I Don't Believe You
“What counts is what we are,
and the way we deepen our relationship
with the world and with others,
a relationship that can be one of
both love for all that exists
and of desire for transformation”.
Italo Calvino
On a day like today, when we are in the middle of a pandemic, and a PR stunt dreamt up by a travel agency is telling us to feel blue we must remember: “what counts is what we are…”
Last week, for the first time, I found out about Blue Monday! In Spain, we do not have this date in our calendar. Neither does China, where I lived most of my adult life before moving to the UK three years ago. Honestly, I am glad that I managed to avoid such intentional brainwashing about how I should feel on the third Monday of January.
I was curious so I did a bit of online research on the story behind Blue Monday. For a second, I thought that maybe there was some ancient tradition behind it. I was hoping for a story that could help me learn more about the heritage of a culture different to mine. I was greatly surprised and disappointed to discover that, in fact, Blue Monday was a marketing tool created by a British travel agency.
Apparently, in 2004, they hired a psychologist to come up with a “scientific formula” that would encourage people to book a holiday to escape the misery they were all supposed to be feeling on this particular Monday in January.
This made me think of my experience when I stopped working as an international correspondent in Asia and I went over to ‘the dark side’. This is how the world of marketing and PR is referred to among journalists who leave the craft. This is because most journalists are used to dealing with these marketing organisations in a way that normally questions everything they say. In journalism, stories come from real people. Ideally, news is made with fact checked information and offers a broad and plural view on the issue. It aspires to become a gateway to unknown ways of being. Arguably, the reason PR is considered the dark side is because it intentionally aims to shift people’s mindsets to their advantage.
When I moved back to Europe, after a decade spent in China, I had a lot of catching up to do. I had to bring myself up to date with almost everything: the latest trends, lifestyles, ways of socialising, communities, people’s interests…the list went on.
While I was in China, of course, I stayed in touch with loved ones and friends I had left behind in Spain. In both Beijing and Hong Kong, I had a few “Western” colleagues, clients and friends. However, I was living in a completely different environment. My exposure to the global Western culture gradually became limited to these few interactions. As a result, my way of being, living and seeing the world progressively shifted into something that wasn’t uniquely Western.
Moving to London, which despite being a Western European country is also not my Spanish culture of birth, resulted in a massive culture shock. Nothing made sense! Even worse, I did not know how to be myself in this new environment. It seemed to me that, despite the West’s commitment to protect and encourage freedom in its broadest sense, there was one overarching mainstream culture. It almost felt as if there was only one way to fit in. Or even, in my case, how to be a Westerner. Especially because, despite my time abroad, all most people ever saw when they looked at me was a typical Spanish person.
It was tough. I won’t lie, I struggled!
I knew that I needed to be patient and allow myself time to adjust and overcome the difficult situations I encountered in my new environment. However, I often didn’t have that luxury, especially living as I did in this fast-paced age of social media.
I was overloaded with information on what I should be doing to fix my situation, how I should be feeling, or how quickly I should be bouncing back. Regardless of how many Instagram accounts from around the world I followed, algorithms were determined to constantly show me an Anglo-Saxon Western world view, which had never been part of my identity either. I felt as if the Internet was manipulating me. As if I were failing my own wellbeing for not being able to do this or to do that to feel better and to do better.
I was stuck on a loop that was messing with my mental wellbeing. The mainstream narratives I was coming up against were clouding my ability to use my imagination and creativity to build my new life in London as an entrepreneur in a way that made sense to me.
Myself covering the Beijing Design Week, 2013. Here I am photographing an Art Installation from emerging Chinese artists.
A good friend of mine at the time, who had been in a similar situation in the past, showed me a very good trick to break the loop of confusing thoughts, particularly at times when external pressures were constantly triggering my anxiety.
My friend told me that all I had to do was break the spell. Allow those thoughts to come to me, listen to them and - almost as if I could look them in the eye – tell them: “I don’t believe you”.
At some point in our lives, we all make choices that are out of character for us or that do not necessarily fit into our usual environment. The feeling of going against the tide, of choosing something different for ourselves is very powerful. And even if we persevere with the choices we make, the pressure on us to be and live in a certain way is so great that it confuses us. Particularly now when we live in an age of homogeneity that is fed by marketing campaigns that influence us all to behave in the same way.
You are what you are, he reminded me, as he explained to me that it was the loop that was confusing me and making me doubt who I was now that I couldn’t fully find my place in a culture that was different to my Spanish roots and my life in China.
It took some time for me to understand how to put my friend’s trick into practice. After a while, it worked! His little method taught me that by engaging in this conversation with myself, I could go deeper into the roots of the spell I was trying to break, and the reasons I should not believe it, until I finally broke free of it.
