22 Times You Need To Stop Comparing Yourself To Other People And Live Your Own F*cking Life

1. When you’re single and your best friend starts dating someone and completely disappears. Relationships fall apart, and the people who heal the best if their relationships don’t last are the ones who never alienated their friends at anytime in the ~falling in love~ process. If your friend isn’t doing that right now, that’s their choice, and you don’t need to spend your time convincing them to move slower or stop ignoring their friends.

2. When you graduate from college and every living, breathing human within a three-mile radius of you is posting a status about the dReAm jOb they just landed in the big apple. Spoilers: their starting salary is barely covering their rent and everyone moves at their own pace after college. You don’t need to feel “behind” if you don’t have a job quite yet.

3. When you feel like you’re not the prettiest, tallest, most handsome, or thinnest person at the party. Everyone has experienced this insecurity at some point in their life, and you just need to focus on being comfortable and feeling confident in your own skin. Chances are the person you’re comparing yourself too is self-conscious about some other body part you’re not even noticing.

4. When you see your ex with someone new. Even if you ex appears unfazed, seeing you affects them too.

5. Any moment in which you struggle to accept yourself because of the glorified perception you have of someone else. In addition to wasting time not living your own life in those moments, you’re creating insecurities that are unnecessary because they’re based off perception and not reality.

6. When drama reels you in and you cannot escape the web of judgment and petty comments that your friendship circle sometimes creates. That. Is. Just. White. Noise. You can shut it out and surround yourself with better people.

7. When you’re on Instagram. Solution: start unfollowing the people who make you feel like you’re not stacking up. Stop thinking about what you post on social media in terms of whether or not so-and-so will approve.

8. When you’re at a hair or nail salon and it feels like everyone else looks like they belong in the bougie salon. You don’t need to overthink your outfit just to go get your hair trimmed.

9. Any time you talk yourself out of wearing a piece of clothing, dying your hair, or doing your makeup a certain way because you think it’s just “not you.” The only person stopping you in that scenario is you. Get out of your own way.

10. When someone who’s been in the industry just as long as you have gets a promotion before you. Often times these things are circumstantial, and it’s not a reflection on what you have to offer.

11. When your younger sibling gets married before you. The fact that we still think of this as a “snub” is archaic, but it can push people to compare themselves to their family members. The only thing to do is be happy for them, and know that if marriage is something you want, it doesn’t need to come in a neatly-packaged timeframe.

12. At times when you are left alone with your negative thoughts and, before you can stop yourself, start wondering why you feel inferior to people or why you don’t have the quality/luxury item/job/significant other that someone else does. Remove yourself from those thoughts with a productive distraction.

13. When your ex starts dating someone who clearly has a specific quality that you know you lack. That one quality is not the reason your ex gravitated to whoever they’re rebounding with. And overanalyzing your ex’s choices is going to push you farther into nostalgia, heartbreak, and unproductive behavior, rather than encouraging you to move forward with your own life.

14. When you lose focus at work because you’re looking at job postings. Instead of fantasizing about working somewhere else, take concrete steps toward making that a reality.

15. When you’re at drinks with the one friend you know still lives off their parents’ money.

16. When someone beats you to the punch, says something funnier than you, captures the attention of the guy you were eyeing, and makes you feel like you’re constantly coming in second. You are not in competition with that person, and you don’t need to be the funniest or prettiest person in the room to be the most noticeable, or the most intriguing.

17. When you have a day at work that makes you feel like you aren’t where you should be and you take to the internet to look at the lives of seemingly-perfect professionals who Instagram a life that leads you to believe they “have it all.” They don’t. So instead, live your life, and starting finding the things you need to feel like you have it all.

18. When you look at your bank statement and wonder why you aren’t earning enough to be able to cover the lavish lifestyle your friends seem able to afford effortlessly. In reality, you are not the only one struggling with high rent prices, student loans, low-paying jobs, etc.

19. Any time you ever set foot into a gym, yoga studio, or some kind of Temple For Your Body. Just remember that living a life that doesn’t revolve around Pop Physique is a beautiful thing.

20. When you are around abrasive people who are blatantly making assumptions about you that you don’t feel comfortable with. It’s hard to block this out when you want to make a good impression and prefer to be well-liked. But at the end of the day, convincing someone that you’re better than they think is too much energy to spend on anyone who doesn’t appreciate your value.

21. When you can no longer picture an “end goal” — to your week, your month, your year, your career, your relationship, or anything. You are allowed to be in a funk sometimes, to feel lost, and to be shaken by it. It isn’t permanent.

22. When your friend sits you down to lay out her five-year plan. Or just generally, when you get to the age in adulthood when everyone is making big, grandiose, future-sounding plans. Not only does everyone hit different milestones at different times, but they aren’t sharing these things with you to make you feel inferior, so there’s no need to take it that way. (And if they are laying out their life plan to make you feel shitty, stop going to brunch with them.)