Why comparison is the thief of joy
So, I have a confession to make….
At the start of my journey and even occasionally throughout, I would sometimes find myself on social media comparing myself to others. ‘Look at that car’, ‘look at his holiday’, ‘look at her figure’... As soon as I get five minutes spare I find myself scrolling through a filtered feed of things I would rather be doing...
We have all done it, in fact, it's almost impossible not to and that’s fine.
Comparison is human nature and is an instinct that starts early on in life - which can actually be positive. But when it is making us feel inferior to another person, or having an impact on our mental well-being, that is when it starts to become a problem. Truth be told, I don't have time to get up at 6 am for yoga on the beach, or to grab Instagrammable avocado on toast before work every morning.
I have a real-life, and sometimes we forget that these people do too. Social media takes the idea of real-life and flips it upside down. You are only seeing what people want to show you, no one would post the boring bits of their day which makes it so easy to forget that people are only uploading their highlights to their Instagram highlights, you are not seeing their everyday life.
All this comparison takes a lot of time out of our days, if you actually monitor how much time you spend scrolling through your Instagram or your Facebook feed, checking out what other people are doing then you will probably be surprised by the number of hours it eats up.
That time you are spending comparing yourself to other people is precious time that you could spend working on yourself. Not to have the more aesthetic feed, or to have more followers, but to be the better version of yourself - better your lifestyle, better your habits and stop comparing your life to an airbrushed reality.
To find out more about why comparison is detrimental to your mental health, read my new book SMASH IT! The Art of Getting What YOU Want
