Live life at your own pace
DO you ever feel as if you’re the only one going through a rough time? Nothing is going the way you planned — the job you have isn’t what you thought it would be, the boy you’re interested in likes your friend and you can’t afford to dine at all the nice places your friends go to because you have to think about your bank balance.
The Instafamous girls you see online always seem to have it all boyfriends who make them seem like #relationship goals, enough free make-up to doll up an army, and invites to all the big events.
It’s tough, I know, when you compare what you have to what others show. Let’s face it, our “realities” now are the posed and perfected photos we see as grids on our phones, and as much as we don’t want it to rule or impact our lives, it does.
I used to think “I don’t care about what I see or what others do on Instagram, I am above that”, but I slowly find myself measuring my life to how others portray theirs on social media.
I sometimes struggle with separating social media from my real life — and I know I’m not the only one.
However, I am grateful that I have a support system that flips me into reality and reminds me that those things do not matter, and that our lives are meant to be lived and not put into pretty boxes for other people to constantly peek into.
If you don’t have a support system that helps you, I want to be your support system. I want you to know that everything does not have to be #goals. It should just be #life. With life comes patience, which I know a lot of us Gen Y struggle with. We like everything to be instant (imagine my wrath when a video takes more than 20 seconds to load. It’s inconceivable!)
BE PATIENT
Sometimes a bit of patience and trust can go a long way. I recently read a post by a friend. She broke down her life into pieces — she had a job in the fashion industry which she had wanted for so long but she realised it was not what she dreamt of and it was not paying her what she believed she deserved.
She was 25 and still not in a relationship which would lead her down the aisle.
She wasn’t happy with how her life had turned out. She thought she would have achieved more, seen more of the world and made her “18-year-old self proud of her 25-year-old self”.
I feel for her but all I can ask her (and maybe some of you) to do is to be patient. Live life at your own pace. Do not rush to keep up with anyone else’s standards or social media’s notion of a “happy life” - just live yours the best you can every day.
Being patient is hard. It can be painful and annoyingly boring but Insya-Allah (God willing), I personally believe that everything has been planned.
Our lives have been set on a course, a destiny of good, bad and everything in the middle, and getting upset about not having what you want right now will only make things unbearable for yourself.
It’s okay to be sad, mad or angry at whatever situation you’re in — but allow yourself five minutes of “whine time” and then move on. Accept it or do something about it and be patient.
You are NOT pathetic for being sad about where you are in life. You are NOT a loser for currently being alone. You are NOT ugly because that boy doesn’t want to talk to you.
You are smart, strong, beautiful and kind, and you are capable of taking action on whatever it is you feel needs to happen, and then let the cards fall where they may.
When something horrible happens to you, be patient and accept it. Work through your problems slowly and don’t blow your feelings out of proportion because it has already happened and you can only move forward.
Be patient because the right things will come to you when they’re supposed to — your life will never be like what you see on the “gram”, because let’s face it — most of those poses and posts aren’t real anyway.
But you will know when your world is going good and right — it will happen when you don’t have the need to flaunt it in a square, when you don’t need to justify it in a long caption, when you don’t have to capture it in a video.
When you are content with living your best life, you do not have to share it with people you don’t know just for them to like or comment. Share what you want, of course! But never feel pressured to define your happiness, sadness or whatever else you may be going through by adding a post to your feed so it can be documented on your life timeline.
We do not know when our real-life timeline will end, so live in the moment. Take every day as it comes — whether you’re alone or with the love of your life, at a job that you find challenging or working on something you feel passionate about. Whatever direction your life is taking, just be patient and know that you are not alone.