"when was the last time you had any real rest..."
People.. its 2023 and it think it's time to be real with ourselves...
We are all followers.
Yeah I said it, followers. And I don't mean that in the literal social media sense. In this day and age we as a culture are ruled by trends and a lot of us are more easily influenced than we would like to believe.
Let's map it out…
Prior to the pandemic we were all following the "Booked & Busy"trend . Everyone needed to see the multiple streams of income someone had or how they were always working and "no days off" was everyone's motto.No one's calendar was truly clear. The the pandemic came through and you would think the world would take a break being that we were all literally forced into one. NO!
The pandemic produced trend number 2: multiple hobbies. We all just had to be filling our time with learning new things and perfecting our craft right? The world was falling apart we still had to be doing SOMETHING.
Now don't get me wrong, I'm not knocking either of these "trends".
Being "Booked & Busy" is a blessing and we literally had nothing better to do during the pandemic except distract ourselves while our loved ones got sick and we held on to our own sanity. All of that is well and good.
My issue is that we hopped onto these mindset trends after our favorite celebrities or influencers sold us this dream that this was the way of living that will produce prosperity and make us feel better about our lives when in reality we didn't need to FEEL better about our lives but do better with them.
That brings me to trend number 3: Self Care.
Now my family here at A Word knows how I feel about self care but if you're new here...
I take my self care very seriously.
What I've been seeing lately within the Self Care trend is people doing things because they're trending and not because they're needed.
Let me break that down...
For example, I've seen people dive into fitness as a form of self care based on seeing others use that method without knowing the real reason that person chose fitness. Without knowing the feelings behind the choice, the struggle to come to that decision...etc etc. People are just jumping on self care methods without doing the inner work first.
I am definitely guilty of this myself. I was heavy on the Self Care train in desperate need to feel better about myself, my choices and my overall life setup.
I went to therapy, I signed up for a massage membership, started working out, watched/listened to self-help podcasts...I did it all. But with all of that I still didn't feel better about anything I set out to feel differently about. The reason for that was because I hadn't done any real reflection! It all sounded cool and helpful but in reality it was a front.
What I really needed was time. I needed time to reflect on what got me to that point and what needed to be done differently rather than put a bandaid on it all and hope I'd feel better by the end of it. So in came the infamous '7 month break'!
I stopped it all and really took time to reflect and grow and live and breathe and eat and sleep...like really sleep. Real rest. I took time to heal the things social media influencers don't talk about. Now, I am not a completely healed individual. Jesus himself will have to come down and chat with me for that to be possible but I am a more conscious individual. I have more of an understanding of myself as a person rather than myself as a person living in a mindset handcrafted by influencers.
There's no profound ending to this. My point is, don't do things for the sake of others or in the image of others. Do things for the sake of YOU because your life is only yours to live.
About the featured writer:
Back at it again with feature number 3!
Christopher Mann has been featured within the "In My Own Words" series twice before and is a definite reader favorite. He's been writing for about 12 years and wants people to feel inspired after taking in his work. Christopher who goes by the pen name C.Mann, is not only a poet but an author as well. He's released 3 poetry books and is releasing his 4th "Boys Like Flowers Too: The Love Edition" soon. He continues to bring love, light and awareness through his work.
Check out C.Mann's daily work on is IG @ichristhepoet and purchase his BOOKS through Amazon.