Chat with Coralie

When times are hard, pressures are weighing you down, anxiety hits more than normal and life just feels like wading through a bowl of treacle, it’s not uncommon for positivity to take a back seat.

Let’s face it, trying to remain upbeat and happy in the face of adversity can be, frankly, damned tough. which was a little tongue in cheek but it read ‘Tier rhymes with cheer so I’m sticking with cheer folks. It’s a different Christmas but I’m going to have a ball. #Cheer4’.

It takes energy and effort to keep going. It takes a sense of belief and hope to pour good thoughts onto bad ones. And if, like many of us, you are struggling to find even enough willpower to just get through the day, the thoughts of a positive person can be like nails on a blackboard.

Social media can be a huge culprit of perpetuating perfectionism where often this isn’t real. Instagram feeds us with images of lives that ours cannot compare with. Pictures of happy, healthy people living their days in sunny climates, driving powerful cars to homes which are cleaned to Mrs Hinch standards and more. Hashtags of #blessed and #lucky fill our screens making us feel worthless, lacking and pointless.

But, I urge you to stop just for a moment.

This isn’t a piece about comparison-itis (although if you do suffer from the green eyed monster when you look at others you might want to do some work on yourself there). No, this is actually about the point of positivity.

My partner and I have often been accused of being ‘too positive’. Assumptions are made that we come from a place of ‘having it all’.

Yet the opposite is so often true. Recently, on the announcement of our Tier 4 fate, we posted an image We had some comments which implied that the reader of the post believed that we must have it all OK and that we weren’t suffering in any way.

Without detailing why this wasn’t true at all, we chose to reply that the reason why we put out positivity is that this is how we choose to be. It doesn’t mean we ignore the sadness or the stresses, but we look for every opportunity to find a positive spin on things, no matter how small the grain of it may be.

It’s a hard thing to do. And sometimes we don’t want to do it. We would rather wallow in the sadness of our situation. But do that for a bit and then let it go. Grab back on to the bumper of happiness instead of hauling your sack of ‘stuff’ around. Keep reminding yourself that you are doing your best. There are things you can’t control. But the one thing you have got control over is what you choose to focus on. Whilst it won’t make the bad stuff entirely go away, it simply shines a brighter light on what is good.

Push the rubbish into the shadows. Put a beaming smile on your face so big that it lights up what is good in the world and don’t let social media or anyone tell you that it’s not OK to do that. Live every day as peacefully and as honestly as you can. And just keep putting one foot in front of the other.

2021, we’ve got this.

Until next month Coralie x