The Feel Good Guide

Chapter One

SELF-ESTEEM 101

Let’s crack right into it, shall we? So, strong self-esteem. What is it? Feeling good about yourself. Loving yourself. Having confidence in your own worth and abilities. Sort of obvious, right? Well, even if it is an easy thing to define, it’s not always so easy to actually put into practice.

The fact is that heaps of us battle with our self-esteem, and for all kinds of reasons. That’s because a lot of the things that affect self-esteem aren’t even related to anything in the outside world, and have everything to do with what’s going on in our own little heads. It has nothing to do with whether we have achieved certain goals, or have a certain wardrobe, or have the perfect boyfriend or girlfriend, or whatever it is that we think is going to make us feel happier and better about ourselves.

Self-esteem is kind of like a little voice in your head that tells you things about yourself—and, when your self-esteem is low, it tells you all kinds of nasty stuff that’s not true. Let me just repeat that last bit: that’s not true. If your self-esteem voice is telling you mean stuff, it’s a liar.

These days, a lot of us seem to spend so much of our time wishing that we were different from how we are, that our lives were more interesting, that our bodies were better … The list goes on. A lot of the time, these thoughts centre specifically on how we look. We want to change our bodies, we wish we had better clothes, and we start to think that if only we could change certain things about ourselves then our lives would be better. We would be better. We hate ourselves if we’re not ‘perfect’, and we compare ourselves to people who we think are perfect. We make promises to lose X amount of weight, or to go to the gym X number of times a week, or to not eat X foods … and then, because we are human beings, we break our promises to ourselves and we hate ourselves even more. It’s a vicious cycle, people!

Before we go too much further, though, I have an inkling as to what you may be thinking right now. Maybe it’s something along the lines of, ‘But you’re young, blonde, white. What do you have to worry about? What do you know about bad self-esteem?’

You’re not the first person to say (or think) something like this. Whenever I’ve spoken about self-esteem, I’ve experienced my fair share of comments along these lines and, to be honest, I think they’re missing the point. The fact that I am all of these things and still have battles with self-esteem just shows how prolific and indiscriminate self-esteem problems really are. Like everyone, I have definitely had my own struggles with self-esteem. It hasn’t always been smooth sailing.

Someone might appear to have it all from the outside (cough, social media, cough), but that doesn’t tell us anything about what’s really going on in their head. It’s something to keep in mind the next time you see a post from your pal who looks like they’ve got everything—it’s entirely possible that they’ve got pretty crappy self-esteem themselves, despite appearances.

THE COMPARISON EFFECT

According to my mum, I was always a very happy child. I didn’t cry much, and I laughed a lot—which, of course, was a dream come true for her! But, as I got older and eventually became a teenager, I started to develop an unhealthy habit of comparing myself to others. Not surprisingly, my self-esteem took a bit of a hammering as a result.

There was a lot I didn’t like about my appearance when I was in high school. For starters, I was really thin, and I hated it, so I used to wear leggings under my jeans to make my body look curvier. (The irony of this, given the stupid restrictive diets I’d do in later years, is not lost on me.) What’s more, I would never leave the house without wearing make-up and straightening my hair. All of my friends had straight hair, and I hated my naturally wavy hair. When I look back on those days, it’s sort of incredible that everyone was so bloody terrified to stand out in any way whatsoever. I can’t help but wonder why that was. Everyone just wanted to be the same as everyone else, because no one realised that we should celebrate our differences.

Our uniqueness is the beautiful foundation of what it is to be human, and our differences are what make this world a really wonderful place.

Our uniqueness is the beautiful foundation of what it is to be human, and our differences are what make this world a really wonderful place. It gets said all the time, but imagine how boring things would be if we were all the same. No, really—take a moment to stop and imagine it. Imagine if we all had the same colour hair, the same type of skin, the same beliefs, the same preferences and likes and dislikes. There would be no excitement!

If you ever find yourself comparing your life, your body, your whatever to other people’s, remember this little gem: it’s the things that are different about you that make you the person you are. And, for that reason, it’s important to embrace the things about you that make you different from your family, your friends, the people you follow on social media. Celebrate those differences. (The same goes on the flip side: embrace the differences of those around you. Celebrate them. Encourage other people to be themselves.)