Interestingly, most of my sadness was being fed by the confusion created by having too much information around me that did not necessarily serve me. My struggle to reconnect with myself and the world around me was aggravating it. And feeling sad, I was even more vulnerable to all those mainstream narratives on identity and behaviour that made no sense to me. I couldn’t find a way back to myself. I felt I was losing myself in the West.
With time, I came to understand that my friend’s trick was not so much about breaking the spell but a way of teaching my brain not to believe certain things about myself; things that might not necessarily be who I am, how I feel or what I want to be. He gave me a powerful tool to not doubt myself so that I could be with myself and my feelings without being overwhelmed by external pressure. By breaking the spell, I befriended the fears that were making me anxious and I created a new set of beliefs that was unique to who I was and what I wanted for my new life in London.
Happily, my friend had a lot more helpful advice to offer. We had many chats over good Spanish wine and tasty home-cooked meals about the detrimental effect confusion has on our mental wellbeing and how it contributes to a lack of self-belief.
We also had very interesting conversations around mainstream narratives, diversity and invisibility. And how the dominance of certain world views contributes to people feeling alienated by the fear of not being able to fight for their dreams. To pursue things and use their creativity to make their uniqueness visible.
When journalists reveal alternative ways of living and being, they are effectively challenging our everyday view of reality. They aspire to foster more open-minded and inclusive societies where people feel empowered to break free from their usual limiting environments. A powerful effect that other forms of storytelling, like those found in literature, cinema, art and other creative forms, also replicate.
When I was working as a journalist in Beijing, I interviewed a Chinese entrepreneur who was fighting to bring his dream start-up to life. We had a very interesting chat about how innovation in China differs to the rest of the world. We both agreed that there was a well-established misconception that good creativity - if there is such a thing as good and bad creativity - could only take one form: the Western one. Everything else fell outside those standards and was perceived as inferior.
This entrepreneur pointed out that, in China, they had a different socio-political system. They were bound by different types of procedures to achieve new methods, ideas, or products. In fact, any non-Western country will offer a different context for innovation based on the specific socio-economic constraints they face to bring their projects to light.
In this context, and taking China as an example, he stressed that, of course, Chinese people did innovate and create but they did it in a different way to the West because China is, obviously, not the West. Consequently, he added, if the West wants to think that what they do is innovation, then what we do in China is micro-innovation.
The reason this entrepreneur was referring to Chinese innovation as ‘micro’ was because they had to constantly navigate certain bureaucratic obstacles that don’t exist in a Western Democracy. This necessitates interesting incremental efforts of micro innovation to achieve a desired outcome.
He was not the first Chinese person to talk to me about the authenticity of their work in such a way. To them, using their ingenuity to create and be what they wanted to be did not have so much to do with state-of-the-art originality, but with innovating while navigating the difficulties of their own environment. To believe that what they wanted was possible. To break free of any narratives or loops and imagine the impossible was possible.
Their self-taught incremental micro innovation skills helped them find ways to be what they wanted to be, regardless of the imposed colonial narrative by which only the West innovates. As a result, they were able to slowly transform a rather repressive authoritarian environment into one of innovation where they could pursue their goals. They trained themselves to believe anything is possible and they broke the West’s dominance of innovation.
Authenticity is a uniquely human condition that gives us the chance to genuinely and freely be what we are. And of knowing that we will be accepted with love by those around us. It is also linked to our ability to dream of a better future for ourselves. To effectively believe that we will have the freedom to use our imagination to create change for ourselves and for others.
The meaning of ideas is relative. An environment that is genuinely conducive to freedom and opportunity should be committed to micro-innovation in whichever way possible so that everyone can create small increments of change to ensure those who are invisible have the chance to use their voice to make their dreams come true, regardless of how different their cultures of origin are.
I do hope that over time Blue Monday doesn’t join the long list of commercialised “days” - Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Halloween, Valentine’s Day - that were never part of my Spanish culture growing up but are now an inseparable part of a global mainstream culture. Maybe it’s a little too late already. My mom told me that she had already heard a few media outlets in Spain spreading the Blue Monday tale!
The “I don’t believe you” trick and the concept of Chinese micro-innovation are good ways to break self-imposed spells to ensure diversity and amplify the voice of unrepresented communities.
If the third Monday of the year has never been a depressing one in many other cultures, I don't see why we need to be led into thinking in this way when we are already struggling with all the challenges of a global health crisis.
It scares me to think that a manufactured concept can spread across cultural borders and trick people into believing that they have a reason to feel sad. It worries me even more when social media has no qualms about giving credence to such a PR stunt - feeding us this pseudo-science – during this unprecedented pandemic. If ever there is a time to call for a collective restraint in influencing people’s mental wellbeing, it is now.