Comparing Your Life With Others Will Only Make You Unhappy
Just the other day I was browsing Facebook and I noticed that a friend of mine and his family has gone for a holiday. The photograps that he posted were picture perfect. Everyone looked so happy and it seems that the whole family was having an amazing time. Wait a minute, didn't he and his family went for a holiday only 2 months ago. It seemed that the life that I am leading was rather boring and lame compared to his. I begun to feel a tinge of envy and jealousy. I had to stop myself right there.
With the advent of social media, it is very easy for us to get caught up comparing our lives with the lives of others as portrayed by their social media. Their houses seems to be bigger, their holidays more exciting, their clothes more beautiful and the list goes on.
A study done showed that people who spend more time on social media are more unhappy. I suspect that this due to them making comparisons on what they see in social media with their own lives. This resulted in them being less contended and satisfied with the lives they are leading. They also tend to crave for more and more material things. But the more material things that they own, it is never sufficient compared to what others own as seen in the social media.
We often fail to realize that what a person post in social media is just a fraction of his life that he chooses to make public. Being outsiders, we do not know what he is going through in his life. He may look happy in his photographs but may be suffering privately. From social media, we are not able to know the issuers or challenges the person is undergoing.
So I will spend less time on social media (steemit is an exception). And I need to remind myself that I have my own life to lead, my own trails, my successes, my failures and my blessings.
Do follow @positivesteem for more positivity.
This is why I don’t really have social media expect this because I got tired of wanting a life I couldn’t ever have . I need to learn to appreciate what I have and be grateful
That is very true. Too often we look at what others have and wanting to have what others had while we forgot to appreciate the things that we already had.
That social media unhappiness thing is real XD I remember a few years ago now some friends discussing the kind of mental problems they encountered while being on Facebook, one of them was saying how sometimes they would post this status update that they considered clever or witty and then actually feel depressed when they didn't get a lot of likes on it. Another friend said they felt the same thing and had to cut back on their Facebook usage for exactly the same reason. And also because of all the negativity and snarkiness and stupid fighting that can go on there depending on where you hang out.
Less time or no time on there is good ;D
Too often we rely on the response of the social media on what we post as a form of validation. That is so wrong because our self worth is not determined by how many likes we get on Facebook.