Stop Comparing Yourself to Other People

I’m bad. I have a really bad habit. I open my Instagram, click on someone’s profile, look at their stories, and I immediately start comparing myself to them. Why can’t I look like them? Why can’t I always have the perfect outfits like they do? The perfect hair and makeup? Why can’t I live in a beautiful, big, perfect house like they do, and have all the fun, perfect friends they have? The insecurities and the jealousy start rolling until I’m so down on myself, I have no room to see what I’ve been blessed with. Do you see the common theme? Perfect. Perfect is a label that I often find myself putting onto other people without knowing much, if anything, about their lives at all. They look so happy on social media, so they must have a perfect life. They’re always surrounded by a million friends at school, so they must be perfect.

It’s so easy to get caught up in what other people’s lives appear to be, that we forget that one truth: no one’s life is perfect. Everyone has struggles, hardships, and pain. Everyone goes through rough patches, and times when they are unsure of themselves and their decisions. Does everyone show these aspects of their lives on social media? Hell no! Do people walk into a classroom or a work office and announce that they are struggling, unhappy? Again, hell no! People only share what they want to share with other people, and comparing your normal to someone else’s best is, of course, going to make you miserable. How many times do you let all your Instagram followers know of the imperfection in your life? Chances are never. Take a look at what you put out into the world and step back. Chances are, someone else has looked at your life the way you’ve looked at theirs, and wondered how does she do it? How is she so perfect? I want to be like her. We just don’t know.

And while we are so quick to make these judgements, we are also so quick to label someone a certain way without knowing them in the first place. Perfect. She has it all together. She has no struggles in life. Oh, look at that, her mom and dad are so rich, I bet her life has always been SO easy. But we don’t know. We can’t unfairly put these judgements onto other people without simultaneously being okay with someone else unfairly labeling us. And no one likes that. We just don’t know.

The point is that, in getting caught up in someone else’s seemingly perfect existence, we are jealous of a lie. We are jealous of a perfect projected life that doesn’t exist. We are comparing ourselves to an unreachable, unattainable goal. What’s the point? The only thing that will come of this is increasing feelings of self-doubt, regret, jealousy, sadness. We will start to pity ourselves and the lives we live, thinking that we will never be good enough. And the problem is that these comparisons stem from our preexisting insecurities. All we are doing is reinforcing these doubts about ourselves—confirming our own uncertainties and sinking even lower into them. Allowing them to have power over us.

As humans, we are lazy. We see another person’s life, become jealous of what we think they have, start to pity ourselves, but then never ever do what we can to change what it is we dislike about our own lives. It took me years to get to the place of starting this blog. I would look at other bloggers, see their success and their awesome lives, and think wow, I really want to be like that. But did I ever start my blog? Eventually, yes, but for years it was the same jealousy with no action. I wanted to be a successful blogger but I didn’t want people to judge me. I didn’t want to put myself out there. I was scared. And in those years, I would just tell myself one day, I will be like them, knowing full well that one day would never come until I took action.

So stop. Stop comparing yourself to other people because you are not other people. Stop comparing yourself to the lies that social media and perceived perfection tell you. Instead, acknowledge areas of your life where you are dissatisfied. Find those insecurities and figure out how you’re going to deal with them. Don’t like your life? Do something about it! Unhappy? Change your outlook! Be proactive with your life, instead of just sitting around, wondering why you can’t be like the next person. This is neither productive nor is it healthy. We need to learn that we are just as valuable and capable of contentedness as everyone else, we just need to search inside ourselves and find the ability to be. So really, stop comparing yourself. Instead, start loving yourself.

Leave me a comment letting me know how you struggle with comparing yourself to others, and what you have done/will do to shift the focus from jealousy to self-improvement.