Ever been scrolling through social media and before you know where you are you’re sifting through someone’s photos from 2016? Don’t worry, you don’t have to say whose photos they were. Let’s just say I think we are all a bit scroll happy. Whether they are Facebook accounts or Instagram profiles, they are small windows into the lives of others and it’s so tempting to take a peek…
You might barely know a person but somehow you’ve ended up friends online via a mutual friend. You barely know them but you’ve seen the wedding pics, the holiday pics and you know what she had for breakfast yesterday!
When you walk past a house with the curtains open at night does curiosity get the better of you? Do you find yourself taking a casual look thinking “Oooh that’s a nice living room! I wonder who lives there…”
It’s escapism. It’s imagining what it’s like to live the life of someone else. We just love to compare ourselves to others. There’s an element of keeping up with the Joneses about it.
We use other people’s looks, achievements and lives as a benchmark to judge our own.
I found myself looking though a fellow instructor’s Instagram feed the other day. ‘She looks amazing!’ was my first thought. Seriously, this girl looks like a supermodel. I went through a few other snaps and vids of her workouts and routines. My second thought was “wow she’s good!” A few holiday pics caught my eye too. Good looking, talented, successful – some girls seem to have it all!
That’s when I stopped. It’s not that I was starting to have bitter, nasty or even jealous thoughts, but more that I was so in awe of her I started to question my looks, my talent, my successes.
One of my favourite quotes came to mind – “Admire someone else’s beauty without questioning your own.”
The quote speaks for itself.
I also reminded myself that there will be other girls wishing they had some of the things I have. There will also be girls looking at those girls and so on.
It’s so easy to forget what we have when we are constantly looking to others. Our qualities, features, achievements are not made less by someone else’s. They shouldn’t leave us feeling low.
When I stopped scrolling I just put my phone away and thought “good for her!”
Remember, every minute looking at someone else’s life is a minute wasted living yours.
