then work backwards, break them down into smaller and smaller chunks, all the way down to little monthly, weekly or even daily activities I can complete. This way, at the end of each period I can look back and see, I started at A year ago and now I'm at G or D or even A.5, progress is progress.

It means that when you look at your big dream, you can see how you're moving towards it, rather than knocking yourself down and thinking you'll never get there. You know what else is great about making an action plan for achieving your goals? You'll be too damn busy to have time to belittle yourself in comparison to someone else. You'll be so proud of what you've been able to achieve, you'll see others that are where you want to be or also on their journey and think "I'm right there with you!" 

Take it from me, being on the side of negative comparison taints everything, even the goal itself. When you find yourself slipping, stop scrolling. Walk away for a while. Like most things in this life, staying positive is all in the mind, it's a choice in perspective. It doesn't mean it's always easy mind you, but absolutely possible!

Rose 

xoxo