Whilst we may love to watch television, it can play havoc with our mental wellbeing! It can distort our sense of identity and make us feel inadequate. Even for those of us who do not aspire to cosmetic surgery or to own a portfolio of property, watching so many examples of idealism can make us feel depressed.

We forget to register all the wonderful things that make us the individuals that we are – our authentic personality traits, which most of us are trying to shape up and improve on.

In short, watching how celebrities conduct their lives triggers a human desire to compare ourselves, just like when we were kids and would compare pencil cases, or how we looked. We’d often feel worse off, or sometimes better than them – and with maturity, hopefully we’ve learnt not to be judgmental.

Yet, when we watch other people’s lives on TV, all such values are in danger of flying out of the window – especially for those of us who feel fragile… and so we risk falling back into basic playground assumptions, because we forget to be our authentic selves.

Next time you feel depleted by the apparent perfect lives of people whom you might admire, remember much of what you see is carefully edited and meticulously styled: show business is about creating illusions!

But moreover, whether we’re well-known or not, we all must take care of our mental health, and being authentically you is the best tool that you can have as a human being. That, and learning to live happily in your own skin.

Being truthful about who we are can be compared to an aged bottle of wine: it can take a lifetime to mature and to reach its finest flavour. It is cherished and stored and becomes its best after years of maturing. In a world of smoke and mirrors, dare to be the genuine person that you are, because self-truth is the most attractive attribute that we have.