Feel Good 101_The Outsiders' Guide to a Happier Life Page 21
Not everyone is going to like you. Get over it. Up until very recently, I was obsessed with the idea of getting my online critics to change their opinions of me. I feel as though this stemmed from working as a waitress where I got on with all my colleagues and filming videos for a small audience who truly all loved what I was making, to expanding and growing an audience from viral videos and word of mouth. As if out of nowhere, I suddenly had people I had never met being sceptical and/or critical of everything I did (even a few months in to writing this book I stumbled across a post about me, claiming that my book deal couldn’t possibly have happened as I’d described in a video, and that I had to be lying about how long I’d been in talks with my publisher!). I became extremely insecure, just as I’d been as a teenager, second-guessing every line in my videos, every tweet or post, reading them over and over again until I was sure they wouldn’t offend someone and start a site-wide backlash.
The fact is that no matter what you do – whether you’re at school, work or you’re an ‘online personality’ (or as the journalists like to call us, ‘Internet sensations that make MILLIONS just sitting in their bedrooms’) – there will be people who just don’t like you, just as you don’t like everyone you come across, either. Eventually you will find yourself at the receiving end of someone else’s impressions and opinions. Whilst you can do everything in your power to try and convince these people that they are wrong about you, life becomes easier once you accept that these people who don’t like you have already made up their minds about you. It sounds clichéd as all hell, but try your hardest to focus on the people who dedicate their time to caring about you and appreciating what you do, rather than wasting it on people who want to tear you down. If you only had ten minutes to live, and you had to choose between spending those ten minutes in a room filled with your loved ones or in a room filled with your haters, which would you choose? When the aspect of time comes into play, we all choose to accept love. Change your perspective – those who mind don’t matter, and those that matter don’t mind. You are most likely not going to change the minds of people who don’t like you – at its very core, it’s either jealousy, chemistry, or both. Hearing someone talk shit about you or socially reject you can really fucking sting, but in time, that pain will bounce right off your thick skin.
Now, when hearing about someone who doesn’t enjoy my music or my video content, I respect it. Taste is subjective. I’m not about to go and confront them and ask, ‘Well, why don’t you like me? What did I do? What can I do to change that?’ because I know I’ll never get the answer I want without having to change the things I really like about myself. I’m going to let them call me ‘annoying’, or say that this book is a pile of dog shit, and I’m going to carry on creating – both for myself and for people who support me, such as yourself. You cannot turn your haters into your lovers – it is a futile exercise.
If you are being bullied or harassed, do what you need to in order to neutralise that situation, be it telling a teacher, parent or higher management at work, but turn that helplessness and desperation for approval into a strength, simply by choosing to draw a line under them and walking away with your head held high. It won’t be easy at first, but your skin will thicken in time and with age. Someone doesn’t like you? Big fucking deal! Who honestly cares, besides you? If you stop caring, then no one cares about their often irrational hatred! You take their power from under them in one fell swoop by flicking your care switch to Off. Remember that as with bullies, the amount of time that critics remain an important part of your life is entirely up to you. They won’t stick around to talk about you for ever, but even if they persist, once you are able to train your brain to no longer give them much thought, it’s as though they don’t exist. This goes for strangers on the Internet, too. Block them or mute them, and cyber-walk away. Let them shout into the void whilst you drown them out with the sounds from the people who spend their time appreciating you for your weird, wacky self.
EPILOGUE
Your Eighty Years
I truly cannot believe we’re here at the end. I’ve made it all the way through the writing process, and you’ve made it through all of my weird anecdotes and often nonsensical metaphors. I feel as though we’ve both achieved something here. If this book was a human, we’d now be looking at an old man – one who has lost a lot, but is still smiling. ‘What other choice do I have?’ he asks, chuckling to himself as he looks back at bittersweet memories of old, captured in photographs. With this . . . nonsensical metaphor, I want to talk about getting old. Like, old old.
On average, a typical human in the Western world will live to be approximately eighty years old. You may be thirteen, a sixth of the way through your life, or you might be twenty-five, a third of the way through. I’m not trying to give you a crisis – but when you reach the age of eighty, or surpass it, your time is limited. From this moment on, you have the rest of your eighty years to do as much as you’ve set out to do as possible. At best, you’ve been given around eighty years to explore the world, learn skills that interest you, climb career ladders, start a family (should you choose to), and then before you know it, it’s over. Death, as you know by now, used to terrify me – not so much my own mortality, but that of my loved ones. I have had to make peace with the fact that death is inevitable, and in doing such, I have begun to regret how little I truly lived through my early years, and am trying my hardest to make up for it.
