Perspective.

When I started Uni I discovered I didn't like change because its not what I expected. I had a firm plan for my life and being a plan A girl, plan B wasn't an option, but plan B was university and it did happen. I am going down a path never intended to go down.

(insert cheesy road picture here:) 

PERSPECTIVE is EVERYTHING

I had such a negative perspective on my life. I thought I had failed, I could not see past my own thoughts. I want to be a public speaker, inspire people and get them to see the their world a different way, I didn't want to go to university.  I'd sit in fear, afraid to jump and just go with the flow. Afraid to do anything that wasn't what I planned in my head and in my heart. What I forgot to remember it is the perspective on circumstance determines how you live it, It also determines how you feel during. 

I am now starting to change my perspective on university, on thought at a time. It is apart of the journey of my life, it is a stepping stone to get me to where I need to go. As I've just started to go with the flow a bit more, I just jumped. Terrified and afraid of the unknown, I started to grab my chances and go with the opportunities shown to me, I've discovered who I am, more about myself. I'm still working on my perspective. More and more but as a chip away at these thoughts of a negative perspective, I am seeing the world in a new way. 

My thoughts changed. My life changed.

When I started to truly believe I was loved, my life changed. When I declared over myself truth, my life changed. When I choose to see things differently and changed my perspective, my life changed.

Our thoughts are keys to how we feel. They influence our feelings. We are content, then that thought comes that says "if I only had this" and BOOM you feel rubbish. That is obvious but our thoughts are more subtle than that. That subtle reminder, that subtle comment that derails our day.

What are you thinking? What goes through your head? thoughts of how much you are worth or thoughts of how much you are not worth?

If you change the way you think, your life will automatically change.

Look outwards its less depressing.

Why do I do that? What am I thinking? How do I feel about that? Why did I just react that way? Why am I angry?

These are questions I constantly ask myself. Constantly. I mean, I'm an analyser by nature. A deep thinker by nature, always wanting to know to try and understand. But I always over think, always get stuck on a line of thought, one thought just spirals and I follow down the path of thoughts. We all overthink certain things in our lives. We look inwards, I don't know about you but I can get so stuck in my mind I forget how to have a conversation at all with anyone. I spend all that time alone, me and my brain that talking to someone about something 'small-talky' is hard. I was told I needed to stop looking inwards and look outwards, this was a very accurate statement so I did it. I was told that I viewed things on a negative slant and I needed to just enjoy life so I'm changing them stubborn mindsets.
Looking outwards is harder at first, but more freeing in the long run. Looking at the world, so much bigger than I. Thinking about something other than trying to work everything about me out, trying to know myself all the time is just exhausting. I'll accept it, I'll say what I fear; The unknown, the fact that I just don't know. I don't know what I'm doing, where I'm going and who I am. Oh I'm learning about all these things. Looking inwards isn't going to give me the answer I crave.

Look outwards, see your life in perspective in reality. We get told to the old age cliche to see the 'bigger picture'. Thats too cheesy and said too much to mean anything anymore, but see a picture bigger than you. You're life is bigger than what rubbish you're dealing with, that niggle, that lie. You're life is so much more important than how you feel. You are special, significant loved by the one who is love. So maybe we should see it from the outwards, be less judgemental of ourselves and go a bit easier! A man once said to me: " struggle is the sign you're not yet defeated". You are not defeated by friend. Not one bit, but looking inwards will depress you. It did for me.

We're having a confidence epidemic in our teens.

Its happening, an epidemic of low self-esteem.

As someone who is just healing with this issue, trying to work it out and overcoming lack of self-esteem more and more each day, I can see it happening all around. The reason why we have so many 'drop-outs' maybe is not because they are lazy, they may just not believe in themselves enough (some are lazy but not all!).

