Always made mistakes and always will

So, after my recent blog post titled Mummy, I was inspired to write another. You can tell me if you see any links between both topics. Answers on a post...oh, hold, answers in the comments section below or on my Facebook post about this! 

I’ve turned another year older today, an no I’m not 45 or older, I’ve hit 35. I don’t think it’s a milestone birthday but I don’t think I could wait another 5 years to publish this blog post! 

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve become more reflective. Yes, I know, I’ve always been a bit of a reflector. A lot has happened in my life over the last 5 years let alone the last 35 years. I got married to an amazing woman (never thought I’d be lucky enough), we’ve had gorgeous twin girls, I’ve moved house 3 times, changed jobs twice, etc...

It’s also fair to say that I’ve made mistakes along the way, whether that be personally or professionally. At the times I’ve made those mistakes I’ve kicked myself every single time, I’ve to an extent regretted making those mistakes too and in all felt very bad about the mistakes. 

It got me thinking (yes, I know it’s dangerous!), that we beat ourselves up when we make mistakes, hold it against ourself for a period of time and generally feel quite crap about it. This is true for me, I do it all the time, but we don’t reflect on how that reaction impacts us. In that, when a similar situation arises do we feel confident enough to deal with it? 

For me, I’ve found beating myself up always knocks my confidence. I’ve never been the most confident person in the world, so it majorly affects me. 

As I said In previous posts, becoming a father has changed my perspective on things. I look at the mistakes I make in a different way now. Don’t get me wrong, I still beat myself up over them but not to the extent I used to before. 

This perspective has changed because I look at my girls growing up, and they do things which you could consider mistakes I.e. during toilet training, accidents will happen, it can be frustrating and you possibly tell your child off. Is that going to help them in the long term? Do they even understand why you’re telling them off? The answer to those questions is probably a No. You find other ways to help them make sense of it all.

So why do we as adults beat ourselves up? Does that really help us? Well, for some it possibly does and for others it probably has the complete opposite effect . I fall in to the latter category, well I did until recently.

I’ve found that understanding why I made a mistake is more important than just saying “Chirag you idiot, don’t make mistakes like that” etc...understanding mistakes and trying to learn from them actually builds confidence, well it does for me anyway. 

Mistakes are something I’ve always made in life, and quite frankly always will make. That’s just part of being alive. Hopefully I’m learning from these mistakes and it shows that I’m learning. Who knows, some mistakes I may never learn from some mistakes. 

I guess the point of the post was to highlight that whatever your age, mistakes are ok, most people learn from their mistakes. I wouldn’t be the person I am today without making the mistakes I have. Some of you may say “yeah, but you’re an idiot” or something along those lines, and you know what, you are entitled to your opinion. 

I’m not saying I’m an amazing human being, or I’m anything special but I’m proud of the journey of my life and will hopefully keep learning and imparting the knowledge of that journey on to my kids (whether they like it or not, haha!). 

So tell me, do you think you’ve made mistakes in life? Do you think you’ve learned from them?  Has it made you the person you are today? Do you think you’ll keep making mistakes? 

Mummy

So, since Mother’s Day is this weekend, I thought this post, that I’ve been thinking about for a while would be best published now.

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about how much my wife does for our daughters. She does a hell of a lot more than I’ll ever be able to do. Something I believe only a mother can do.

Mother’s are the most unselfish people in the universe, the amount of time and energy they sacrifice for their children is beyond incredible. Nothing I write or anyone writes will ever do justice to mothers everywhere.

Growing up, I probably didn’t appreciate what my mum did for me, the sacrifice she put in to give me the best her and my dad could provide. Taking me to this class, that class, pushing me to fulfil my potential and making me feel like I had everything I wanted and/or needed.

Did I appreciate this when I was a teenager or even younger and say thank you? Nope, I didn’t, well at least it don't think I showed it. I was being a child, doing my thing and only thinking about me, especially being an only child. We’ve all done that to a degree right? Taken our parents, especially our mums for granted. 

Growing up I used to hear “wait til you’re married” or “wait til you have kids, then you’ll understand”. And you know what, no truer words have been spoken. Over the last 2.5 years since our twin girls arrived, I’ve realised more and more how much a mother does. 

My wife is constantly on the move, she's a machine! Always thinking about our girls, “what can I do with them tomorrow?”, “how do I make sure they are constantly learning?”, “what can I cook that’s really good for them?”, you get the jist of it. She is an absolute legend, it’s safe to say Mothers in general are.

Mothers play multiple roles and play them all amazingly well. They are mothers, wives, daughters, daughter in laws, etc...they look after pretty much everyone. My wife certainly does, always thinking about everyone other than herself. 

Another mother in my life (apart from my wife and my own mum) is my mother in law, she’s always running around and doing things for everyone else, even when she’s not well. It’s obvious where my wife gets her unselfish and dedicated nature from. It's also further evidence i guess of how unselfish mothers are, right?

