The overwhelming generation of self-help

The overwhelming generation of self-help

If your Instagram is anything like mine, you will endlessly scroll through seeing post after post of top tips to overcome anxiety, 5 meditations to do every day before you go to sleep, books and podcasts on offer, suggestions along the lines of... if you do a headstand every morning at 4:30am when there’s a pink moon whilst balancing a crystal on your toe, you will reset your nervous system into thinking... well, probably nothing. But seriously, its bloody overwhelming and I am talking from experience.

As someone who suffers from anxiety, believe me, I have tried it all. Don’t get me wrong I have some tools in my toolkit (this is a phrase I have picked up from someone else I promise) that I use daily that do actually really help me. But why when you have done so much research and listened to so many podcasts can you still feel so shit? I believe no one can actually give you an answer and I am sure that’s not what you wanted to hear!

Of course you can do things that you enjoy, make yourself go on runs to clear your head and meditate, but how about just waking up every day and just being kind to yourself? I know for some people that can be easier said than done, but why in a world where there is so much pressure already, are we putting even more pressure on ourselves? We all do it every single day, judging ourselves on how we spoke in a team meeting or what we said when we bumped into an old school friend at the station, or after eating a doughnut sitting on Instagram all afternoon comparing our bodies to those of photoshoped women in bikinis – ever set one of those as your phone background?

I have and I wouldn’t  recommend it. Would you say half the things you say to yourself to a loved one? The answer is likely to be no. Or perhaps you self-sabotage in other ways.

I started this self help journey around 4 years ago when I learnt to meditate. After attending a class like this, your whole world starts to revolve around how to better yourself. I even recently bought a whiteboard from Wilkinson’s and drew a chart of all the things I had learnt you should do every day to live your best life. The list had around 6-7 things I had to do and I would then tick them off as I went through my day, I learned this from a book too. But guess what, by day 2 I found myself completely overwhelmed as I would constantly beat myself up for not being able to fit everything in! In the end I binned it and promised to just write smaller to do lists that were actually manageable. This allowed me to make slower but steady progress and still enabled me to take satisfaction from ticking things off.

I think you can become obsessed with what everyone around you is doing to a point where I often wonder if was I happier when I was slightly more naive to it all? The answer is probably yes.

Maybe we all need to stop putting so much pressure on ourselves and just live. The chances of us even being born are so slim and life is so precious, but half of us are completely fixated on the future we are forgetting to live in the here and now! Maybe I’ll try to practice this one thing, show up everyday and just do my best. That’s all I’ll ever be able to do.