You Do You: Why We Need To Stop Comparing Our Lives To Our Friends’

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We’ve all been there, right? We’re lazily scrolling through Facebook and Instagram and all it takes is one great picture of your friend’s car/boyfriend/handbag/holiday, and suddenly, we’re experiencing some serious friend envy and self-doubt.

In this digital age, it’s even easier to see what our friends are getting up to and how awesome their lives look on social media compared to ours. It’s natural for even the most confident and content of us to get into a bit of a rut, and question how good a friend we really are when we’re acting envious instead of happy over the success of our friends.

Don’t worry too much – it’s completely normal to feel this way occasionally. However, here are some things to remember when you need to combat the green monster and show your besties some love instead:

1. You’re only making yourself unhappy.

The worst part about comparing our lives to somebody else’s is that this comparison rarely motivates and inspires. Rather, it works in the complete opposite way. When you see your friend upload a bikini picture on Instagram and she has the body of your dreams, it can increase our insecurities about our own body image and causes all kinds of negative feelings to surface.

The thing to remember is, each of us have our own special quirks and qualities. Our uniqueness is what makes us special, and that uniqueness should never be compared to someone else’s. Spend more time on loving what YOU have, and not lusting over what somebody else has.

2. Social media doesn’t depict real life.

It isn’t any secret that we portray the very best version of ourselves on social media. If you do it, there’s a pretty high chance your friends are doing it too. By comparing yourself to her social media profiles, you’re really just comparing yourself to someone who isn’t real.

Instead, focus on something that is real, you! Compare your past self with your present self so you can see how you’re growing and improving as a person. Most importantly, do it for your own confidence, and not for how it’ll look on Facebook.

3. You should be celebrating your friends successes.

Rather than sit there and turn green with envy at how perfect your friend’s make up is, and how you can never mange to get it quite to right yourself, hit her up for some tips! One of the best parts of having girlfriends is being able to share how to get perfect winged eyeliner and Kim K like selfies.

Instead of feeling envious of what your friend has and what you lack, you can share in each other’s successes. Building each other up and supporting each other, is what best friends are for after all.

4. It’s unproductive.

News flash: Comparing your life to someone else’s doesn’t actually help you achieve your goals. In fact, the complete opposite is true. We get the same amount of seconds in a day as everyone else, and using any of them to compare yourself to somebody else is a waste of your time and talents.

You can only control one life, and that’s your own. So start that novel, paint that portrait, or do whatever else you need to do to achieve your dreams. You keep doing you, and you might be surprised at just how much you’ll achieve.

5. There are better ways to measure your worth.

It’s important to remember that some of the best things worth having are not external, materialistic or measurable in the number of likes you get. Qualities like gratitude, generosity, humility and kindness are so much more enviable, and not something you can obtain when focused on the appearance of others on social media.

By ditching your phone and Facebook for reading a novel, helping a friend, or volunteering, you might find that how many followers you have on Instagram won’t matter to you as much anymore, and that’s a good thing.