What Does ' Living Your Life' Really Mean? - Caroline's Fashion Styling

I’ve been thinking about dreams and life for a while and I feel there’s something that needs to be said about today’s world and the messages being constantly sent out. Let’s face it, if there is one thing that the online blog market is truly saturated with – its empowerment messages. Ironic really because if there is one thing people truly lack in this general age, it’s also empowerment. Everywhere I look, every article I read, there’s a message, a message telling me to go after my dreams, a message telling me to have it all, telling me to travel the world, to learn something new, to master my IT skills, to join a gym. It’s actually quite tiring. Maybe I just want to sit on my sofa and eat a bag of Doritos, maybe that’s my daydream.

What does living your life for you look truly look like?

Well, I wouldn’t know because I’m not you, my dreams are not your dreams. My dream is to travel the world on a yacht, your dream might be to have 10 kids. The problem with all these empowering messages is that I feel they create doubt and mental conflict. The constant bombardment of messages telling you to live a better life gives the mistaken impression that there might be something wrong with your current one. That you’re not thin or fit enough or that you are missing out on important life experiences.

The other thing that grates on my nerves is that a lot of these messages are nice and dreamy but don’t take into account practicality. It’s all very well to tell someone to book that trip they’ve been dreaming about – what if that person is barely making ends meet? How will these messages make that person feel? What if that person has a family they’re responsible for? The wrong message on the wrong day can have dire consequences.

I believe in empowering people, I believe in positivity and having a positive outlook but I think that along the way we’ve lost sight of what the purpose was meant to be and turned all of this into a mission to better people’s lives. And that’s the part that worries me.