Freely Welcoming And Exploring Social Trends

In this talk, I'll discuss how we tend to resist social trends. I'll explain how this resistance to them can sometimes be limiting and detrimental for us, and how letting go of it can help us to explore new things in life, have other benefits more generally, and ultimately grow as people. I do encourage you to be a little cautious in practising this though, as I explain in the talk.

Transcript

So,

Hello there.

Welcome to this talk about welcoming and exploring new trends.

Thank you for joining me today and I hope this talk will be helpful to you.

So,

What trends are we talking about?

We're talking about popular fads,

Trends,

Whatever you want to call them.

Trends that a lot of people sign up to,

Things that become popular in society,

Sort of social trends,

Things like this.

Whether that's sort of fashion or something,

Technology,

A new phone or something perhaps.

This is the sort of trends that we're talking about,

The sort of trends we're discussing.

So,

I'm just going to sort of jump straight into it.

I think there's a tendency among a lot of people to resist signing up to trends.

There's a feeling of if I sign up to trends,

I'm sort of giving in,

I'm sort of compromising myself,

I'm not standing strong for myself.

And sometimes this is true.

This is a healthy instinct to have,

I think.

But I think it is possible to release this,

To let go of this.

I don't think it needs to be there in every situation.

So,

Let's try and understand it better.

Where does this tendency come from?

Okay,

Why do we feel like this?

Why do we sort of have a bad instinct about signing up to popular trends?

I think the reason is that lots of people nowadays have relatively low self-esteem.

Perhaps it's just the society we live in.

I think technology,

Digitalisation,

Social media and things lead a lot more people than in the past,

I think,

To have low self-esteem.

And I think people subscribe to trends in a kind of move of self-affirmation.

They sort of feel,

If I'm doing that,

I'm going with the crowd,

I'm valid then.

Otherwise I'm sort of inferior,

Not valid.

So essentially,

They have this low self-esteem and they use subscribing to trends in that way as a kind of escape from it.

So rather than facing up to the actual underlying problem and trying to solve that,

Which is what you need to do in that situation,

Instead they try to run away from it,

To escape it by sort of giving themselves a sort of phony hope by joining in something that everyone's doing and trying to feel accepted in that way.

So obviously then we see the reason people don't like trends is because if you have low self-esteem you might subscribe to a trend to escape from that issue.

But it doesn't,

The reverse doesn't follow that if you subscribe to a trend you must therefore have low self-esteem.

You're sort of wagging the dog with the tail then.

It doesn't follow in that respect.

So I think we need to acknowledge that and let go of our resistance to trends on that basis because it doesn't apply universally.

It might well apply in a lot of situations,

But it does not apply universally.

You can easily subscribe to trends simply because you enjoy them and just generally you can subscribe to them while you have high or sort of sufficient self-esteem.

So it is okay to subscribe to trends in this way.

Remember to bear this distinction in mind so that you don't sort of slip into thinking that,

In the process that I'm about to describe,

So you don't slip into thinking that it's necessary to subscribe to these trends.

It's just totally sort of trivial,

Just superficial for fun.

Just a bit of fun.

So with that in mind why do we want to subscribe to any of them anyway?

What's the point?

Why is it kind of,

Why would we want to subscribe to these trends to sort of,

You know,

What does it achieve?

I'd say you can learn new things and you can have new experiences from subscribing to trends and releasing your resistance to them.

You can really sort of get the most out of life from these new experiences.

You can sort of explore much more what's on offer in life by having these new experiences and by opening up to new trends.

It can also help to open the mind to new things and to cultivate a more open minded,

A more accepting and a less judgemental attitude sort of generally.

Just in life generally.

Obviously it's sort of clear why this is beneficial.

Lots of people want to be open minded,

Want to be less judgemental.

But it's also more specifically can be beneficial to our mental health and you sort of think well,

How can that be?

How can subscribing to trends be beneficial to mental health?

