Six things we need to normalise in everyday life.

There are so many things in our society that have been shamed, tabooed, or made us feel embarrassed to talk about. Here are six things we need to normalise in our day to day lives.

Grieving the loss of anything

We don’t only experience grief when we lose a loved one or end a romantic relationship. Any loss requires us to process grief. A friendship, an old version of ourselves, a job, a period of our life, or even a home. Positive change will still require us to let go in order to welcome in the new - so we need to be able to comfortably and fully process grief.

Feeling every emotion.

We have them for a reason. If we didn’t need an emotion, why would the human body be able to feel or express it? You wouldn’t be able to feel anger or cry if these emotions didn’t serve a purpose.

All emotions are a message, a release, a necessity. Learn to tune in to yourself and understand what the emotion is telling you. And remember, if you suppress one emotion, you suppress them all. We can’t selectively feel emotions so if we try and numb sadness or anger, we also numb joy and love.

Saying no

Simply - if it’s not a fuck yes, it’s a fuck no. Saying yes when we want to say no means we are saying no to what we really want to say yes to. When we fill our days with things that we don’t really want to do, we’re not allowing ourselves the space for the good shit.

Feeling the discomfort of change (and allowing it anyway)

Change can feel heavy and uncomfortable. Humans love the certainty of safety and comfort but we can mistake anything outside of our comfort zone as danger when actually this space is where we grow and move forward. Any time that we choose to step out of our comfort zone, we will feel discomfort, but allowing that and reframing it as a positive feeling can help make significant, lasting change.

Doing things imperfectly

Perfect is literally impossible - take it from a recovering perfectionist. Trying to get things done perfectly is the quickest way to move absolutely nowhere. Perfectionism leads to inaction, frustration, and a whole host of overthinking. Start now and start imperfectly. No one will be as critical of what you’re doing as you are.

Loving ourselves

We are so conditioned to hate ourselves that we do everything we can to change ourselves. There’s no wonder collective self-love and self-confidence are so low. A display of confidence can be viewed as arrogance and self-praise dubbed as self-centred. But it’s not arrogant to like who you are, love your traits, and cheer yourself on. It’s absolutely vital. And it’s what is needed in our society by the bucket load.