Imagine if the version of you that you posted online was the real you.
Be the Real you, and put #nofilter on your life
The no-make-up selfie doing the rounds on social media got me thinking… why do we always have to Instagram our lives to appear more exciting, and glamorous?
Photos on Facebook are usually a succession of snaps of people looking pouted and preened, when an hour before they were in their slippers watching Ant and Dec. Behind the adventurous travel shot is usually a life more ordinary.
I used to work in TV news, and the images selected were edited and chosen because they were more beautiful, more compelling and more interesting…
And that’s what we all do on Facebook. My life on Facebook has included glamorous holidays I used to take in Asia in gorgeous spas pre-little one. My on-assignment work trips to exciting news locations – Ukraine during the height of the conflict or Iraq.
And now it’s a succession of photos of me, my husband and little one looking happy and complete. There’s no waaawaaaa in these photos.
IS THIS REALLY YOU?
But sometimes we all feel pain, and need to cry – the times you don’t appear on Facebook. There’s another part of me that I don’t usually talk about: when I’m sad, and lonely, and fragile. Those moments of bleak darkness… a break up, a death, a marriage ending, loss of a job… days when the world seems to consume you. No matter how painful, and grief stricken you may be, those are perhaps the moments of our greatest personal growth, but we have to be prepared to feel the pain and live through it.
About 5 years ago, the doctor saw through my action-girl persona, and tried to prescribe me anti-depressants. I thought about it, but in the end I declined from taking them. I realised that if wanted to live through pain, I had to experience it, even at its most crushing.
HOW AWFUL MOMENTS CAN BE OUR MOST UPLIFTING
Positive Psychologist, Martin Seligman now advises the US Army how to recover from Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).
He equips soldiers to be more emotionally resilient, and says that PTSD is something that has been incorrectly labeled, so we accept the label, and shove a load of pills down our throats to numb the pain. But if we feel the pain, then we can experience rock-bottom and move forward.
POST TRAUMATIC GROWTH
Immense stress and trauma, should be known as Post-traumatic Growth. It’s a period of our lives that we can growth, and learn more about ourselves, and what we want.
The 13th century poet Rumi says: “Sorrow prepares you for joy. It violently sweeps everything out of your house, so that new joy can find space to enter.”
So before you try to disguise your pain with pills, or a packet of hobnobs, or a bottle of Prosecco, try to remember that from immense sadness can come moments of arse-crunchingly great joy.
Perhaps the no-make-up selfie with warts and all can pave the way for the #nofilter life – and celebrate the moments of darkness and light.
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