Surely that doesn't make any sense.

And I think again that shows sort of how prevalent and pervasive this assumption is that if you subscribe to a trend you have low self esteem.

And again I'm not saying that's not correct,

It's just it's not sort of a necessary truth.

It's not necessitated in that sense.

So in terms of mental health it can be beneficial because if you do cultivate this more open minded attitude and more importantly and relevantly in this case,

The less judgemental attitude,

That can really help to deal with sort of stress and other sort of everyday mental health issues that we experience.

If you're less judgemental about stress,

About anxiety,

About fear,

You know whatever it is and indeed with body positivity and things if you're less judgemental about yourself this can only be a good thing.

Specifically with stress and things if you're less judgemental about it it becomes more of just kind of a thing rather than a problem.

You're not finding fault with it,

You're simply acknowledging it.

And this is,

I mean you've probably worked out by now this is indeed the whole point of mindfulness,

Okay,

Is being less judgemental of being more sort of open to thoughts,

To emotions,

Just allowing them in,

Observing what's there rather than judging them as good or bad.

So it can help this sort of subscribing to trends,

Allowing yourself to open up to trends can help in several ways that can be beneficial to yourself as a person.

There's also an extent to which doing something everyone else is doing can make you feel more sort of easy,

More comfortable,

More happy with yourself.

Obviously there's a fine line here between sort of having higher self esteem and simply feeling sort of happy from signing up to those trends because in a sense life is less of a sort of resistance battle,

Life is less of a struggle so it's a bit more easy to have that sort of catharsis,

That tranquility of just going along sort of with the flow if you like.

And then there's the other side on the fine line,

As mentioned earlier of using sort of subscription to trends as an escape from low self esteem.

So there's a difference between sort of feeling happy about,

Sort of going with the sort of social flow if you like and between going,

Sort of feeling much more pressured to use it as an escape from issues that you are willing to work on yourself.

This feeling of being happy or going with the flow of it isn't a problem as such,

It's just something to bear in mind and to be cautious about in case you're not aware that perhaps you have low self esteem or something.

So you just need to be aware that there is a fine distinction here between being a side effect,

Feeling happy being a side effect,

Feeling happy being your motivation for sort of going through with this process.

So now we have the reason why we tend to resist trends.

We have when you should and shouldn't release that resistance and welcome those trends or explore those trends and we have what you can get from doing that,

From exploring them and why you would want to subscribe to them.

But how then do we subscribe to them?

What is the process of subscribing to those trends and participating,

Perhaps is a better word for it,

Participating in those trends.

So most of it should be relatively self explanatory obviously if you want to try something you try it,

Everyone sort of knows how that works.

Often it's good to remember,

So I just want to mention a couple of sort of subtle details and nuances and good tips for engaging with it and sort of participating in these trends.

First one is push yourself but don't push yourself too far.

The best approach,

This really is the main one,

Is usually to get into whatever it is bit by bit.

Starting with a tiny bit and relatively soon afterwards trying it again a bit more and so on and so on.

The reason you want to do it relatively soon after it is so that if it's sort of you still want to try it but it's much easier to pass to sort of just relax and sort of be lazy a bit and not try it.

You don't want it to fizzle out so you want to try it again relatively soon afterwards.

This is a useful way to do it so that it's not too much of a sort of shock initially if you sort of throw yourself into it and you scare yourself away from it but at the same time remember to try it enough,

Achieve that balance,

Try it enough the first time that you're really sort of breaking down any barrier against it and any fear of it and so on and so on.

So we need to strike that balance where you're trying it wholeheartedly but not throwing yourself blindly into it.

That's just a useful sort of tip to remember.

It's important to note here perhaps the elephant in the room obviously that if you really want to try it this process of gradual increase or increase at whatever speed really suits you it should be pretty easy and straightforward.

You should sort of feel relatively kind of excited about it,

Excited by it because it's what you want to do.