Anyway, back to comparison and my high-school days … I was fortunate enough to go to a private high school, but that also meant I was surrounded by some incredibly wealthy families. I’d often compare myself to the wealthier kids and think, I wish I had as much as them. I felt a bit average, because I thought I didn’t measure up and my clothes weren’t expensive enough.

I know exactly what you’re thinking. A private-school girl wishing she was better off? I can almost hear your eyes rolling in to the back of your head, and I completely agree—it’s ludicrous. But it’s also the perfect example of how ridiculous this temptation to compare yourself to others really is. It’s also a reminder that every experience is relative to the person going through it. Even when you’ve got things pretty good, you can still find yourself wishing you had more, or that things were different.

If you get stuck in a rut of comparing yourself to other people, you’re always going to find ways that you or your life don’t seem to measure up—no matter how many good things are already around you. You know that saying that there are always people better and worse off than you? Well, that one evaporates into thin air the moment we start comparing ourselves to other people. Everyone suddenly seems more accomplished and better looking, seems to have a better job and a nicer house, seems more physically fit or to have more money, or just seems to be generally happier in their lives. The key word there is ‘seems’. It’s not the real thing, now, is it?

I like to call this the ‘comparison effect’. It’s what happens when you compare yourself to other people who seem to have more than you, without knowing anything about their personal lives. All it does is make you feel bad about yourself.

Of course, because our whole world has been taken over by social media platforms like Instagram and Facebook, it can be hard to avoid seeing how perfect other people’s lives are (or, at least, how perfect they seem!). The comparison effect might have started in high school for me, but it really ramped up when social media became a big part of my life and work. Now, we’re so inundated with everyone’s best angles, their lush holidays (unsure if people still say lush any more?) and their happy moments that it becomes increasingly easy to forget that EVERYONE has problems. Common sense tells us that nobody’s life is perfect, but for some reason that seems to go out the window as soon as we start scrolling through our social media feeds.

SOCIAL MEDIA VS SELF-ESTEEM

When it comes to social media, lots of us only share the nice stuff from our lives. We don’t always want to post the sad stuff—but that can mean that our feeds just end up looking like everything’s sunshine and happiness all the time. Of course, ain’t nothing wrong with sunshine and happiness … until you start looking at the feeds of the people you follow, think that’s all there is in their lives, and then feel bad because your life isn’t as good, or wonder why they don’t seem to have bad days like you do. That sneaky little voice creeps into your head and tells you it’s because something’s wrong with you, and your self-esteem plummets. We’ve all been there.

I’m sure there are people out there who would just say, ‘Well, if social media makes you feel so bad about yourself, why not just quit it then?’ To which I’d reply by stating the obvious: quitting social media is just not that easy for many of us. For lots of us (ahem, me) social media is a massive part of our jobs. And, even if it’s not, chances are it’s one of the main ways you stay in touch with people, and keep up to date with what your friends and family are doing. Dropping out of social media might work for some people, but it can also come at a cost—and not all of us are willing to pay that price.

To give you an idea of just how much a part of our lives social media has become, let’s take a quick look at some numbers. First up, reports released in 2018 by We Are Social and Hootsuite found that:

*	the number of social media users worldwide in 2018 was 3.196 billion. (The total world population is currently 7.7 billion, to put that in perspective.)
*	the average Kiwi spends 5 hours 59 minutes a day on the internet (on any device), and of that they spend 1 hour 53 minutes on social media.
*	more than two-thirds of the world’s population now has a mobile phone, with most people now using a smartphone.

And then, in terms of how much more common social media has become, earlier this year Pew Research Center released data on social media usage in the US that showed that 65 per cent of adults now use social networking sites—and that’s a nearly tenfold jump in the past decade. So, love it or hate it, social media is a big part of the world we live in. You can stop using it, if that’s your jam, but you’ll be in the minority.

There’s a whole lot of chat out there about the impact that social media has on our lives and on our mental health. So, what does science have to say about that? Well, it’s a bit of a mixed bag. Social media is still pretty new, so there’s not a lot of conclusive data, but what the research does seem to point to is that social media can be both bad for us and good for us. Helpful, huh? It all seems to depend on several factors, including how you use social media, what type of personality you have, and your existing mental health.

