Creating a life you love, in the era of social media.

It was in the small everyday decisions and simple acts that she began to craft a life she loved, one she didn't need to escape from.

We surrender our power when we choose the narrative that we'll only be happy, content, fulfilled, enough... 'when'.

When we're laying on the beach in Fiji, cocktail in hand, when we have a home that looks like the pages of an interiors magazine, when we have a circle of friends that support us daily and never let us down, when we have a partner, when we have a partner that initiates a grand romantic gesture every week, when we can have eight hours uninterrupted sleep a night, when our children behave themselves for more than four hours in a row, when we lose five kilos, when we're completely on top of our anxiety, when, when when...

'When' leads us down a never ending spiral of discontent and misery. We never arrive and thus we are never truly satisfied and at peace.

If we hide behind 'when', we shut off the myriad of beautiful possibilities that lie behind simple moments during the rhythm of our days. Let me tell you this, there is magic in a ordinary day, when we stop to see it, when we choose to craft and create our lives as only we can. When we start right here, right now, with who we are and what is available to us.

And perhaps, we also surrender the possibility of a life we're truly in love with when we give too much power to external factors in our life.. like social media.

Since I was a teenager, I have loved the Eleanor Roosevelt quote, 

No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.

It rocked my world when I first read it and it is something I still think of regularly, often in relation to how we interact with the media... social media in particular. We lose the magic in our every day when we defeatedly believe that forms of media rule our lives. 

Social media makes me feel like a failure.. everyone is in the Greek Islands, everyone is out doing amazing things, achieving their goals with glowing skin and incredible friends that never forget to invite them anywhere. 

Sound familiar?

When we allow the things that we choose to look at and engage with (and remember lovely people that we choose to look at these things in the first place!) to make use feel inferior, or to believe the lie that we'll only be happy 'when'.. we miss out on so much beauty and joy that is right here under our nose all day long. And it often impedes us from creating a life we love.

There are very real limitations that many face physically, mentally and just...  logistically. Different seasons in life can have their own beauty and restrictions. Many people have heartbreaking challenges in their lives that are beyond their control. But perhaps we don't give enough weight to all that we do have control over.. all that we can change and create and craft.

The interconnectedness of our world is pretty incredible. I have friends around the globe.. some of whom I've met traveling, some I've met in the online world and  social media allows us to glimpse into each other's lives and connect and relate and that is amazing.

Social media has allowed Nourish and Nest to reach people who would have never connected with our brand otherwise. I stumble across inspiration for travelling, cooking and generally being a nice human in this online world, events and projects and ideas and stories that I would have never known of otherwise and I am thankful for it. 

But being connected with what hundreds or thousands of people are doing daily through social media can be a bit of an overwhelm too. I have to put some rhythms and routines into my life to make sure I'm not scrolling the grid all day, staring at other people's moments when I should be living my own. I don't want to be just watching other people's lives.. I want to be consciously and intentionally creating my own life. Day by day, moment by moment.

For me, when I feel that overwhelm creep in.. I make a few choices. I choose not to start or end my day with social media and focus on following accounts that inspire or interest me. I have at least one social media free day per week and try and disengage with it when I am on holidays. 

Maybe those kind of boundaries are a no-brainer for you or maybe some mindfulness around how you interact with social media would be helpful for you.  There's no one-size-fits-all approach to how we engage with the online world but we all definitely need to take responsibility for how much time we spend scrolling through other people's lives as opposed to how much time we spend creating a life we love. 

If you are allowing the way you consume content to keep you living in the land of discontent.. may I gently and lovingly suggest that you take back your power and remember that you are designing your life, day by day, moment by moment?

What do you want more of in your life? What do you want less of? What are the small acts and rituals that could punctuate your day with joy? You are incredible and (as Mary Oliver so stunningly puts it) this is your one wild and precious life.. what are you going to do with it?

Tara x