If it's not and if that's not how you feel and perhaps it feels more like a chore then please please please ask yourself if it's actually what you want.

The whole point of this is that you are choosing new trends.

You're not being pressured into them in order to explore new things and have new experiences.

You're not being pressured into them.

You are choosing them yourself.

If it feels like a chore then it's very very possible,

As indeed it's highly probable,

That you're beginning to take it a bit too seriously and in this situation I'd advise you to stop completely,

Stop this participation in the trend and step out of the process to assess how you feel about it.

If you find that actually you are taking it too seriously and you're having low self-esteem or another underlying issue then please please work on this before trying this process again.

It's so important if you notice yourself feeling pressured,

Feeling like it's a chore that you step out because otherwise you're letting yourself be pressured by the self-esteem and being pressured here is really going to feed that low self-esteem as you let it begin to take control of you.

So it's really important to start this process from a place of high or at least average self-esteem.

It's actually sufficient to be able to go through this by choice not by pressure.

I know I keep sort of going on about that but it is really really important to bear that in mind.

There is an element of feeling some pressure.

This is a bit confusing so I'm going back on myself now but here there is an element of feeling some pressure to conform.

But it's really very very very light pressure.

Sort of oh everyone else is doing this,

Maybe I should do this,

Maybe I would feel a bit happier doing it.

But it should be easy to push down.

Should not be forcing you anywhere.

And when you begin this process of trying a new trend you should really be acknowledging this pressure.

Just notice that it's there just like any other mindfulness.

Not taking it seriously.

Say hello I see you there.

I don't need to go along with you.

And then allowing yourself to go in the direction of the pressure,

Go with the pressure a little bit in order to find the new things.

While realising that you don't need to go with it.

You are perfectly valuable without sort of succumbing to it.

You don't need to succumb to this pressure in order to be valuable or to be valid.

So it's important not to be confused between those two types of pressure here.

There's the light pressure of kind of this is what everyone else is doing which is kind of survival instinct to maybe you should go along with the rest of the flock,

The herd,

The group,

Whatever you want to call it.

And there's the much heavier pressure when you're being sort of forced into it when you're taking it too seriously.

And that's the one you want to really keep an eye on and make sure you're okay with the light pressure but if the heavier pressure is there then step out and reconsider.

So that's really everything I need to say on this I think.

I've gone on long enough now.

It's now with you to assess whether you think you're in the right place for this,

To try this and then to go out and try some new things.

Perhaps you have some things in mind already that maybe you're afraid of.

You want to go and sort of have a go at to break that fear or maybe you sort of reject them on principle.

I know I do that a lot myself.

So you know maybe you already have some things in mind you want to sort of go out and try or maybe you sort of just feel like you want to expand yourself sort of as a person,

Expand your interests,

Open your mind a bit and so you want to go out and find some new things which you sort of don't already have in mind.

If you want to do that I recommend go out and maybe go on a walk,

Whatever,

Do whatever you want,

Socialise with some people,

Go out into the world,

Find some things that lots of people seem to sort of subscribe to,

To participate in and have a go at them.

If nothing else in this process really just remember not to take anything too seriously.

It's all a bit of fun to find new experiences,

To find new things and to explore more of what life has to offer with some added benefits to yourself and perhaps your mental health alongside.

Do not take things too seriously.

Okay?

It's a bit of fun.

And so with that I've really come to the end of what I need to say.

As I say it's with you now to go out and explore.

So thank you for coming and for joining me today.

I hope that that helped.

I hope that it was clear and that I didn't sort of go on too much.

I know I have a habit of doing that but I hope that it really does help you and that it proves beneficial for you and that you can really go out and use it.

Don't worry too much about my sort of advice of make sure you're in the right place.

It's not kind of a strict guideline.

It's just to make sure that you're able to do this from the right starting point and get the most out of this and making sure that nobody gets into trouble.

So as I say with that,

Thank you for joining me today and I very much hope to see you next time.

Goodbye.