How To Stop Comparing Your Life To Other People On Social Media

Does it feel like the grass is always greener on the other side? It is the most fitting description of how you feel whenever you go online and check out your social media accounts. Whether you admit to it or not, social media's glossy pages make you fall into the pit of the comparison trap. 

Everyone who goes online only shares their highlights, excluding every mundane experience they consider ugly. The endless scrolling will make you wonder how to live a better life. It leaves you thinking that your life is not as good as theirs. 

But should you even be comparing yourself to everything that you see on Instagram? The straight, no sugar-coating answer to this is NO. 

Why Do People End Up Comparing Online?

Even the savviest person on social media could not help but compare their lives to those seen online. Everyone seems to be perturbed by the picture of "perfection" projected by every social media user. 

The biggest problem in online comparison is that you don't have access to the reality of the situation you compare your life to. You only see a fraction of it on social media, and you think you have seen it all. 

You don't have access to all the information you need to make a good comparison of the situation. You simply look at their photos and compare it to your life. Before you even realize that you should stop comparing, you have already fallen into the pit. 

You can only assume that their life is better than yours. The more that you convince yourself that they are having a better time than you, then you are more likely to choose that biased perspective of life. At the end of the day, whenever you feel bad about your life, you are the only one to be blamed for it. 

People compare their lives to those they see online because they are unhappy with their lives. At this point, they feel like the social media post of other people only strengthens their idea of how low their life is. 

How Do You Stop The Comparison Game?

Can you teach yourself to stop comparing people? Does it really matter if others are happier than you? To be able to resist succumbing to the challenge of comparing your life to that of others, you can do a few things instead:

Practice a life of gratitude

Sometimes, you can get caught up worrying about how your life should be like that you forget to recognize what you already have. So before you lose all hope and end up comparing your life to that of others, it is best to start and end your day with a list of the things for which you are grateful. 

This could be the most mundane thing in life, like how your dog shows how giddy it gets at the sight of you. It could be a comfortable bed that you sleep in at night. These things may be simple, but they make you feel grateful for this lifetime. 

By recognizing the simple things in life, you can start feeling more positive about life. It will make you feel like there is always something about your life that's worth celebrating. 

Push yourself to pursue what motivates you

How do you know that something is worthy of your time and attention? Measure the happiness it gives you to the amount of effort you put into doing it. If you use social media to set your goals, then being on social media is valuable to you. 

Not all the comparisons that you do are bad. Some can be used to motivate you to improve yourself. For example, a colleague who recently got a promotion has been attending training to improve herself. You can use this to push yourself to get further training to be better at your job.

However, if you are comparing yourself and getting demotivated, then you should just stop right there. Feeling resentful is not going to help you at all. It's a feeling you shouldn't even want to feel at all. 

Start living your life to the fullest

Every minute you spend feeling jealous about another person's life, you are throwing precious time you could have spent improving yourself. While it may be a struggle, in the beginning, you can always imagine what it would be like to recall what your life was like. 

If it were your last days on earth and you would look back on how you spent your life, will you be happy to know that you wasted most of it comparing your life to others? Remember that the secret to happiness is finding its source from within you. 

Happy people celebrate what they have. It means they work hard to get the best of what their relationships offer. It is not just about the daily achievements that they made. So instead of wasting your life spending every minute scrolling through social media, start living. Time is a very precious commodity, and it's only as good as it lasts. 

Where Do You Draw The Line?

Social media may present to you a plethora of images of enviable lives. But always remind yourself that this is just a piece of the puzzle. When you look beyond what they show and imagine what the bigger picture is like, you will realize that there is more about your life that's worthy of attention. 

Where do you draw the line when it comes to comparing your life to that of others? When comparing no longer motivates you to become better. When it begins to make, you feel like nothing that you do is worth it. 

Hard work, dedication, and perseverance—these are the three things that you need to succeed in life. You are capable of making your life a better one. When you commit yourself to it, then you know that you can make it happen.