It’s an unexpected way to start the year, but it’s a new year and an average me

Does anyone else feel like everyone around you are absolutely slaying the game of life right now? Yes, I said slaying. These extraordinary, incredibly talented individuals that are weaving their way through life just smashing goal and goal and creating opportunity after opportunity.

If you haven’t been living your life like an Instagram Queen’s dream right now, well, it can leave you feeling a bit… shit.

It’s something I’ve been grappling with lately and I talked a little about it in my last post of the year, why I was so ready for 2017 to be over.

It’s a hard thing to accept, think about or even to “own it”. The overwhelmingly crushing feeling of being average.

Average. Yes, loud and clear for all to hear. AVERAGE.

And actually, let me tell you, 2018 is exactly the year that I’m going to start owning it. There are certain realities that I’ve just got to start accepting:

To me (and to everyone else out there that feels a bit average sometimes),

• You will never be a size 2 again (or a UK 10, I think). You like food and wine, and 2018 me just has to get on board with not feeling guilty about that.
• Your body is no longer 20 years old. You need to stop treating it like it is. Face masks, early nights, and eating good things are your friends.
• Saving money is you know, smart, blowing it on that ASOS dress you won’t wear, not so much.
• Only book travel that you can afford
• Stop trying to make everyone around you happy, and focus on what you really want.
• Comparison is the thief of joy. Stop comparing your circumstances to others around you. Instagram and blogging “reality” is sometimes not that person’s “actual” reality.
• No, you don’t need to know everything about everything. Politics, climate change, literature, history. No. Stop feeling like your Bridget Jones at the fancy law office party. You’re perfect the way you are (but also, maybe read a book and newspapers from time to time).
• Being average doesn’t meant you’re inadequate… or even average at all. Because what you see as average, someone else out there will always see as extraordinary.

Love, me

xoxo

So, is it a new year, average me after all?

It’s not so much that any of us are actually average. It’s the opposite. No one person out there is exactly like you. You’re unique, bright and talented, in ways different to others. And yes, I’ve found myself viciously comparing myself to others lately. Not in a negative, spiteful way, because I cannot stress enough how much I love seeing the people around me succeed. But in  a way that I feel as though I’m not even close to being on that level.

As cheesy as it is (I also had to Google what this quote actually was, only to not really find what I wanted but here it is anyhow) “Don’t compare your chapter 1 to someone else’s chapter 20.”

In 2018, I’m here to love more of myself. I’m not here to reinvent my personality with a new year, new me mantra. I am however, here to accept the aspects of who I already am.

Because I think when you start accepting who you actually are, instead of trying to be something you’re maybe not… is when you have the true capacity to be extraordinary.

Kelly xox