“There is only one of you and there will never be another one. That is your power.”
Mel Robbins
We live in a comparison saturated society. Scroll through any social media app and your feed is flooded with people who appear to be having a better life than you.
Nicer house, nicer car, nicer clothes, cool job, all the things.
What you see on social media is a carefully curated selection of people’s lives. It is like a greatest hits album, but that’s it.
On the other hand there’s you.
You may be reading this with a stain on your shirt or a piece of lettuce in your teeth.
Or may have just woken up and scrolled through your phone with a case of morning breath that is almost melting the screen.
You have no plans to travel someplace exotic today and take 100’s of pictures for Instagram.
You have no plans to dress your kids up like they stepped out of a Baby Gap catalog and post them on Facebook.
You have no plans to decorate your kitchen like it was out of a Pottery Barn catalog and accidentally take some random photos to see how many likes you may get.
Actually, you may be struggling to just get out of bed.
If your kids’ outfits match that’s a plus.
If there are no more pizza boxes on your kitchen table that’s a win
If you brush your teeth, awesome.
Comparison Crisis
The problem with comparison is that it robs you of the joy of being you.
Yes, there is joy in being uniquely you.
Life by design is not pretty.
“Comparison is the thief of joy”
Theodore Roosevelt
The people who display the perfect life on social media are in their own way miserable, because they have to constantly keep the image up.
The dopamine hit of having 1,000 likes on a post or 10,000 followers is addictive and much like any drug it keeps taking a stronger dose to be effective.
They have to constantly one up themselves.
Since when did it become a social norm that we have to broadcast our specialness all over the internet.
Compare yourself to yourself.
As the quote says there is “only one of you” and that is your superpower..
No need to impress the masses with a perfect social media presence.
You struggle with your weight, self-esteem, sprouting hair in weird places
You struggle with being the version of you that you think other people want to see.
I am not discounting these struggles. We have all been there.
What if stopped trying to compare ourselves to others and focused on being the best version of ourselves?
The Good Ole Days
As a kid I was happier.
Blissfully ignorant in my parachute pants and Chuck Taylors thinking I was the coolest kid on the block. I was the average reflection of the friends I hung around with. There was no Facebook, Tik Tok or Instagram to tell me that I was not cool.
In my mind I was the next freaking Karate Kid.
This scourge of anxiety & depression in our society is somewhat driven by our constant need to be more than ourselves, to be someone else, to live someone’s else’s life.
We are in a constant state of FOMO (Fear of Missing Out).
What if we embraced JOMO (Joy of Missing Out).
I know it’s cliche, but 20 years from now are you really going to care how many followers you had on social media? How many likes a certain post had? If you learned the latest tik tok dance?
Super You
In most super hero stories the main character appears normal, even a little quirky until danger appears and she suddenly disappears and reappear in a cool costume with superpowers in tow.
We have it backwards.
We live our lives in a costume, afraid to reveal our true selves.
Let’s take off our costumes and embrace the superhero we really are.
It takes super strength to put one foot in front of the other sometimes.
It takes x-ray vision to see through the facade of social media.
Use your ordinary powers, they are yours and no one else’s
You know what if you have a ketchup stain on your t-shirt, lettuce in your teeth and hair sprouting out of your nose, that’s ok!
That makes you super ordinary!