It’s easy to get caught up in a cycle of self-loathing, especially in today’s day and age where there are approximately 8000 memes encouraging you to do so. I’m not dissing meme culture here, but sometimes the constant reaffirmation to hate yourself gets old and toxic. I love joking about how much of a mess I am as the next person, but have you ever stopped to think about what this might actually be doing to your self-esteem?
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Here’s the cold hard truth: you probably aren’t as much of a mess as you think you are if you are reading this. Why? For starters, you are a student at the university the Prime Minister called “the Harvard of Canada.” Things could be a lot messier. I’m not much of a believer in the “someone has it worse than you” healing tactic, but I just wanted you to take that step back to realize that you are doing something right.
You. Are. Doing. Something. Right.
As university students, we all have a little perfectionist inside of us. We all want to succeed for a plethora of reasons. We all have goals to some extent, and we’re all willing to work for them. These are all good things. We shouldn’t stop being ambitious. We should, however, change our perspective towards our busy lives. We are so lucky to be as busy as we are because we are exposed to so many opportunities.
Believe it or not, the way you think about things changes them. Don’t believe me? Give this TedTalk a watch, it won’t disappoint.
The main idea: stress isn’t the enemy; the way we think about it is. Seeing stress as preparing you for the challenges to come is way more conducive to your mental and physical health than seeing it as debilitating. Perception is everything, but it takes time.
I’m not suggesting, and neither is the video, that changing your perspective on stress for one day will make you feel like you’re lying on a beach with a Pina Colada in hand. I am saying that if you’re able to take that step back when you’re stressed, you might start to feel more grounded, and less like you’re being sucked into a vortex.
It’s okay to be stressed out sometimes. It’s okay to question everything too. It just means you care about your life (which is a really, really good thing to care about).
Keep on keepin’ on everyone!
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