Can I borrow happiness?

When you are struggling with your mental health, experiencing a dramatic loss in confidence or you have incredibly low self worth you often take one of two paths - to give in and retreat into your own world, becoming inactive and feeling a level of inevitability. The other is to work; to try everything in order to feel happy and healthy and wear yourself out doing so. I certainly fall into the latter group.

I found that when I reached a point of crisis in my life and needed and wanted huge changes I struggled immensely with comparison. Not an uncommon story but one that was nonetheless painful and difficult to manage. When you look for help with this you come across lots of directives about how to avoid this feeling such as; making lists of your positive qualities and achievements, acknowledging you are unique, compete against yourself and where you were yesterday, name your inner critic and practise gratitude.

This is very difficult to do when everywhere you look people only highlight how they are ‘living their best lives’ celebrity culture is well entrenched in our much of our daily lives and consumer culture looks to be thriving more than every especially lately specifically within mental health and wellbeing with many instagramers or influencers promising the happiness they claim to have. All for a fee.

I have always been a dreamer but concurrently highly cynical, I know and have always known when something is inauthentic and have a highly developed intuition that means I can almost sense bullshit. Even with this, even with the full knowledge that most people using social media platforms are selling something

What this is actually about it that you have lost a sense of identity therefore thing you can easily identify you are proud of.

One of the ways this can be exacerbated is by always allowing other to validate you by loving you or appreciating you. However, the problem with this is that people do not always have the time to do this for you as and when you need it.

That is why you need to do this for yourself, you need to be ‘your person,’ ‘your own cheerleader or ‘your best friend.’

This realisation has helped me to feel far more peaceful and confident. It was a thought that I

Living your best life

Imposter syndrome

Identifying with others

living as someone else

Are these my true thoughts or someone elses

In the coming weeks I will go into much more detail about why I have decided to do this, sharing my life for a year, but in a nutshell it is because I need to strip back the layers and years to work out what makes me happy, discover old and new ways of finding joy and laughter as well as getting well, rebuilding my confidence and self esteem and finding a new career path....

Just a few bits to do then!

Currently I am suffering with depression, working out my notice period and leaving a profession I hold dear and struggling to see the light in each day. To most my life would look lovely but the problem is I cant feel it, I am burnt out, have no self esteem and have no idea who I am anymore.

I dont know how to dress, what I like about myself, what type of Mum I am, what I am passionate about, whether I am enough for those around me etc even down to whether or not I like coffee.

I have lost my identity and self worth to years of fitting in, becoming a mum, trying to uphold a professional me daily, being criticised, following those I find exciting or inspiring and my mental health.

Now starts a year of trying to get back to who I am and feeling proud and confident to show this to the world...starting with the IG world.

I ask you all for your support and guidance and hope to follow others as we all find our ways to uniquely blossom in this crazy world of ours.