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The Comparison Game Will Bankrupt Your Soul · Natty Unfiltered

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Foreign.
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Welcome back to the Natty Unfiltered podcast.
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The space where we get real about identity,
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confidence and rediscovering yourself beyond motherhood.
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Today I want to talk about the comparison game and
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how it literally bankrupts your soul and you don't even
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realize it. I thought the comparison stopped after high
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school. Okay, maybe computer college, but nope,
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it sure continues on into the adulthood.
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And at times I think that it gets even.
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Feels the same as being back in high school,
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if that can make sense. Let's be honest.
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Scrolling and comparing will com will keep
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you broke. Broken money, broken confidence and broke
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in joy. And I'm talking about the
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lovely social media that we all do on the regular
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basis. And I think more than we like to even
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admit to ourselves. I know this because I've
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been there, sitting in my phone, looking at people,
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looking at other beautiful women, moms who
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I thought had it all together. Now we know that
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whatever you see on social media, not everything is what's happening
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in life. You know, you see the perfect homes, the perfect bodies,
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the perfect businesses. And every
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time I compared my life to what I saw online
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and it made me feel smaller, less than
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if I felt behind. I think that social
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media does, it does good job when it
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can uplift you, but it also can really
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bring you down. I feel that
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accounts that you follow make a big difference if
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you follow accounts that uplift you, that bring you joy, that actually
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make you want to do better for yourself than
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those accounts that you probably want to follow.
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But here's what I realized, that the
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comparison game will bankrupt your soul.
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And so that's what I want to talk about
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today. And I want to talk about how I broke
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out of that trap and how you can do as well.
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Now, the comparison sometimes feels harmless at first
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because you're just scrolling, you're just checking,
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and then you don't realize what it actually does to you.
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So it slowly drains your joy
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because you're always measuring your life against stress,
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someone else's highlight reel.
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Now you see all the
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good that others post because
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let's be honest, not a lot of us want to post.
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Not such great things that are happening in our lives.
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So when you're stuck in comparison, your wins
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don't feel like enough, your progress feels too slow,
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and then your identity feels shaky.
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The truth is the comparison is not inspiration.
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It's self sabotage dressed up as motivation.
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If you think about it, how many times have you left social
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media feeling worse than when you opened it?
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I can tell you I felt this way Plenty
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of times. And until I start
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to catch myself and realize what actually I'm doing
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to myself, to my self worth, to my confidence.
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And I needed to look for ways to change that.
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Now it's not just emotional. The comparison has financial and
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also spiritual costs. From the financial standpoint,
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let's say, you know, you're looking at social
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media posts, you're looking at beautiful clothes and then you start buying
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things just to keep up. You buy clothes, products,
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programs that you don't even want. You buy
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it because you want to keep up with the trend,
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you want to look the same way and you
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just buying just click after click
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after click. From the confidence standpoint, you begin
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doubting your worth. You start playing it small, not taking
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risk, start doubting yourself thinking,
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okay, well she can do it or he can do
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it, but I can't do it for X,
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Y and Z. You start, you start having those reasons of
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why you can't accomplish certain things because of
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you lack maybe how you look, maybe you don't
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have the right tools. Also the joy. You stop
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celebrating your life because you're too focused on others.
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Social media does this really good job in drawing you
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in into this online reality
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which is not really a real world because you
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just see the snippets of somebody else's life and
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then so the result is that you go broke in every sense of
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the word and you want to realize
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that and then snap out of it because it
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just does not do any good for you.
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Social media should be there to inspire you,
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to uplift you. As I mentioned before, it shouldn't
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be there to bring you down and make you feel very little
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and make you feel like you can do what
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other people are doing that you see online.
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Now. There was a season where I couldn't
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open Instagram without spiraling or
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like TikTok, you know, like you I would sit,
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you get on the social media, you think, hey, I have half an hour and
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before you know it, an hour, an hour and a half passes by and
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you close the the app and
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you just feel drained. And sometimes, yes, I see my kids
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do it and I always have to tell them, don't be spending so much time
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is just consuming. You're wasting your time scrolling where
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you can be doing other things for yourself or
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around the house and all you do is you
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just wasting your time away.
