Letting go of Comparison & Perfectionism

It is so easy to assume other people have their lives “together” and never struggle with anything with the way that social media has created all these stages that people use to showcase the best parts of their life. I used to believe I was alone in my struggles and in the frustrations of my life because I also thought, how could anyone whose life looks so perfect on Instagram have any kind of fears or disappointments? This kind of attention has caused many of us to believe that we are less valuable and not as worthy as some of the people we follow because we think that if you were any good at “living life” it would be just as good as the pictures we see from the people we follow. But, that’s just it, what you see in those tiny squares, in the constant “story-telling”, snap-chatting world we live in, is not a real depiction of the moments of fear, doubt, struggles, disappointments and failure that follow everyone at some point or another. Most people try to hide those things for many reasons, one that I can assume is because we think we are alone in our struggles. No one ever posts about their struggles, so we must be alone in ours, right?

It is easy to compare the low points in our lives to the highlight reels in other people’s lives and get discouraged by our seemingly lack of progress as a result.

Maybe you need this reminder today as much as I do: we all mess up, we all fail, we all have setbacks, it just looks different from one person to the next. But the soul-crushing emptiness disappointments can bring carries a weight felt universally among all of us.

What happens behind the scenes is much of the same for everyone: we all have insecurities. We all have fears. We all had seasons of failure. But comparing your own life to anyone else’s takes away from the beauty and the creativity of what God intended for your life to be.

For a really long time, I found myself comparing myself to others – not the real-life version of other people; the version I saw of them on their social media feeds – and living a miserable life as a result. If only I had what they had. If only my house was as nice as theirs. If only I had a husband. If only I grew up in a different family. If only my body looked as good as theirs. I saw everything that person strategically edited and perfected for me to see, not realizing it was only a snapshot of part of their life, not what their life was really like.

The biggest awakening for me came maybe only a year or two ago.

There was a friend of mine that I followed on all the social media sites. We knew each other but we didn’t really know each other, you know what I mean? Like, we went to high school together, but that was more than 8 years ago for us, and we hadn’t talked since. So, we knew each other, but not enough that we knew what went on in each other’s personal lives. But I followed her on social media (and she followed me.) I looked on with envy at all the things she had that I didn’t. Eventually she got engaged, and then married, and everything about her life looked so happy and wonderful.

Meanwhile, I had just ended my long-term relationship that I thought was going to end in marriage.

Every day, I would look on as she posted happy pictures of her and her husband, or just cute little pictures of what their life was like together. I was so envious. I hated every second of what I saw, but at the same time, I was so drawn to her because her life looked so perfect and so wonderful. I wanted that. I will tell you, it got so bad that any time she posted a photo of herself with a new outfit, I was the first one to dig to find out where she bought it. And then guess what I did? I went to the exact same store to try to find that exact same outfit (or shirt, or pants, or shoes, or swimsuit. Whatever it was, I was so blinded and assumed I needed to have what she had in order to make me feel as happy as I thought she already was.)

It was a very empty, lonely place because no matter how much I tried to be like her, and compared myself to her, and tried to make myself feel as happy as she looked, I was more miserable. This, and things like it, is what contributed to my $10,000 maxed out credit cards because I thought I could just buy my way to happiness. I thought I could just buy what she had and be as happy as she looked.

But, I am not her. And I was not created to be her. Now, I am finding freedom in the reality that there is no one like me or created in uniquely the same as I was.

A few years later, I ended up in the same social setting as this friend, and by a chain of events we got a lot closer than we ever had been. It was through that when I found out that their so-seemed happy engagement was anything but. They were met with disdain and a lot of negativity when they got engaged. But, you’d never have been able to tell that by their social media photos. A lot of people didn’t want them to get married and thought they were making the wrong decision. But, again, that’s not something you would have gathered by any of the things she posted on her social media pages. All I saw were the smiling pictures of the two of them, her perfectly put-together outfits, and thought I was nothing in comparison to her.

And then, even after they got married, she and her husband later confided in me that they considered divorce several times just in their first year of marriage. How was that even possible? They looked so happy and without disappointments every time a photo was posted. It seemed bizarre to me that people that looked so content in these tiny squares – these little snippets of life – would be anything but that outside of them. And wasn’t marriage supposed to be the “happily ever after” she claimed it was on her social media feed?

They, too, had seasons of failure and frustrations, but you’d never know it. Because people only like to post the highlight reels of their life. People only want you to see certain parts of their life. To make their lives seem good. To mask their own fears and insecurities.

But, it’s not real. No one on this earth has a life free from pain, heartache and disappointments. A lot of people would like you to believe they don’t to hide from who they really are.

It’s not okay to compare yourself to what you see your friends post. In addition, it’s not okay to envy what others have that you don’t seem to have.

This resonated with me, too, when just a few weeks ago I was part of a photoshoot with a really good friend of mine. As the photoshoot progressed, we started comparing our bodies to the other girls’ bodies and all the things we didn’t like about ourselves (I don’t like my thighs – I think they are too thick. She doesn’t like her thighs, she thinks they are too thin. Where does it end?) It was so bizarre how each of us wish we had the others’ legs. But, guess what? If we did, if we could switch bodies for a day, we would realize that we would still carry certain insecurities about ourselves. It’s normal, but that doesn’t make it okay.

A pastor I listen to regularly said something one time in his sermon that has stuck with me since then: Insecurity is probably the ultimate insult to God. If He needed you to have something different [look different or be someone different] to accomplish His will for you, He would have given it to you.”

How true is this?

Instead of comparing what you have or don’t have to others, celebrate who you are and how God created you. No one on this earth is perfect! All of us experience insecurities, fears, doubts and disappointments, regardless of what you see on social media.

It is okay to celebrate when people post exciting things on Facebook or Instagram but remember that every victory had a price to pay to get there. Even every “perfect” body had a price to pay to get it (or in some cases, photoshop was used.)

Every person will go through seasons of hardship and disappointment. Everyone will struggle. Follow your friends and share the exciting times together, but remember that after it’s all said and done, they feel the same way you do sometimes. They look at your photos and think you have it all together too.

We are all running the same race together. Let’s run it embracing the beauty of who we really are instead of wishing we were someone else.