Are we obsessed?
Is putting pressure on ourselves to achieve certain life milestones detrimental to our health and self-worth?
you’ve probably experienced a moment when you’ve wondered if you’re on the right track. When you’ve compared what you’ve accomplished to your age and how much time you have left. And then you’ve asked yourself the anxiety inducing question, am I where I’m supposed to be? Cue sleepless nights and smothering pressure.
If you’re putting too much pressure on yourself, you’re not alone: to do more, be more, get more done, be seen as smart and competent, overcome challenges stamp out any and all undesirable circumstances in your life, be liked, loved, admired and appreciated, and be seen as valuable.
Life’s a journey in which you have to reach certain milestones, in a particular order, by a specific time. Your questions may include, when will I finally date someone? And, when will I buy my first car?
If you don’t make it to the next one within the designated time, you lose. It’s ingrained in all of us, in one way or another, and the stronger these beliefs are, the more unyielding our expectations become. And worst of all, as the inevitable gap between reality and expectations grows, the more stressed you’ll feel.
The idea of milestones is a gross over-simplification
of life. Each of us is living a diverse life, and we’re all unique. So, the expectation for us all to follow the same path is farfetched. Yet, we continue to allow the pursuit of life milestones to influence us. It’s not that these events aren’t important, but such is the scale of the importance we place on them that the path between two milestones becomes almost irrelevant.
Upon achieving one, it’s on to the next one. Got your degree? Next is a successful career within five years. Started dating someone new? The words ‘settling down’ and ‘marriage’ explode around you. Get married, and the noise to have kids hums louder. There’s barely any time to enjoy achievement. Sooner or later, you start comparing yourself to others, feeling as though everyone you know, even people you don’t know, have reached an enviable stage in their lives – and it’s only you who can’t seem to catch up. Where do these milestones that are making us all feel so crap come from?
Comparison
From an early age, you feel pressure to compare yourself to others. You measure your success and selfworth relative to someone else’s. You aren’t taught to compare yourself today to who you were yesterday. The benchmark’s against some other random person. This invariably leads to low selfesteem, jealousy, envy and disappointment. No matter where you are in your career, there’ll always be someone who looks like they’re more successful, happy or wealthy than you.
Reaching markers is easy when you’re young; your whole life’s structured so that you hit each of life’s major milestones at the same time as your peers: walking, talking, starting a new school, going to university. But when you leave school or university, it all becomes more complicated. Suddenly, you have multiple life goals to achieve, and there’s no clear path to getting there. Is it any wonder so many of us begin to feel like failures?
You can be anything, but you can’t be everything. When you compare yourself to others, you’re often comparing their best features with your average ones. Not only do you naturally want to be better than them, but the unconscious realisation that you don’t can be selfdestructive. At worst, when you compare yourself to others you end up focusing your energy on bringing them down instead of elevating yourself.
The search for success
Every day, you’re told to be the best you can be. Your friends, family and society push you, all under the guise of a single belief: success breeds happiness. You believe successful people are the happiest people. The media shows you wealthy, smiling faces, telling you stories of their success, fame and fortune, making you feel like you too need to achieve that to be the happiest you can be. For your life to be fulfilling, you need to try your best at everything you do. For some reason, the world’s under the impression that only the best can create happiness. Only once you’re at the top can you face the world and say, I’m successful.
Breaking free from these powerful, often unrealistic, expectations takes time and involves ditching guilt, readjusting your world view. and redefining what success means to you.
Success, which comes in many forms, is a mindset
“Breaking free from these expectations takes time and involves ditching guilt and redefining what success means to you”
that you always have to keep in check because it can falter under pressure. It also isn’t linear; instead, it’s achieved by staying determined and consistent despite perpetual failures and setbacks, and overcoming obstacles until you reach a place where you feel like you can stop. You can measure it in moments that make you feel good. It could be achieving that promotion at work, but it could also be waking your kids up to see them smiling when yesterday they were too sick to go to school. It could be cooking your partner a breakfast so good that he or she texts you later to tell you how much they loved it. Or, getting up early one day for a run after being too depressed to leave the house for a week.
Don’t allow yourself to be overwhelmed by what you think you’re supposed to have, want, need or achieve. Balance your mind, the flow of pressure, your desires and your energy. Define success based on your criteria, draw the line between determination and unhealthy obsession, and, most of all, give yourself a break.
After their successful Netflix film Seriously Single the Ramaphakela siblings will return this festive season with their trademark humour in a new three-episode-series, How To
Ruin Christmas: The Wedding. Expect action-packed episodes with witty performances by a cast of new faces, popular talent and beloved industry veterans. The Netflix Originals holiday special will premiere in December, just before Christmas. Glamour chats to lead actress Thando Thabethe about making the series.
Glamour: Congratulations! What a way to end the year!
Thando Thabethe: It’s huge! I think it’s beautiful that the world will get to see what Africa and South Africa has to offer. I’m really, really excited about it. I applaud the level of production coming out of Africa. It’s about time we made the world a smaller place.
G: Being on a Netflix Originals series is huge; its reach puts you on the global stage. What does that mean to you, and your industry in general?
TT: What it means to me is that I’ve taken a leap of faith to have this be my sole focus, and being on the global stage is definitely part of the plan. I hope to do more. No, a lot more! This year’s been pretty fantastic. I’m really excited about everything that’s happened with Housekeepers, which recently went into production on Mnet. Then there’s Blood Psalms, which I also did this year. Being part of How To Ruin Christmas: The Wedding is incredible. It’s been an incredible year, in fact. I’m fortunate considering the year it’s been.
G: What are your production highlights from the series?
TT: It was the entire thing. It was interesting. I think it could’ve been a movie in its own right. We filmed the series inside a bubble, in a hotel for five weeks. We had no contact with the outside world – we couldn’t even go to the shops. I think what that did was create a tight-knit circle, a greater production. We all got close, and the relationships you see on screen became true reflections. It was one big, fat party, much like a wedding. Being stuck together was a highlight. We had great conversations, able to come back
from a day of shooting and just unwind with real people. The show in itself is beautiful; the experience was magical.
G: Your role as a bride in the comedy series is an emotional rollercoaster. How did you prepare for that?
TT: I’m the one who sticks to the script and tries to walk in the shoes of my characters. I try not to diverge from that, but I think that with any story, and in real life, we can all borrow from each other, so I sometimes borrow from my experiences.
G: Describe the series in four words. TT: You were never ready.
G: What is it about?
TT: It’s a story of acceptance; accepting yourself and others just as they are. And the fact that nobody’s perfect because people make mistakes . Sometimes, they lie to protect other people.
G: How will you spend the festive season?
TT: I’ll be spending it with friends and family as I do every year. It’s a time for togetherness.