We are seeing a confidence crisis in girls and boys who really believe at their core they are not pretty, ugly, unintelligent, unworthy and unwanted. Its all around us. I'm sick of it. I can't cope seeing these young people with so much potential feel like RUBBISH. Not on my watch. I've being there, I know what lack of self-belief does to you, it destroys you. You feel isolated, lonely - then the self-pity kicks in- and in turn then start speaking that over yourself and it becomes a self-prophecy leading to you actually leaving yourself out for fear of rejection. This is academically, socially and aesthetically. I see young girls, obsessed with twitter and facebook, having to know the latest trend and feeling genuine anxiety if they don't have the latest phone and outfit. For a while, I believed that maybe they were a bit superficial but there is something deeper that in my ignorance I almost missed; a need to belong, a need to feel loved and accepted and to feel they have a worth. A future. A destiny. The latest phone for a moment brings all of these things but then its over, the latest relationship brings this is the hype of love feelings and hormones, and the highs and lows of emotions but the reality of love kicks in and it hurts. The sacrifice it takes can't always be handled by every young person because some are just wanting to fit in. This is all natural of course, every single person who has being an adult wanted to fit in. Its inbuilt in our DNA but the extent that young teenagers, who are so precious are going to is astonishing. What have we fed them? We blame society but WE ARE SOCIETY. We've sat back and watched our young ones become so obsessed with their looks, not encouraged healthy self-esteem as a general rule and created this place that says "If you're not a size 6, have a hollister jumper and have an Iphone" you can't fit in. Now we have a pandemic of young people who are so blinded by what they should be they can't see who they are. I was like this but with my personality, so blinded by the fact I didn't feel I had lots of friends and was Miss.Popular I didn't see what I was, who I was or what the truth about me was. I now am uprooting lies that are so deep within me, its taking a while to cut them off and build new highways; well how about building it properly from the beginning. I had close friends and family speak the truth over me, but I got so lost in what I was told my own age group, how rejected I felt that I just believed a lie over the truth. This is happening to young people, on a even greater scale because now in a society with statistically more broken families than ever before we are left with broken people. Parents who by circumstance are not co-parenting, single parents struggling to make ends meet. In no way am I crisiting singleness or divorce, sometimes its just a circumstance and not really anyones fault just a situation but its left us with broken parents and therefore broken children who need affection and need love but its hard to give (in no way have parents failed their children) when you have to work to live.

I'm recommending we start speaking positively and engaging our young people in positive conversations. Instead of hearing them affirm over themselves that they are not a model figure (however, it must be noted there is a difference between someone believing a lie and someone who is heavy and needs to go on a diet for health reasons) we have to re-lay the foundations of our young peoples' thinking. By making then say good things over themselves, engaging in positive conversation, helping them believe the truth and educating them into what LOVE says about them not what LIES say about them. We have to open our eyes as a society and start to deal with issues because if we don't history will repeat itself in their children.

Who am I?

There is a section of culture I hate.

The masking part, we all wear masks. I wear them all the time, I smile when I'm sad. For so long, I hid bihind a mask of a friend, a close dear one. Who I've being brought up with, she was my twin, we did everything together and even have the same name. I subtly and subconsciously allowed someone elses ideas and ideals and what they thought about me become and define me. We've all done it.

I've being a secret nerd my whole life- I love history, politics, human nature she doesn't, she was very fashionable I wasn't. But I let her define me, I started to try and be her. She never forced this on me, I presumed from how popular she was and how she was good at most things she did that she had a winning formula. What is there is no winning formula, just being an individual?

 I don't look like how you'd think. I'm not nerdy in any shape or form in the way I look ; I love fashion but prefer to find new ways to spice up my jeans, t-shirt or shirt, blazer and cardigan and trainers combination. This is my idea, besides looking at blogs and fashion magazines but nothing in the way I look tells you that I'm a nerd. I don't dress differently so you can see my 'uniqueness' I don't stand out in a crowd. But my interests lie in the nerdy section of life. This is not cool for most young adults. When people want to go partying and to nightclubs, I really don't. I want to have a long dinner, watch a movie and talk all night. I want to go to a pub for casual drink and chat. I want to deep chat and talk about everything in life and have true, honest and genuine conversation. I absolutely despise small talk and can think of a million things I'd rather do, than remark about the weather and the biscuits. I can watch Jamie Oliver and Bear Grylls all day, I absolutely love indie movies. Nothing in me is made to be popular and I'm not, I am very well loved but I'm not at the centre of the dancefloor.

Now I've realised that I'm not my bestfriend, I've also realised everything I held onto for comfort, to tell me who I was is a lie. I always thought I had a great knowledge of who I was. The horrible truth is I don't, or I didn't - now I'm starting too. I'm walking a path that not many walk because I've chosen to try and be myself. I'm taking off the mask, and its vulnerable and its scary. I'm out my comfort zone. But I'm learning to accept who I am.

My biggest battle is fear of rejection, rejection for who I am and everything I am. Its happened so much in the brief moments I've tried to be myself. It has also brought be true friendship from a few but rejection from the masses.

To try and figure myself out, I'm accepting that I am loved. Maybe the reason we don't take off our masks is for fear of rejection and that we won't be loved for who we truly are? I am loved always, all the time by the One who is love, by friends and by family. The more I know this, and choose to believe it and tell myself this truth. The more I am becoming be, the more I'm knowing who I am.

