Being a spectator of other people’s lives is easy.
We spend lots of hours finding out what other people did, bought, or said.
The more uncomfortable we feel about ourselves, the more we tend to look external.
When scrolling, we see envy-inducing posts from our friends and especially influencers.
Posts that make us say to ourselves: wow I wish I had that! I wish I could do that!
We go to our friends and discuss all those wonderful excentric lives we see online.
Or we are by ourselves and get more and more miserable because of that large contrast.
The more “success and happiness” you see online, the harder it looks to achieve that.
Witnessing these differences between your own life and the lives of others is not a healthy activity.
No wonder we compare and despair.
The more we expose ourselves to their lives, the more impossible it feels to introduce radical change in our lives.
Or at least it feels impossible to “achieve” a version of happiness and success that resonates with you.
That’s another problem.
Influencers make us believe living the good life is happiness and success.
We start to believe we need at least a million dollars to achieve some levels of happiness.
Or that yacht, or the ability to fly around the world 20 times a year for example.
The perception that is created about happiness and success is a distorted one.
We don’t realize happiness and success are not “achieved” at some point.
It’s very depressing when you compare your “normal and boring” life to theirs I get it.
So you want to consciously decide to stop idolizing them.
Stop looking at their profiles all the time. Unfollow them.
All that energy you spend on idolizing them should be spent on activities that influence your own life.
My strategy is to idolize my future self instead.
I carefully think about what he is doing, with who he is hanging around, what he is saying etc.
It’s that vision that I look up to. It’s that vision of my future self that I’m guided by.
The “happiness and success” that is displayed online can be used as fuel or inspiration that’s fine, but I don’t get sad or obsessed by them without taking some form of action.
When I see influencers chilling by the pool, I don’t get jealous, dream, and wish for it, I get inspired.
If I like what I see and it really resonates with me, I incorporate that swimming pool in the vision of my future self, surroundings, and circumstances.
Never will I think that I can’t achieve those results.
Never will I think they are better than me.
Never will I think that my destiny is to stay where I am.
My focus is on my future self and I love to idolize him.
What I love more though, is the journey to actually become him.
Don’t get jealous and down when you see posts of influencers living “the life”, get inspired and start by switching from scrolling to actually building that vision of your own future self.