The Comparison Game

I heard someone recently say that social media is the devil. Now that may be a stretch, but I understand the point they were trying to make. Social media hands down can make you feel like you are doing life all wrong. It is a highlight of everyone's Oscar wins, and you're sitting here on the couch in flannal pj's wondering the last time you washed yoru hair. I get it.  I've played the comparison game many times. I know what it is like to click through facebook and immediately get an overwhelming feeling that you are a failure. I have sat on my couch, iPhone in hand, and compared my life to the lives of others on social media. And immediately felt like an ungrateful loser.

There was a period in my life...a ten year period, that I compared myself to every other female that I knew. The comparison game fed my woundings of insecurity, bitterness, and resentment daily. There were some years, that every time, and I MEAN EVERY TIME, I glanced at social media I felt like I was missing something in my life. I felt inferior, and jealousy made me hide people's news feeds or just unfriend them. I couldn't stand how success looked on others. Sometimes, I didn't even recognize that I was comparing myself to others. But eventually I realized that I operated in a constant state of subconscious comparison because I didn't like who I was. I didn't like where I was on my journey, and I felt stuck. Those who I deemed "unstuck" and secure in who they are triggered me to my core.

Here's the truth...social media lies. It whispers tiny little lies to say that we are not good enough, as almost to say see so-and-so has the life you want. It's a screen shot of only the good. I'm trying to break down that facade, and show where I struggle to remind others... hey, you are not alone." Because here's the truth.. I don't have my crap together. Every day, I struggle. PERIOD. Every day there is a freaking STRUGGLE, an internal push and pull that whispers to me that I-am-still-not-good-enough. And the more I silence that voice and replace it with truth, the less I compare myself to others.That person you constantly compare yourself to? They also struggle.

Realizing that everyone struggles, and anyone who I deemed as having it all, or having the life that I want, helped me to stop the desire to compare myself to others. Come on now, social media only shows the really good about people's lives. They aren't showing the messy house, the rotten spoiled kids, the yelling mom, the stack of bills that can't get paid, the screaming couple or the binge-eating oreo session. It only shows the perfect. And perfect is not something anyone will ever be.

How can you get un-triggered by social media? It starts with really thinking about the "why" behind your trigger, and speaking to that "why." Let me speak from my own life, there was a period where I wanted to really pursue more commercial hair and makeup gigs. And for some reason, I just couldn't get where I wanted to be in that area, so every time I saw a "competitor" doing the things that I wanted to do and having success, I would beat myself up and feel completely sucky. It wasn't until I realized that, that is just not the journey that I am meant to be on. God has a different plan for me, and once I believed that God's plan is bigger and better than my own desires, I stopped getting triggered by it on social media. You know what also stopped? Feeling the need to check social media every 5 minutes. I don't need "likes" to be liked and neither do you.

When you realize who you are and what your purpose is, you can stop comparing yourself to others. I am a lion, and you may be a fox. Different, created to be different, created for life to look different. And you can't really compare those because they were created for a different purpose. And when we accept that, we feel free to offer ourselves to others and to learn from others. I have much to learn from others!

For the first time in my life I am completely comfortable with who I am. It took a health scare to get me to accept my scarred body. It took a divorce to have me so at the end of myself THAT I FINALLY WOKE UP and realized who God created me to be. I was created for a purpose, and for a reason, and God doesn't make mistakes. It took highs and lows both personally and professionally to get me to a point that I FINALLY get who I am. You cannot compare apples to oranges, because they are different and are meant to be different. They smell different, they taste different. You and I are different. I can't say this enough, we were created to be different.