Celebrities are not just famous people and its all an illusion.

Recently, I've really been thinking hard about celebrity culture. The way in which someone, somewhere said someone was more important than someone else and knowing about where they get their coffee from is very important.

So lets begin to look at it at its roots; as a society we need to label and class people. This helps us put people into categories and figure them out a little bit better. Its being done since time began, we need significance, acceptance, love and to belong somewhere innately, this is what we need. The humanist Abraham Maslow showed this in his hierarchy of needs, in which if all our needs (both physical and psychological) we can't reach Self-actualisation, an understanding of the world and ourselves and can't have dreams and meet goals. Celebrity culture, is shown to be a place where all our needs are met; they are famous therefore they belong; they have fans therefore they are loved; they have made a film and walk a red carpet with lots of people screaming their name therefore they are significant. This is the lie we are sold. These human needs if not fulfilled healthily we look for them in other ways, I really believe is in some ways where our obsession with celebrity comes from. This group of people who have it all, and if we had what they had, we would somehow have it all.

It is of course not only in celebrity culture this happens, we see it in advertising the lure that if we had that product we'd be happy. Wear that perfume and you'll have a man desire you completely and wholeheartedly. This constant tap into our insecurities, advertising and PR are in fact incredibly intelligent ideas. They work, we see that actor who talks about what he desires personality wise in a women (And then us girls who fancy him secretly dream about how we could be the one), but we do it in our everyday lives also make someone a celebrity too us. Listen to how the popular person wants a friend with x qualities and think of ways to become their friend and we get really depressed when looking at that girl/guy with a beautiful figure/physique on instagram. Celebrities are not just who the gossip magazines say they are, is not that person they claim it is rather its an illusion we make about anyone we see who we believe to be better, more able, richer, more significant, value and loved than us. They could be famous, they could also be your best friend. Its that person we've built in our brains who will answer all of our insecurities even though in our heart of hearts its not true.

Have you ever noticed that  hollywood celebrities are explained to be somehow superhuman, they have the best hair, of course they never have a sad day, the best bodies - the best everything. You know, if you just met Chris Evans your life would be complete and he'd answer all your problems but Chris is a man- with flaws. I came to this conclusion one day watching a great series called 'the becoming series' on youtube. I saw the one with Chris Evans ( I love them because they ask intelligent questions I want to know the answers too not just those crappy 'What do you eat for lunch?' type questions) in part 2, He spoke of anxiety, before he did the Captain America films, he got therapy (counselling for us Brits) and struggled with various aspects of fame! This was highly intelligent and intriguing as this thing that we should all want because it makes us complete (apparently) fame, this guy didn't want. How could this be? I thought to myself as I continued watching. He spoke about rising above your thoughts and how to deal with 'brain noise'. This guy is completely normal, at this point I was crying. I'd just gone through a  massive life change, and like him I struggled to come to terms with it. I wondered, like him, if I could deal with it. I wanted to peg it to the hills like He did. This thing that was meant to make him complete and answer all his life problems didn't, was it true Chris Evans was JUST like me? He is but celebrity culture would have you convinced He is not. I wanted to jump in the screen and hug him, because I felt less alone he was dealing with anxiety too and because He really made me realise once and for all that there is no better or worse in life just different. He loves doing the lower-budget indie movies, he hates the limelight of press junkets and clearly doesn't like celebrity all too much. How can this American man who is making movies; doing press, jumping in front of green screens in a ridiculous costume be the same as me, an English Women; leading groups and mentoring young people, trying to bring social change and completing a degree, deeply interested in politics, history and world affairs and culture. But somehow he was. He made me think and see something in a way I've never seen it. If I ever meet Him, I would like to tell him how incredibly intelligent He is, and how genuinely talented he is. I mean he has done some amazing indies- check out 'London' and 'puncture'. Hollywood celebrities are no different to any of us. Its an illusion at the core of it because they are human and have needs [plus if they are at the top who is feeding their needs? The grass is always greener on the other side, as i've looked into this I've began to notice more and more that gratefulness and thankfulness are a key in life, being thankful for what you have because there will always be a problem and something to fix but perspective and positive views on life are key to us living an incredible life. A celebrity can't answer life's deepest needs for you, or your deepest questions. Yes you can admire someone and think they have done well and even aspire to them ( I aspire to influence and provoke people to think, like Chris Evans did too me) but they can't complete you and the normal celebrities in life who are not famous, like family and friends who we place on a pedestal can't complete us. Only true love can.