Notably, though, there are quite a few studies that suggest that using social media can exacerbate feelings of loneliness—and loneliness definitely isn’t good for you. In January 2019, Forbes reported on a new study from the University of Pittsburgh and West Virginia University that found that negative experiences on social media were linked to increased feelings of social isolation—or, in other words, when people had bad experiences on social media they felt lonelier. By contrast, the study found that positive experiences had little or no impact. The study’s authors suggested this was because of ‘negativity bias’, or our tendency to remember and be affected by negative events much more strongly than positive ones. The fact we tend to let negative comments or experiences get to us more than positive ones is, in my eyes, a bit of a flaw in human nature. It’s a mindset I try to change in myself when I can, but it is really bloody hard. It’s like we’re hardwired to take criticism or negativity more seriously.

Another study, published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine in 2018, surveyed 7000 19- to 32-year-olds and found that those who spent the most time on social media were twice as likely to report experiencing social isolation. The researchers said that seeing ‘such highly idealised representations of peers’ lives may cause feelings of envy and the distorted belief that others lead happier and more successful lives, which may increase perceived social isolation.’

In other words, social media can really ramp up the comparison effect by causing you to compare your life to what you think the lives of the people you follow are like, based on their social media feeds. And, sadly, all too often you just feel lonelier and worse about yourself as a result.

There’s also research out there that has looked into the impact of social media on things like sleep, our relationships and addiction, and I have to say the verdict’s not looking great on any of those fronts. (Although, to be fair, the problem doesn’t seem to be just social media on its own—it’s also how much time you spend staring at your phone.)

And, just to keep things balanced, there’s actually an emerging body of research looking into how social media might be a force for good, for example when it comes to treating things like depression. On this note, I’m sure heaps of you will agree that there is a lot that can be great about social media. It’s not all doom and gloom! For example, social media can connect us to lots of incredible people and places that we would possibly have no idea about otherwise. What’s more, it also gives creatives, activists and people who run their own businesses a platform to talk to their followers, it entertains and amuses us, and it can put us in touch with communities of like-minded folk we might never have met.

Personally, I’ve found that social media can also be a source of beautiful empathy and encouragement. Whenever I have posted about feeling low or about going through something difficult, the amount of messages I receive from people offering words of support and love (these are people who I have never even met, might I add) is incredible. These messages far outweigh in number any of the negative messages I have ever received. This always gives me warm fuzzies. I guess that, sometimes, it’s just easier for us to speak to a phone than to a real person. We might feel a little more comfortable speaking about how we’re feeling when there isn’t a real-life human sitting there in front of us, and I think that has opened the door to a really lovely, caring side of social media—which just tells me something about how many lovely, caring humans there are behind all those phones.

SELF-ESTEEM IN THE SPOTLIGHT

I’d started to gain a public profile after appearing on the first season of The Bachelor New Zealand back in 2015 when the comparison effect really took hold of me. All of a sudden, all of these people were watching me, following me on Instagram, and I felt as though my life wasn’t exciting or glamorous enough to warrant the attention. In order to ‘justify’ my followers’ interest in me, I felt this pressure to live up to a version of myself that was what I thought everyone wanted me to be.

It was a really difficult time. For one, I was dealing with the anxiety I felt as a result of suddenly being in the media and having to live in the public eye. (A New Zealand version of the public eye, of course—it’s not as if paparazzi wait outside my house. If they did, I’d imagine they’d pretty quickly get sick of taking photos of me in my trackpants.) At the same time, I was also trying to make my relationship work while it felt like the whole country was judging my every move. I know, I know. This all sounds very dramatic given that New Zealand is a tiny place and ‘celebrities’ here only have to deal with a fraction of the media attention that international stars do. Even so, I found it really difficult. It was especially hard to deal with getting so many nasty, judgy comments from people on the internet who had never met me (comments that I always insisted on reading—I’m unsure why).

It’s taken me a long time to get my self-esteem to the point where I really believe in myself. It’s something I’ve had to work hard on over the years.

When I look back now, from a much better place in my life, I’m able to see that my anxiety came in part from a deep-seated belief that I wasn’t good enough. Have you heard of imposter syndrome? Back then, I didn’t have any idea what it was, but when someone mentioned it to me a while ago I immediately looked it up. As I read about it, I found myself nodding along, thinking, Yup, so me.

