Are we defined by the people around us?

When you look in a mirror what do you see? Do you see the version of yourself people want to see? Or do you see the version of yourself you want to be?

This is something I have thought a lot about recently and it's something that I feel quite strongly about. We live in a world where we can feel pressured by society to look and act a certain way, and with social media being prominent in many of our lives, this can be even more challenging. We spend our days being bombarded with images of people claiming to have the "perfect body" and showing you how to be the "perfect version of yourself", but who is this really benefiting? Does altering our personality and image because someone says we need to really benefit us?

In my opinion, no. From my own experience, altering the way you look to suit someone else, not only changes how we truly are but can also have a quite severe impact on our mental health. Yes we may not feel happy with how we are in that moment but focusing on what others think of us isn't going to help make things better. When we look at ourselves in the mirror we should see the best version of ourself. A version that we have created and noone else. A version that our friends and loved ones should help to reinforce and not bring down.

Yes it can be very hard to accept how we look and who we are, however it isn't impossible. It's as simple as chaning your outlook on life. Although we say it's as simple as changing your outlook, it's not always that simple. Sometimes changing our outlook can seem very daunting. Changing something that has been the same for years, but it can be done. I for one find it hard to change something that has been a part of who I am for years, but I have slowly started to change this.

I was sat thinking about this a few weeks ago, and I was thinking to myself "Why am I constantly comparing who I am to others? Why am I worried about what people might think?". These are questions that have been going round my head for years, and I decided that now was the time to change all that. Time to change how I thought about myself and the world around me. By simply changing the way I talk to myself, it has enabled me to slowly change my outlook on life. Instead of saying to myself "you can't do that, people will judge you", I know say to myself, "Yes you can do it. They don't care what you're doing". My example for this is when I'm at the gym. For ages, I was convincing myself that I couldn't do the weights because people would judge me for not knowing what I was doing, now, by simply changing my mindset to "I CAN", I realise that most of the people in the room are more concerned about what they are doing and not me.

This principle can be used in most situations, from work to your personal life. By simple changing they way you think it can really have a huge impact on how you feel as a whole person. Now, you may be thinking, but surely simply changing how you talk to yourself doesn't change your mindset forever, and the answer is you are completely correct. I will fully admit, that I still have days where I don't feel my self worth, and even as I'm writing this there's a little voice in my head questioning whether I should hit publish or not. This doesn't mean that I don't love myself. It simply means I'm human. We all get days where we don't feel ourself, and that we aren't good enough. However, it's how we deal with those days that makes the difference.

I finish with this quote I found a few days ago, that has really resinated with me and got me thinking even more about mindset.

The positive thinker sees the invisible, feels the intangible, and achieves the impossible - Winston Churchill