Or more specifically in my case today, brownie with raspberries and whipped cream! Cake isn’t my usual breakfast choice, in fact often it’s leftovers from dinner so anything from curry to chilli, sometimes pasta if I’m a little hungover, or a full English with all of the trimmings, but it’s rarely cereal. I enjoy my food, I like eating nice things and I also like to eat things that are good for me. Fruit and veg for example, not something out of a plastic bag in a cardboard box that goes to a great effort of telling me how good for me it is when it’s clearly been processed to within an inch of its life.
Pretty much everywhere you look today, someone is trying to sell you something. It could be a product like breakfast cereal, a lifestyle from inside the covers of a glossy magazine, more plastic crap that claims to save you time or inconvenience but will just end up in the back of a drawer. We’re all being sold to, all the time. We’re all being fed messages from those that want us to part with our hard earned money. Trouble is, those messages are false. Buying expensive gin is not guaranteed to make you fabulous (although you might feel it for a couple of hours when you’re under the influence!). Eating so called healthy ready meals is not necessarily healthy because they’re processed. A chocolate bar doesn’t help you work, rest and play. You’re quite capable of doing all of those things without it.
When there’s all this noise around us, we have to sift through it and choose what we believe. As the mum of two teenagers, I’m constantly reminding them that just because a product makes a claim doesn’t mean it’s true. It’s something we could all do with remembering. Buying a new dress won’t give me a new body, no matter how much I wish it would provide me with a slimmer and sleeker version. Focusing time and effort on things means we accumulate clutter and fritter away out hard earned money.
So what can we do? Well firstly make our own minds up about whether something is good for us or not, do our own research and don’t excitedly latch onto the next big thing. Notice the messages around us and how often we see them. Even just this morning reading the news and social media on my phone I’ve seen numerous adverts for things that companies think I might want, just to remind me. We can not read the news or tune out of social media and that avoids the ads and also the comparisonitis that crops up when you see everyone else’s perfect lives. Because we know they’re not really perfect, don’t we. They’re just highlight reels of their best bits, what they want everyone to see and not the things they would be mortified if someone knew.
The key to happiness, in my view, is to focus on you. Learn the things that will make you feel better and do more of those, and less of the things that make you feel rubbish. Think, really consider what you want out of life, and work to make that happen. Take yourself mentally to the end of your life and think about what you’ll be glad you focused on and what will be irrelevant. It sounds morbid but life is short, even for those who live well into old age, and I’m not sure you get a second chance to be honest. So do the important things, the hard things that are worthwhile. That mean something to you. Spend your time on experiences and making memories that you’ll keep with you forever. Don’t eat the cardboard cereal just because according to their marketing department it’s really good for you! Make your own decisions, be curious, and do what’s right for you.
Disclaimer - not a picture of the cake I had for breakfast but it was the last one I baked, for my lovely eldest nieces fifth birthday. She told me what she wanted and I made it happen for her :)