You quickly flip through your Instagram page, browse through the images and without skipping a heartbeat, search for your favorite celebrity or person to view their recent images. It becomes an obsession to achieve the perfection society upholds as a standard. With the obsession comes the emptiness from within as you start to view each aspect of their images with a critiquing eye, wondering how they can portray themselves as the perfect individual that they depict throughout their social media accounts. The immediate feeling of emptiness soon turns into a pit of negative thoughts and emotions in regards to your own portrayal and image throughout social media. ‘Why can’t I be as perfect as ____’ or ‘what does it take to be like ____.’ These types of thoughts are toxic and self-inflicting and without further thought in regards to the circulating contemplations, you further fall into the deepened hole of the toxic thoughts that further form the way you think.

Let me ask you— do you believe that these depictions are accurate? Do you believe the daily lives led by the celebrities and individuals you follow are the absolute truth in terms of what their lives are like? Society’s obsession with perfection leads many to unconsciously follow the same pathway of striving for this perfection that is impossible to attain. Absent are the portrayals of struggle and difficulty that play a common theme among all members of our communities and societies, however, when the mind is focused on the negative thoughts in regards to achieving perfection, our minds deviate from focusing on the important aspects of life. Society’s obsession with perfection strays the human mindset from focusing on the reality and so difficult it is to achieve perfection that individuals go to extremes to accomplish this.

Although perfection is impossible to attain, do something for you commencing today—start to love every perfect imperfection, the flaws that make you who you are—start to love the individual that is you. Further commence to realize that the depictions you see on screen are not accurate—there is no such thing or notion of a perfect life as well as perfect human being. Halt the comparisons and the negative self concepts, focus on commencing your journey to be the best version of you. Why? There is no other individual like you, with whole uniqueness and a distinctive life story to continue to live and write. Focus on the reality and stray away from society’s obsession for perfection.