BY: SYMONE CONWAY
It’s natural for people to have thoughts about the lives of others. The human population is a curious one. But sometimes this curiosity can get dangerous. We may begin to compare the lives of others to ourselves. As Theodore Roosevelt once said, “Comparison is the thief of joy.”
Starting back in middle school we begin to compare ourselves to those around us. How the next girl looks, what the next girl is wearing, what’s cute, cool, or popular, “glowing up”, and impatiently waiting for our life to live up to our expectations. Except these expectations often are based on others expectations as we’re all trying to keep up with or outdo each other.
Seeing as how I have personally experienced what these comparisons can do to your mental state, the best way to avoid comparison is disregarding the aesthetics. In a society where social media is prevalent, I took it upon myself to be totally inactive. In high school I did not have social media. No instagram until my senior prom, no facebook, hardly using snapchat, occasionally twitter or pinterest, not even tiktok until my junior year. Social apps are the biggest ways to look and see what others are doing, what they have, and internalizing that information. I did not want to know what classmates or strangers were buying, where they were going, or what they were trying to make cool. Social media breaks are most important for prioritizing your own journey because we consume so much of others lives on a daily basis that it can cause us to depreciate the beauty of our own original, incomparable lives. Sometimes being reclusive from the “crowd” is beneficial in the long run.
Another way to prioritize our own journeys is journaling: writing down affirmations, what you’re grateful for, what you love about yourself, areas of growth, etc. Affirmations are especially helpful along this journey because if you don’t listen to anyone else in this life, you should listen to yourself. Rather than engraving the lives of others into our mind because of social media, affirmations allow us to take in our own positivity that will eventually (with repetitive practice) become so ingrained that our overall confidence and sense of self improves as well.
As young adults, we spend a lot of time between trying to fit in with everyone else, finding ourselves, and then wanting to show off to the rest. The only person we should try to be better than are our past selves. Too much comparison causes unhappiness and low self esteem. We get too concerned with if we’re “good enough” with something, which can lead to misplaced emotions. Our self worth is not dependent on anyone else’s life. Too many people live to impress others and still don’t feel accomplished.
Not being active on social media and journaling quite often personally helped me a lot. I didn’t have access to others’ lives, and could only focus on being happy with my own. When I did immerse myself into social media, I was not heavily bothered or concerned with the aesthetic others try to live up to, especially when their lives may tell a completely opposite story behind the phone or regardless of what they present themselves to be in front of others.
Avoiding comparison takes work. By always looking at the next person, we almost compare ourselves subconsciously. But the goal is to get to a point in life where we are so strong and secure in ourselves that what the next person has going for them does not phase us.