There's a lot of lemonade being made out there, I'm simply trying not to compare mine to anyone else's!
*sips lemonade and addresses the elephant in the room on Instagram*
Please raise your hand if, at any point, you’ve compared yourself to someone you follow on social media.
c o m p a r i s o n triggered by social media breeds anxiety, depression, self-doubt, demotivation etc etc.
This is a simple fact.
I do not have a life-experience to share on how I have overcome this - because I have not.
I have done this, I am currently doing this, I am aware of it but I am low-key struggling to deal with it.
I’m just trying to be upfront and honest about it. Tons of scrolling and some introspection later, I arrived at a handful of observations - some are possible triggers, some are realizations, and some are neither here nor there:
(a) At any given point in time, there will always be people on social media that are way way more successful than you. Some are younger than you, some are older. Some have worked really hard to get there, some have just been privileged and well-connected. Either way, one carefully chosen picture, and a well-curated caption are masters of triggering comparison while withholding the whole story.
(b) Again, at any given point in time, two or more people on your social media list will be on a vacation. The pictures will be pristine, the angles divine, and the poses plentiful. Again, you won’t know the whole story - they could be traveling after really working for it, or trying to escape a harsher reality or not even that happy on the trip - but the social media algorithm will perfectly place it on your timeline and I do not have to list down what happens next….
(c) Some people will always look gorgeous no matter what they do or what time of day it is. This, in my humble opinion, could be one of the following or a combination of - genetics, genuine hard work towards maintaining a strict routine or regime to achieve this, time and money spent on this that you either do not want to do or do not have and/or 30 different takes before that one perfect reel...
The key takeaway here is - YOU DON’T KNOW WHICH ONE IT IS.
(d) Anytime you open a social media app, two or more people will inevitably be celebrating a significant milestone - buying a house, the birth of a first/second child, getting married, getting promoted, starting a new job, moving to a new country, starting their own business etc. While you are happy for them, at some molecular level you have started to compare and if you have not hit those milestones yet or are a little off on your timeline, you start to feel discouraged, which may or may not cascade into anger towards self, anxiety, self-doubt, the works you know.
BUT, what that social media announcement did not cover was probably the couple that had to fight their in-laws for every little detail of their wedding, the numerous houses they checked before they locked in on one, the 16-hour workdays, and no family life for that promotion, the twelve hundred interviews before they bagged that job, the anxiety and uncertainty they had to wrestle with, before moving to another country.No one really wanting to celebrate that on social media, eh?
I have started to remind myself (regularly) that for every person announcing something or vacationing or celebrating there are the rest of us that are working, emailing, attending those boring meetings, planning that vacation, hustling towards that milestone, hogging on that not-so-aesthetic but delicious plate of food, striking a decent work-life balance and tirelessly working on not comparing each day - the regular life stuff you know!
Social media for me nowadays is:
memes that get me through the hard days
places to look for sustainable clothing
plants
recipes
eco-friendly stuff
cottages to visit
stalking people sometimes (just tryna keep it real here!)
So, send your girl memes!
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