Once again I’ve thought over the last few weeks about how hard we can be on ourselves and how hard others can be on people.
Every day it seems that people judge others on their looks, personality, job, home, finances and on and on and on. Whatever happened to compassion for no reason. I remember my mother being ill when I was a child and the neighbour bringing around dinner for us kids. Or another member of the community being in hospital and the neighbours rallying around to make sure the kids were washed, dressed, fed and got to school and the house was always cleaned and tidied, just for the spirit of everyone. I miss that, but everyone is just too busy.
Likewise I know I’ve said this before but aren’t we hard on ourselves? We work so hard, long hours, to raise money to buy all the ‘stuff’ that we don’t particularly like, that we don’t particularly need, just to keep up appearances. I’ve seen children expecting brand name shoes, coats, bags and clothes, even pencil cases for school just to be in the ‘incrowd’. I recall going to school in hand-me-downs from my cousins and that was fine because everyone else was the same. Only the children who were the only child got new stuff and then they passed it down as they grew out of it. That was fine, we generally didn’t judge each other on our clothes, we judged each other, we were too busy playing. We did judge each other on how fast we could run though.
Ladies having to wear make-up that looks a certain way, their hair, clothes, shoes, bags, colour schemes, homes, cars and even jobs have to be of a standard that is sooo difficult to achieve we are all exhausted and self conscious.
Men also have to look a certain way, and currently male suicide is at an all time high. Male suicide hasn’t been this high since 1913 and that was at the end of the first world war. We put so much pressure on men to be strong, the providers, part of the crowd and it is unachievable and at the same time men are also expected to have the perfect body, hair, clothing and basically to do as they’re told. No wonder men are feeling the pressure today. This really worries me, I have a few younger men in my life, friends and family and I worry about them a lot, I hope they know (they should do because I message this to them) that I am always just a message away, a phone call away, my door is always open, the kettle is always on and I am just there if they me and I will always find a space if they need it (in my tiny home).
My view on all of this is, as it always has been. You don’t have to wear the same fashion as everyone else. You don’t have to look and live the same as the rest of your social group. How about standing out from the crowd? To be honest I’d say for the majority of my life I’ve rarely been part of that crowd, I’ve always had my own style, my own views and opinions, my own voice. Sometimes (fairly often) this makes me stand out and to me that’s fine. Often people don’t like or agree with me, that’s fine too. I generally don’t worry myself about whether people I don’t know (or like). We are very lucky to live in a free country and society and I feel that we should encourage ourselves to do what we want to. What others do is their choice. I think I’ve generally been considered to be a bit hippy-like because I don’t conform and that’s fine by me.
How many times have you walked through a city centre and judged someone by their hair or their clothes? I’m ashamed to say that I’ve done it a million times and this is my lesson to myself, to be more mindful of others and to stop those thoughts as they start and look back to the amount of times over the last couple of years, since I’ve been ill, or the days where I’ve been so busy and exhausted, or the times when my babies had just worn me down. Those were the days I didn’t bother looking in the mirror to see how bloody awful I looked, I didn’t want to see it and I didn’t care if others did see me. My conscious effort and mindfulness is to not be bothered about how others look, it’s not my business.
Likewise to not put so much pressure on myself. I’ve been tired the last few weeks, whether that’s the weather changing from snow to 19 degrees in the space of 2 days or my medication, who knows. But isn’t it easy to say ‘just keep going’ when all you want to do is snooze the afternoon. So that really is what I’m going to do and not complain to myself that I’m being lazy, self care isn’t lazy, it’s important to general wellbeing. It’s an saying that ‘you must have needed it’ and it’s true, your body heals when it’s sleeping, so I am happy to speed up my healing process and continue my afternoon snoozes.
The link I’ve attached to this week is a hypnotic recording for self critisism, it’s a great one for self calming and learning to really like yourself.
Have a great week 🙂
Recent Comments