Real Me Monday

Happy Monday everyone! It is a new week full of awesome opportunities just waiting for you to reach out and grab them.

This is going to be the first "Real Me Monday" blog post of a series I thought of the other day. I have also started an Instagram account (@therealmemvmnt) that will be dedicated to empowering people to embrace the real them on social media.

Today's society is hyper-focused on what will make us look the best, what will make our feed the most desirable, who and what will make me look the best. This, in my opinion, creates a toxic environment where we are now holding ourselves up to an unattainable standard. That couple goals page you follow only posts the best posed, filtered, and lighted pictures. They don't post the sick at 3 A.M. with swollen eyes and messy hair. And I'm not saying you have to start alerting the world when you're having an episode of questionable stomach movements, but I would like to remind us all that accounts like that never highlight the lows. So if we never see others experiencing their lows, when we face our own it makes us feel like we must be doing something wrong.

So what is the point of these posts and the instagram page I have started?

My goal is to highlight the imperfections that happen throughout my own weeks, and hopefully encourage others to do the same. While my blog will just be posted on Mondays, the Instagram account will have encouragements posted throughout the week, features of other people I know that are willing to be vulnerable about their struggles, ways to cope with comparison, and so on!

This past week I have been struggling with feeling like I am not being as productive as everyone else. I see my friends posting pictures of them studying or sending me snapchats of them filling in their study guides or post-working out. And it has made me feel like I need to be doing more than I am. So how am I battling this? The realization that just because I don't post every time I open my binders to finish notes, or pull out my highlighters to re-read power-points, 0r turn my computer on to finish another section of my blueprint for my final coming up does not mean that I haven't accomplished anything. It also doesn't mean that just because I saw evidence o f my peers being productive at that one point in the day that they were doing exactly that for the next six hours. It also doesn't mean that they were solely focused on the task in front of them! I am the worst at sitting down to do homework, and then getting caught up in notifications or silly games on my phone. A lot of times I have to turn my phone off to be completely focused and actually get my work done! Using time wisely is something that everyone struggles with, so one picture on Snapchat doesn't mean that they aren't having a hard time focusing too!

This past week I have had to continue to remind myself that what I did every day was probably just the amount I was able to. And if I didn't get enough done, there are other days in the week for me to catch up! I will get things done, and I will be productive in my own time.

I am really excited about this project and looking forward to seeing where it takes me. Some of my short-term goals are encouraging others, highlighting the "real" me/us, and building up the platform in general. Some long-term goals are gaining traction, and seeing a tangible change in my followers on their journey to "get real". I would also like to one day make big comfy t-shirts that say "let's get real" on them to be worn as lounge shirts on those days when you don't even want to get fully dressed. Because let's get real, it happens more often than not.

I will be following the hashtags on Instagram #realmemonday and #letsgetreal so that I never miss a post from people that want to be involved!

Thank y'all for reading the first Real Me Monday blog post and I hope to see you taking part in this movement that is all about accepting ourselves for who and what we are: human.

Let's get real together, y'all.