In 2012, when I was twenty-one years old, I filmed and uploaded a video called ‘One Chance’. In it, I spoke about the importance of chasing a dream if you have one, as well as lamenting my lack of motivation in my teenage years. I speak about how, when I first discovered music with guitars, I would sing into a hairbrush, pretending I was performing on stage to a crowd who had bought tickets to see me, dreaming of being friends with my favourite band, Busted. Although I was only fourteen, and limited by my inability to attend a stage school, I look back at my wasted teenage years filled with regret for the after-school clubs I didn’t fight to join, as well as the musician kids at school I could have tried to befriend and write music with. Instead, I was preoccupied with trying to be liked, by my peers and my crushes, barely picking up my neglected guitar that my dad had bought me and making him feel as though he had wasted his money.
Whilst I do not hold my blow with anxiety against myself (if I woke up every morning and blamed my mental health issues on myself, I wouldn’t want to wake up, simple as that), I sometimes sit back and reflect on all the opportunities I couldn’t bring myself to take: the teaching degree I never studied for, the lifelong friendships I would have made at university (as well as the sense of independence I would have gotten there), the holidays with friends and press events abroad that I bailed on . . .
Just as it does no good to worry, it does no good to reflect with regret. Those years, however wasted, are behind me now. I cannot get them back. I do not get a do-over. These were the cards I was dealt, and I have to keep playing my hand. All I can do is ensure that the remainder of my eighty years is spent in such a way that my early life pales in comparison. Whilst I am not the master of living life to the full, I am no longer afraid of taking opportunities to make wonderful memories. I say yes and no to the appropriate things; I travel the world whenever I’m able to; I make sure to visit my family and see friends often; I practise guitar and write songs whenever I feel inspired, and work hard to play the shows to the crowd that I dreamed of as a teenager.
Did I mention that Busted got back together and I got to tour with them? I’m fairly sure I mentioned that. It only took twelve years(!)
The bottom line is: you truly get one chance to nail this ‘life’ thing. There are no do-overs (at least, not in your current vessel, should you believe in reincarnation) and there will be times when you have hated entire days and haven’t lived life to the fullest – that is okay. Rest days are super important! However – your clock is ticking. You have eighty years to live the best life you possibly can. You can s
pend those eighty years however you want – it’s your life, after all. You can spend them dreaming, or you can spend them doing. You can spend them defeated, or you can spend them fighting. You can fill your brain’s photo album to the brim with memories and gorgeous sights, or you can choose to leave it blank. Ultimately, at the end of it all, when you and I are approaching the end of our short time here, we’ll be saying one of two things:
‘I’m glad I tried that.’
‘I wish I’d tried that.’
I cannot personally think of a scenario more depressing than being an elderly lady on my deathbed, with nothing but my memories to reflect on, and finding that there aren’t as many as I’d hoped. I dread the thought of being in a hospital and remembering times when I backed out of doing something, and wishing with all my might I had the power to go back and do it. Regret is one of the most dull-ache emotions you can experience, and so it is up to you to minimise that final pang of regret you will feel when it is too late to do something about it. As I said earlier – everything you want in life is on the other side of your fear. Talk to those intimidating cool kids that you want to be friends with. Tell your crush that they’re cute. Climb that career ladder. Take that day off. Go on that holiday. Put in that time towards your passion. Write that song. Write that book. Take that chance. If it all goes tits-up, well, that’s gonna suck for some time, but at least, when you’re able to dust yourself off and get back up, you’ll be proud of yourself for having tried. It will always be better to say ‘I wish I hadn’t done that’ than ‘I wish I’d tried that’.
My final plea to you, after you’ve stuck around reading my words for so long, is this: if there is something that you dream of doing (that is legal, obviously) then please do everything in your power to do it. Chase after it. Make mistakes and learn from them. Don’t waste your limited time on this planet because you’re sitting in the passenger seat next to your fear. Don’t spend your time worrying about your critics. Don’t waste your life trying to impress the people who don’t like you for who you are. Do whatever you need to do to be in that deathbed, smiling, saying, ‘Man . . . I had a good run.’
After twenty-five years of tears, mistakes, anguish, fear, anxiety, depression and regrets – and then love, friendship, memories, sightseeing, laughter, accomplishing dreams and slowly discovering who I truly am . . . yeah, I’m happy here. I feel good. I leave you with my favourite quote:
‘Stay hungry, stay foolish.’
– Steve Jobs
I hope you feel good, too.
Emma ♥ x
Resources
If you’re reading this section and considering reaching out to these services for help – I want to offer you the biggest congratulations! It truly takes a lot of guts not only to admit that you are struggling, but also to choose to take action and do something about your problems. I’ve spent many years being too afraid to seek help. What if they think I’m being stupid? What if they tell me that I’m making things up? I also still find myself with an irrational fear of talking to strangers on the phone to the point where calling for a taxi is an arduous task – so don’t worry, you’re not alone.
