Don’t compare yourself to strangers

We often fall into the trap of comparing ourselves to others as we scroll through various different social media. We also make judgements about how we don’t/can’t measure up against them. Unfortunately, social media is a place that triggers that unpleasant self-disdain, and this, as I’ve seen is so very unhealthy. In our modern world, social media exists as a tool to highlight the best parts of us and our lives, meaning comparisons have become stronger, but also more unfair.

Sonja Lyubormirsky, a psychologist at the University of California, said that “people who are happy use themselves for internal evaluation.” While in many cases comparisons help us learn from each other, other times, they rob us from gratitude and fulfilment in our own lives. When I find myself thinking that someone is better than me on social media, what I really find myself doing is trying to meet unrealistic expectations. So, in the long run, we should compare ourselves to nobody but ourself.

The truth is, the people we compare ourselves to on social media are almost always enduring struggles that we aren’t aware of. And yet, we typically tend to compare the worst we know about ourselves to the best we presume about them. However, when we do come to know about the fact that even their lives are far from perfect, this just goes to show that everyone, even society-adored ‘perfect’ people aren’t perfect. No amount of physical beautification can mask the fact that we’ll never be content with ourselves. The best we can do then is love ourselves unconditionally and realize that there’s more to life than the internet. It might feel like everything to someone living in this decade, but there are oodles of other things in life to encounter. We can do ourselves a favour and take some time off our screens to think about what we want to make out of our lives, because it is the one thing we solely have and can control.

– SaaniaSparkle 🧚🏻‍♀️