We all know a social media show off, who uses their channels as a shop window of how perfect their lives are.

Whether it’s their amazing figure in their work-out gear, their latest glistening expensive purchase or their envy-inducing home and garden, it can feel like these people exist to make us feel completely inadequate in comparison.

Sadly, they didn’t take any time off from flaunting in lockdown and continued to spend their days showcasing their best lives for us all to see and crave.

With a reported 87% increase in social media usage over the last few months*, it’s been impossible to escape seeing others using the pandemic to upskill themselves, renovate their properties or embark on new healthy eating and exercise regimes. It’s exhausting to scroll through, let alone actually do!

The Covid-19 crisis has been the most extraordinary event most of us have ever experienced, altering the way we live our lives and creating new rules and protocols to abide by in order to keep ourselves and our loved ones safe.

We were each forced into our homes for an intense period of three months and left to make our own entertainment, distractions and coping strategies to endure what was, on reflection, a pretty terrifying period of time.

Even those without any pre-existing mental health difficulties have admitted to finding it tough – the uncertainty, concerns about unemployment and struggling to stay confined to our homes all the time. It wasn’t great for anyone!

Some chose to use the time to study online, broadening their skillsets and qualifying in new areas. Some made home improvements, brought pets and modernised their gardens. Others bought home gym equipment and bikes and vowed to eat healthily or quit drinking.

All that is great. Seriously, hats off to everyone who made the most of it and managed to be productive – but it’s OK if all you did was survive.

If you were able to calm a racing mind, if you made it through the days without crying or, heck, if you just got up and dressed most days, you did great too!

Thankfully, restrictions are easing now and the ‘new normal’ is upon us. As many emerge as ‘better’ people with new skills and outlooks on life, it’s important to remember that it’s OK to return to life as it was before. To not be a new person, or to not have changed in a big way.

Anxiety, depression and mental health conditions are on the rise as a result of lockdown and it can be difficult enough to get back to our former lives and routines, let alone trying to be brand, shiny new versions of ourselves.

So however you’re ending lockdown, remember it’s OK. This is a situation unlike any other and there’s no right or wrong way to be. Keep going – you’re doing great!

* – Business Today