It’s a Trap!

Hello my name is Katherina and I am an addict.

I am addicted to comparison…and maybe some of you are too.

I don’t think that there is a day that goes by where I don’t compare my life to someone else’s. Or where I don’t look at what someone else has achieved and think of how little I have achieved by comparison. This has become a life draining practice in my mind; and it is becoming an epidemic in the world around us.

These words ring especially true in my life. When I’m scrolling through Facebook or Instagram I begin to subconsciously put myself down because everyone else is living such perfect lives. As I look at their smiling faces and see their grand adventures, I look around myself at my absolutely average life and I feel a tightness my chest. It closes around my heart and my mind and prevents me from understanding that the entirety of a person’s life is never going to be portrayed on social media. Nobody posts about the awful, embarrassing, catastrophic things that happen to them in a day. We all only post the highlights, the celebrations, the hand-picked moments. Yet here I am, still comparing my everyday cookie baking, house cleaning, and errand running life to the world travelers and life enhancers on my news feeds.

It had gotten to the point where sometimes I have a hard time seeing or hearing about what my friends are doing because I instantly begin to compare myself with them and to put myself down because I am no doing what they are doing. I can no longer read other people’s blogs (which I deeply apologize for because I know that they are truly and wonderfully beautiful) because I will begin to doubt my own ability to write, because my words do not sound like their words.

How completely and utterly insane is that?! I am depriving those that I care about from love and validation because I have ruthlessly and unceremoniously torn myself down through comparison. To the point where I am no longer able to support others because I have no bases of support to stand on myself. When we compare ourselves to others we are unknowingly ripping up the foundation that we are standing on. And without that foundation there is no way that we could ever be able to build up others because we have nothing solid to stand upon ourselves.

There are many things that can give birth to this intrinsic need to measure oneself against another – such as low self-worth/esteem – but there are only a few ways to escape it. One of them being that you need to realise that everyone’s lives are vastly different and that often times we only see the highlights. So when we take our lives and compare them to those on social media we are in essence comparing our everyday messy, complicated, and unpredictable lives to someone else’s curated, planned, and dolled up life. We make a comparison when in fact there is no comparison at all.

We need to begin to recognize that someone else’s success does not mean that we have failed. We need to get our hearts to the place where we can see other people’s highlights as the icing on the cake not the whole cake itself. We need to get our brains out of the habit of instantaneous comparison.

We need to build our foundations out of love and support and self-worth, instead of these lies that are telling us that our lives are no good.

So next time that you’re scrolling through social media or catching up with a friend, and you feel that tightness begin to take hold in your chest remind yourself that there is nothing in your life that needs comparing. Because your life is beyond compare. There are no words that could express all of the many facets that make up this crazy beautiful jumble that is your life. And that comparing is not inspiration but rather self-degradation, and we owe ourselves so much more than that!