How to stop negative self-comparison

Hey champ,

Have you ever experienced this?

You’re going about your day, feeling good, and then while you’re waiting for your coffee or to pick your kids up from the bus stop, you automatically find yourself scrolling through Facebook or Instagram.

And then, five or ten minutes later, you put your phone down and realise you somehow feel a little worse.

Maybe you can’t put your finger on what exactly you’re feeling, but it’s definitely not the carefree, feel-good mood you were in before.

Sometimes, scrolling through social media can be a really funny or empowering experience. And sometimes it can be like a time machine, only instead of taking you to cool places and times in the future, it takes you to the mental equivalent of a sh*tty abandoned carpark in the middle of nowhere! ?

The thing is, it’s easy to feel down about your life when you’re constantly comparing it to others on social media.

But, you’ve gotta remember that you can’t compare your behind-the-scenes to someone else’s highlights reel! – Tweet it!

Have a quick think about how you’re feeling just before you jump on social media, and then check in with how you feel after.

If you don’t feel good, it’s time to change something up.

As our mate Theodore Roosevelt once said, comparison is the thief of joy. So, we need to combat it whenever we can.

Here are two strategies you can use to overcome negative self-comparison:

1. Change it up!
   Change up your social feeds so you start seeing heaps of posts from people who inspire you, make you feel good about yourself, make you laugh or help you get some perspective. Chuck them a like or comment so you keep seeing more of them in your feed. Try following @kurtfearnley @emmawatson @bethanyhamilton @serenawilliams @nationalgeographic and, duh!, me @turiapitt. And by the way: if looking at someone’s feed makes you feel bad about yourself, derrrrrrr, unfollow them stat!
2. Do a social media cleanse
   No, I’m not talking about a detox tea being promoted by someone on Instagram! ? I’m talking about giving yourself a little time off social media.
   You can either give yourself a few days where you don’t check social media at all, or you could work at cutting down the time you spend there each day.(FYI, the average person checks their phone around 80 times a day! I installed an app called Checky to measure how often I check my phone, and I’ve been working on getting this number down. These days, I’m down to 10 a day which I still think is too much, but it’s an ongoing process!).

So, give those strategies a go.

And, I want to hear from you:

1. What social media accounts make you feel empowered, happy and strong?
2. What other strategies have you tried to cut down on negative self-comparison?

?Let me know your answers in the comments below?

Remember, thousands of people stop by the blog every week, and your answer could really help someone else!

Here’s to you, behind-the-scenes and all!
Turia x