If you haven’t heard of it, imposter syndrome is basically when a person doubts their accomplishments or their abilities, and is constantly afraid that they’ll suddenly be exposed as a—yep, you guessed it—imposter. There might be a heap of evidence that shows how competent they are, but those who experience imposter syndrome will remain utterly convinced that they are frauds and don’t deserve the things they’ve achieved. They tend to believe that their successes are the result of dumb luck or that they’ve somehow managed to trick others into thinking they’re smarter than they really are. What’s more, like poor self-esteem, imposter syndrome doesn’t really care who you are. It can get to anyone, and has been shown to affect both men and women.

When I first learnt all this, it made me wonder how many of us are wandering around out there thinking we aren’t good enough to be where we are? I even noticed a bit of this sort of thing creeping into my head when I was writing this book—thoughts along the lines of Why would people want to listen to you, Matilda? Thankfully, by now I’ve discovered that one trick when these imposter-ish thoughts creep in is to see them for what they are, and quash them straight away. You just have to drown out that imposter voice with a louder voice. Your voice. A positive, confident voice that says, ‘You know what? Why wouldn’t people listen to me? I have something to say, and by golly I am going to say it. And, if people don’t want to listen, then they don’t have to.’ (You don’t have to say ‘by golly’, but you get the gist.)

It’s taken me a long time to get my self-esteem to the point where I really believe in myself. It’s something I’ve had to work hard on over the years, but it’s paid off because things have improved significantly. I’m still not a hundred per cent there in terms of never having any self-doubt whatsoever (I’m not sure anyone is, actually), but I’m on the journey. And that’s what counts.

IT’S ABOUT THE JOURNEY

As I’ve mentioned, your self-esteem and your happiness are closely linked. Just like self-esteem, happiness doesn’t really have anything to do with material things. You can have a lot of ‘things’, after all, but still be very unhappy.

Too often, people are busy working towards something they think will make them happy, but happiness isn’t a goal. For example, a young woman—let’s call her Roberta, shall we?—thinks that if she just keeps slogging away at her shitty job, she’ll get promoted, and then she’ll make more money, and then she’ll be happy. Or maybe Roberta just wants to live in a nicer house, and then she’ll be happy. Or maybe Roberta is single and thinks that when she finds a partner, then she’ll be happy. This kind of thinking does my head in! I just want to grab Roberta and shake her (gently, of course, but firmly) and yell, ‘ROBERTA! YOU’RE MISSING OUT ON LIFE!’

Don’t be Roberta. (Unless your name actually is Roberta. In that case, feel free to keep being Roberta, but maybe learn from this book-version of Roberta.) Life is too short to wait for happiness to come to you. It’s not a magical destination you will one day reach when you have lots of whatever you think it is you need in order to be happy. Here’s the not-so-secret secret: happiness—just like self-esteem—lies in the journey.

If you’re searching for happiness on the outside, it’s time to stop. I hate to break it to you, but you’re not going to find it there. Happiness is something that comes from within, and that’s precisely why it’s so closely connected to how you feel about yourself. It’s been said before, but happiness really is a state of mind. It’s also about more than just putting a smile on your face or everything going smoothly all the time. Just like good self-esteem, happiness is something you have to work on.

You can’t get away with quick fixes here. Going shopping for new clothes might make you ecstatically happy in the short term, but I bet it’s only a couple of weeks before that happiness evaporates and you’re already sick of those new clothes—and probably just want more. Sound familiar? That is not the kind of happiness we’re after here. We’ll take the long-term contentment instead, thanks!

True happiness isn’t about everything being right—or even positive—all the time. It’s about learning to be happy and content within ourselves, even when the world might be telling us otherwise. It’s about learning to find happiness in the smallest of places, so that we can enjoy the peaks and ride out the troughs of life. Sometimes, it’s even about finding happiness at the same time as letting ourselves be sad, or angry, or hurt.

Likewise, strong self-esteem doesn’t make you bulletproof. Even after you put heaps of effort into feeling good about yourself, you’re still going to have days when you just don’t feel the love. And that’s fine. It’s because you’re human. The thing you need is a toolkit of tips and tricks that you can put into action whenever you do feel your self-esteem wavering, so that you can get right back to being your awesome self.

If only such a toolkit of helpful action plans existed … Perhaps in the form of a book? You know, sort of like this book?

You, my friend, are in luck. Read on!