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Now I also would see like,
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let's say like other moms with the perfect routines,
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spotless homes, you know, kids in
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this cute outfits and you know,
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sometimes I feel like, okay, Maybe I'm not measuring
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up, but that was all in my head because I
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would stop and think and I would tell to myself,
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well, wait a minute, there's always going to be
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somebody who has more or bigger or better,
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but it doesn't mean that I don't have those things.
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And I just have to appreciate and be grateful and thankful for
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what I have. So that was the breaking
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point, is that realizing that their path is
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not my path, where all of us are on different paths
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in our lives and you can't tell where
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somebody is in life and where they used to be before,
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because maybe you're just starting out and they've already been there where
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you are right now. I also
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decided that choosing to either unfollow or
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mute certain accounts, that would trigger those
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comparisons. And once I started to like, mute certain accounts,
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I started to feel a lot better because I didn't want
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it to completely unfollow the accounts because I thought, okay,
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I'll feel better and then I'll
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just unmute those accounts.
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That's something that I decided to do it for myself now,
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shifting the energy. Instead of asking, why not me?
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I start to ask what's possible for me?
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And that's really shifted my mindset because once
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you start saying to yourself, what's possible for me? What's out
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there for me? I can do this, then you
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just start thinking differently. You start opening up
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doors and opportunities for yourself because you're not in that sort
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of like victim mentality and thinking, I'm not good enough,
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I can't do this. So everything just kind of changes once you
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start asking yourself what is possible for me. So slowly
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I started to build like my own lane,
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focusing on my mission, my growth,
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and what brought me joy.
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As I mentioned before, like, you cannot measure your chapter
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two against someone else's chapter 20. You will
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see other people's success stories or where
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they at, but you have no idea what they've
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gone through to get there.
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Like I've seen, for example, when I started to get into digital
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marketing, I've seen so many women, so many moms
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being successful, and I was like, oh my goodness, it took
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them such short time to get to where they at.
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And then I started to find out, well, they kind of had a
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background in sort of like sales
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field before, so they already
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done it for like 15, 10 years. Yes, there's some people who
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are like more natural at it and the success
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just comes more easily to them. It still takes time,
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but once you start digging in, once you Start finding out, you're like,
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okay, they've been doing it for quite some time. And if
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you think about it like CEO of the company didn't just get to be CEO
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overnight or over like one, two years. It took years
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for someone to get to that position. I think
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a lot of times right now we in this stage
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of like instant gratification that when we see
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now somebody say oh I know,
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like my business is doing so well or I make such,
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such amount x amount of money doing this,
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this and that, they don't tell you what
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struggles they went through, they don't tell you how long it took them to
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get there. There's few people that I've seen that
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would mention and say what they've gone through, how long
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it took them. A lot of people will omit that.
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And for us as consumers
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or you know, like when you're scrolling, you'll see that oh, the success
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happened overnight or somebody looks really great, but you
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don't know that this person, they've been working out,
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they've been eating right and it took them maybe a year to get to
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where they at and how they're looking right now.
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So you don't know sometimes this the history and
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story of where somebody been before.
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Also what you admire in others is simply showing you
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what's possible for you,
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what you see out there. It does not mean that it's not
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achievable for you. It's all about are
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you willing to get to where you want it to be and
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what you're willing to do, Are you willing to learn? Are you willing to change
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your mindset? Are you willing to put in the work? If you are,
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then you will get there. You will have like
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they say, the successful people have failed before,
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many times before. They'll actually got to
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be successful. And so you need to accept failure as
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part of the success. And as I know it's very hard to do that and
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I've had to learn this as well.
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Once you learn it, you know that okay, failure is
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just a stepping stone towards my success and I'm
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willing to do anything and everything, learn, ask others
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and keep on pushing through and not just drop the
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ball because I know where I want it to be,
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where I'm heading and I see the future.
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And the third thing is the gratitude is the
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very important thing to comparison.