With that said, I feel as though before I leave you, I must state this: You’re not being stupid. The services listed below employ trained professionals, who will have listened to many others with similar issues more times than you can imagine:
UK
• SAMARITANS – free confidential support for anyone in distress.
www.samaritans.org / 116 123 (Freephone helpline, 24 hours a day, every day.)
• NHS – find advice regarding medical treatment.
www.nhs.uk
Call 111 for any non-emergency medical assistance (Freephone, 24 hours a day, every day.)
Call 999 for emergencies only.
• CHILDLINE – free confidential advice for children and young people.
www.childline.org / 0800 1111 (Freephone helpline, 24 hours a day, every day.)
• THE MIX – a support service and online resource for young people, offering advice on a variety of issues.
www.themix.org.uk / 0808 808 4994 (Freephone helpline, 11 a.m.–11 p.m. every day.)
• BROOK ADVISORY SERVICE – advice and support for anyone under 25 on sex, contraception, pregnancy, sexual health and abortion. Drop-in appointments available at clinics nationwide.
www.brook.org.uk
• MIND – charity providing information and support on a range of mental health issues.
www.mind.org.uk / 0300 123 3393 (Infoline, 9 a.m.–6 p.m., Monday to Friday. Calls charged at local rates.)
• SWITCHBOARD – helpline providing support and advice for LGBT+ people.
www.switchboard.lgbt / 0300 330 0630 (10 a.m.–10 p.m. every day.)
Ireland
• SAMARITANS – free confidential support for anyone in distress.
www.samaritans.org / 116 123 (Freephone helpline, 24 hours a day, every day.)
• CHILDLINE – free confidential advice for children and young people.
www.childline.ie / 1 800 666 666 (Freephone helpline, 24 hours a day, every day.)
• SPUNOUT – a support service and online resource for young people, offering advice on a variety of issues.
www.spunout.ie
• JIGSAW – organisation providing mental health support to people under 25.
www.jigsaw.ie
• LGBT Helpline – confidential helpline for LGBT people in Ireland.
www.lgbt.ie / 1 890 929 539 (6.30 p.m.–9 p.m., Monday to Wednesday; 6.30 p.m.–10 p.m., Thursday; 4 p.m.–10 p.m., Friday; 4 p.m.–6 p.m., Saturday and Sunday)
Australia
• LIFELINE – free confidential support for anyone in distress.
www.lifeline.org.au / 13 11 14 (24 hours a day, every day.)
• KIDS HELPLINE – free confidential counselling service for anyone between the ages of five and twenty.
www.kidshelp.com.au / 1 800 55 1800 (24 hours a day, every day.)
• REACHOUT – a support service and online resource for young people, offering advice on a variety of issues.
www.au.reachout.com
• BEYONDBLUE – organisation providing information and support on mental health issues.
www.beyondblue.org.uk / 1 300 22 4636 (24 hours a day, every day.)
• For support and resources for LGBT+ people in Australia, visit:
www.healthdirect.gov.au/lgbti-mental-health
New Zealand
• SAMARITANS – free confidential support for anyone in distress.
www.samaritans.org.nz / 0800 726 666 (Freephone helpline, 24 hours a day, every day.)
• YOUTHLINE – free confidential support and advice for young people.
www.youthline.co.nz / 0800 376 633 (Freephone helpline, 24 hours a day, every day.)
• For information about mental health services in New Zealand, visit:
www.mentalhealth.org.nz
• OUTLINE – free confidential support for LGBTQI+ people in New Zealand.
www.outline.org.nz / 0800 688 5463
USA
• NATIONAL SUICIDE PREVENTION LIFELINE – free confidential support for anyone in distress.
www.suicidepreventionlifeline.org / 1-800-273-8255 (Freephone helpline, 24 hours a day, every day)
• PLANNED PARENTHOOD – advice, support and healthcare for women on sex, contraception, pregnancy, sexual health and abortion.
www.plannedparenthood.org / 1-800-230-7256 for an appointment.
• THE TREVOR PROJECT – service offering crisis intervention and suicide prevention for young LGBTQ people aged 18–24. www.thetrevorproject.org / 1-866-488-7386 (24 hours a day, every day)
• NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Health) – organisation providing information and support on a range of mental health issues.
www.nami.org / 1-800-950-6264 (10 a.m.–6 p.m. ET, Monday to Friday.)
In the extremely unlikely situation that you do not receive exceptional servi
ce from the places listed above, lodge a complaint and do not let it deter you from seeking treatment in order to be truly happy. Getting help does not make you stupid – it makes you brave.
Take care of yourself. Go and have a wonderful life. If it hasn’t already begun, then it begins today.
To The Ones I Love . . .
Whilst Feel Good 101 took many long, exhausting hours to create, this book of life lessons has been twenty-five years in the making. So many people have entered my life and graced me with their love, knowledge and experiences that it would be near impossible to thank them all.