Most of social media is all about displaying your highlights showreel and showing everyone how f’n awesome your life is. You could be crying on the floor with your 15 cats while simultaneously posting a photo of yourself with half a t-shirt on (I believe some call it a crop top) pouting into the mirror of an elevator with your hips all sidewaysy and your legs crossed over awkwardly, or something.
No one will ever know about the cats and the tears.
Now, it’s true, you won’t catch me posting a photo of myself red faced and bedraggled after a run; and many, many of the photos from my photoshoots go in the bin because they accentuate my wrinkles or I look angry, or bored, or have my eyes half closed like a stoner (those are shockingly common!).
I’ll admit, I’ve a lot more self-development to go before I completely stop caring what other people think about how I look.
I’m getting there; I’ve come a long way.
I used to think that the only way people would like me was if I was perfect. Perfect A grades, perfect straight hair, perfect fake tan, perfectly fitty-inny.
Perfectly boring!
I controlled the bajaysus out of everything, most of all the image I presented to people. It was bloody hard work!
Eventually I had to accept that it wasn’t working.
You can’t control or perfect your way to happiness. Doing so will have the exact opposite effect.
Rather than crafting a perfect life (lie?), as I used to try to do, I finally realised that living a Bloody Good Life is actually about accepting the imperfections, the ups and downs, the out-of-controlness of our lives. Something that is very hard for type-A perfectionists like myself and most of my clients.
This is where we fall down in our happiness.
Life is imperfect and there ain’t nothing you can do to change it.
But you can learn to accept it.
You can’t control your emotions, they come and go like clouds in the sky. Nor can you control your thoughts, they come and go like waves on the ocean.
All you can do is sit back and learn to watch them; go with the flow, whatever cloudy/wavey analogies float your boat.
Because if you’re all up in the clouds trying to clear the sky, you’ll miss out on what’s going on down in your life. And if you try to rush around smoothing out the waves of the sea, you’ll only create more ripples.
Bloody Good Life 101 is about learning to pull up a deckchair and watch the clouds come and go, like the Headspace dude Andy says (great name).
Grab yourself a sturdy lilo and watch the waves as they do their thing.
Because beyond the clouds is blue sky and under the waves is the calm of the ocean, and when you can learn to stay anchored in the calm that’s always in you, the clouds won’t ruin your day and the waves won’t knock you around.
That’s how you live a Bloody Good Life.
Perfectionists/ control freaks who struggle with indecision and overthinking – check this out