Agatha Christie summed up mothers well

“A mother’s love for her child is like nothing else in the world. It knows no law, no pity, it dares all things and crushes down remorselessly all that stands in its path”

Being a mother is more than a role, it’s a way/choice of life, a woman’s life changes incredibly. Women make sacrifices left right and centre. To have children they put their bodies on the line, they give up a lot of their own goals and dreams and set new ones related to their children. Again, forgetting about their own wants and needs.

I’m in absolute awe of all the mother’s that I know, my wife in particular. She’ll probably read this and tell me how cringe it is, she doesn’t take compliments very well! 

Appreciate the mummy’s in your life, let them know regularly how much you take notice of what they have done in the past and what they do. They don't expect it or ask for it, but that's what makes it more worth it.

Please don’t let Mother’s Day be the only day of the year you show your appreciation. Like any other commercial day of the year, it’s just a reminder and not the only day of the year to show love and appreciation. 

So, ask yoruself, do you show enough appreciation to the mother’s in your life? Do you even see how much a mother does? How many of you take your mum for granted?

Digital Mental Health

So, it's been about a year since the last blog post, this one has been sitting in my drafts on my phone for about the same time, so thought it was time to publish!

I wrote in my last post that my life now is very different from when I used to write a number of years ago, and I alluded to thinking about things differently now, particularly in the context of being a parent.

This particular post is close to my heart for a number of reasons, one of which is my daughters. Most things I think about now are about them; their futures, their education, influences on their lives (like social media), etc...

I think back to what life was like for me and us (as a generation) before social media; or should I say social media as we now know it? 

In an age where social media is part of normal life, specifically Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, etc...we forget that social media was available to us in different forms when we were growing up, with probably similar consequences of use, I'm thinking of Hi5, MSN Messenger, Yahoo Chat, etc.. 

Back in my younger days using something like MSN was almost a direct replacement for talking to someone on the phone I.e. You would have real time interaction with someone, by conversing with them almost like speaking on the phone.

These days, although Facebook Messenger and other forms of chat are available, we seem to interact indirectly, for example, I can post a message on Facebook which some may respond to by leaving a comment but not necessarily having a real time interaction with them.

We as a generation and society seem to have become so engrossed in posting pictures, usually of how "amazing" our life is or the other extreme of how "crap" life is. I've been as guilty as anyone of this in the past and some would argue I still am (stop picking on me!). I guess it puts me in a good position to ask "why do we need to post and tell the world what's going on in our lives?", "did the world ask to be told about my day?", "would it make a difference to the world if I was having the most amazing time of my life?", I think you get the gist of where I'm going with this, right? 

We seem to have lost our abilities to interact with others, in that, not many of us (I don't believe) pick up the phone and say "hi (insert name), how's your day going today?" Which used to provide a sense of realism, a sense of warmth that someone is/was genuinely interested in my life. 

Is it a coincidence that we hear so much more about people suffering from mental health issues? No, I don't think it is. When I thought about writing about this topic I searched google for links between social media and poor mental health, and the majority of results referred to "young people", and that's why I wanted to write this post. I feel like the next generation will suffer from the adverse effects of social media more so than this generation does. We seem to be seeing the start of this already with online bullying, shaming, etc...

People will think I'm a hypocrite for raising concerns around social media, particularly because I'm a regular user of Facebook but that doesn't mean the questions I've asked are any less relevant. If anything, I feel like I'm in a good place to bring it up.

I mean, how many of you log on to a social media platform as soon as you wake up? Or check your phone to see what the latest updates are on whichever social media platforms you use? 

I do it most of the time; wake up, check phone, and then do other things. You probably too!

Social media, no matter how many connections, friends, and followers you have can be a very lonely place. It's hard not to see posts on social media and then compare them to your own lives, however people only post what they want you to see, you have no idea of the real truth or what's truly happening on the other side of that screen. 

This in turn can effect a person's mental health. Comparing someone else's perfect or amazing life to their own and developing a false picture can have more of a deeper adverse effect than people may realise.

This is all relevant to the Digital age we live in, and as things become more digitised, the situation gets worse. Why is life becoming more digitised? In my view it's because we want it to, we want things to make life easier for us regardless of the consequences.

My view on a digitised world and mental health is that, as social media and the digital world matures more, we need to better equip ourselves and our children particularly against the pros and cons of it all. It's important I feel to ensure we can handle the pressure of this evolving world, because if we don't we're going to see a lot more cases of people with mental health issues. 

I think I've waffled on enough here, what do you guys think? Do you think the digital world is a problem? Do you think there's an overreaction to the causes of social media on mental health? What do you think we need to do to help the situation?

Oh and here's a recent written piece I found on bbc.com, makes interesting reading!