It is something that most of us will admit to feeling, that pang of jealousy when we scroll through our social media to see so many people, all apparently living their best lives. Everyone of them seemingly successful with lovely homes/jobs/partners and well-behaved, tidy children, having great holidays several times a year.

When we compare our day-to-day lives with someone else’s highlight reel, we lose sight of the things that really matter to us. We forget how grateful we are to have the things that we do; families that love us, a warm a home, a healthy body, shiny hair or a happy dog waiting to greet us when we get home. Those small things that make us happy and are actually a part of who we are.  We forget that the perfection we see daily online is just an illusion and we become blind to the challenges that other people face. We fail to see that the strangers we see online are actually hiding their reality; their insecurities and their own daily issues behind carefully edited pictures and well-worded captions – just as we are. In fact, the same people that we admire online will no doubt feel the same envy of wanting more than they have after scrolling through their own social media. None of us are immune to it.

We have become part of  an online entity but we are failing to see that our own insecurities are not our real identities; it’s not our insecurities that others see in a picture or a post. Instead of judging someone on what we see while passively skimming through our news feeds, we need to remind ourselves of all of  the ways we are blessed.  It is time that we started enjoying the moments that we have instead of pausing to take pictures of what could be perceived by others  to be a perfect moment.

Go out today, enjoy the present moment. Aim to stop scrolling, to get out there and bask in those memories - the ones that never make it on to Instagram.  After all, in those memories, we are our most present and genuine and those are the moments that will stay in our hearts long after we have even forgotten the name of our internet idols.