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When you start counting your blessings, you stop counting
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someone else's. Being grateful, being, being thankful for
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everything that you have in your life. Doesn't matter how small
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or big things that you have And
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I'm talking about even things like, you know, you wake up in the morning for
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your health, for the food, for the car that you drive, for the roof over
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your head, for the opportunities come to, you know, your way.
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So many things that we tend to take for granted.
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But if you stop and think about what are the good things
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that you have in your life and just be grateful, the more grateful you are,
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the more things start coming to you, the more that you
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start attracting into your life. So again, it comes back
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to changing and switching your mindset and how you think.
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And even if things when they don't work out, they always work out at the
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end. And even better than you thought about. I to this
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day, I've always have to remember myself even though there's issues arise,
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even when things life gets tough.
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And sometimes like I feel how much God
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can be testing me and I know it's testing me to see how I can
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handle certain things in my life until
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maybe, I don't know, reach my breaking point.
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And every time I just learned that I'm
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tougher than I think I am. And so
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you always have to remember that you cannot give
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up, you cannot think that you're
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less than somebody because you have less than
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what somebody else has.
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Remember that you don't know what the other person is going
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through even though they're showing all
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the glorious things online that you see.
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And so the practical steps that
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like you can take, you can curate
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your feed, you can unfollow,
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you can mute, you can block if needs to,
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whatever that is going to make you feel better about
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yourself while you working on yourself.
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You want to curate the feed that when you open up the app, it just,
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it makes you happy, it uplifts you. If you want to follow
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motivational positive accounts,
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if you want to follow the people that after other moms that you can relate
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to, then that's what you need to do. And also limit your
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scroll time like protect your piece even if you put the timer.
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I think that if you don't put a timer as I've done
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it and I'm sure you do it, you sit down because you have a
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break for 15, 30 minutes and before you know it you double that
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time or maybe even more so putting,
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putting, putting the limit on your scroll time is very
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important. And set your goals based on your values, not on
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somebody else's. You write them down,
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what your goals, what your dreams and work off
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of the list. Be for yourself.
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And always remember to celebrate small wins daily.
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I think we, we Always look at, okay, I'm just gonna celebrate
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when something big is gonna happen, something big and good.
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But you want to celebrate small
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wins. Like if you're trying to getting on social media and you're growing,
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you want to grow your following. Celebrate those small
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wins by having people follow you, like one by one.
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Don't just celebrate when you say, like, oh, well, I'm going to
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celebrate when I have 5,000 followers or 10,000 followers. Those are great.
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But celebrate 10 followers, 15 followers.
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And from then on, small wins and celebrating them are
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just as important as the big wins. And just to remember
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that someone else's success doesn't take away from yours,
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there's plenty of room for everyone.
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The comparison is a thief of joy. And if you let it,
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it, it will completely rob you blind.
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But here's the truth. You don't need to run their race.
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You were given your lane for a reason. And when you stop
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comparing and start building,
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you step into abundance in money, in confidence,
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in joy and self worth. So my
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challenge for you is look at the accounts
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that drain you. Don't bring you
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joy and just maybe unmute them.
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Look at the accounts, maybe that's bring you joy and start following
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them. So you are stepping into your own lane
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and you will thank yourself and your mind will thank
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you and your soul will thank you.
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So I hope that this little pep talk,
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you know, help you to kind of look at how you
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spend your time on social media. As parents,
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as a parent myself, you know,
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it's, it's very hard these days to limit yourself and limit your
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kids to be on social media and also tell them
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to when they spend time on
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social media, spend it wisely, and if they are, yes, you can learn so many
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things on social media because I know that I've learned a lot of things that
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a lot of different doors have opened up for me that I otherwise wouldn't have
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known, which I'm thankful for it. And sometimes you actually build relationship
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and friendships on people that might not be even like living
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in your own city, which is
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great, but you also have to look at the downsides of social
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media and the comparison that happens and
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just evaluate it and change certain things.
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So I hope this was helpful to you. I want
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to thank you for tuning in to the Nadian filtered podcast. If this episode
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hit home for you, save it, share it, and pass it along
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to another mom who needs to hear this reminder.
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And just remember your story, your pace,
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your lane is enough. Keep rediscovering who
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you are because you are worth every bit of it.
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Until next time.