Comparison Kills, Contentment Breeds Life

The older I get the more I realize how social media has the power to influence a lot of the decisions we make, opinions we have, and beliefs we carry. I do think that social media comes with a lot of positive aspects to it, but I also believe that with the good comes the bad. Don't get me wrong now, I am not trying to say that I live my life without any social media because I don't. But I've realized that you don't need to have every social media platform that has ever existed. I have the ones that I feel like are valuable to me in some sort of way.

The one thing that social media has showed me is that comparison exists and it can be a total b*tch. Comparison has made me feel many negative feelings, such as feeling not good enough, not smart enough, not rich enough, not fit enough, and everything else in between.

I have gone through a rollercoaster of emotions with social media. The one app that I feel like I have gone through the most would be Instagram. I made an Instagram because part of me wanted to have what other people my age had. I thought that by having an Instagram that I would understand trends, vibes, and aesthetics. I thought that I would be able to stay connected and updated with what others around me were doing. I thought that I would be able to feel a sense of popularity by a numerical value my profile had - the number of likes my photos got, the amount of followers, the follower to following ratio, etc. But rather than understanding that, I questioned everything about myself and if I was "good enough." I would spend hours scrolling looking at people's photos and how they posed. I would spend hours trying to photoshop and edit my photos to look adequate. I would spend hours looking up poses to do before I decided that I wanted to take a picture. I would spend hours on another app that let you pre post photos to see if that photo would match your feed. Basically, I spent hours of my life each day doing something that didn't feel meaningful to me.

I would go back and forth with temporarily deactivating and reactivating my account. I would go weeks without it, but then I would feel like I was missing out on everyone's life so I would hit the redownload button on the App store. This went on for years of my life until I finally graduated college and decided that there was more to life than being consumed by social media. This is when I decided to permanently delete my Instagram account, which meant that once I decided to do that, I would lose everything. I would lose all my photos, all my likes, all my comments, all my followers, etc. At first, it was difficult because I wouldn't know what to do when I was on my phone. After a while, it just felt like one of the most liberating feelings.

Just recently, I bumped into one of my old friends and she asked "How come you don't have an Instagram anymore? You were so good at it!"

This was the question that hit the nail on the head for me.

I was so trapped and consumed in this false reality. I learned that a "candid" photo was not candid because it actually took about 100 different snapshots to choose from. I learned that #blessed on a photo was not actually the feeling of being #BLESSED. I learned that half of the stuff on Instagram that is shown is only the "good parts" of someone's life. I learned a lot from having an Instagram, but I learned a lot more from not having one.

One of the most important things I have learned is the word, the meaning, and the feeling of being content.

Content (adj): in a state of peaceful happiness

Here are a few things I've learned about contentment and comparison:

• Contentment - I've learned that when we I've learned that content people don't always have the best of everything, but they make the best of everything.

• Comparison - I've learned that when we play the game of comparison, we are playing a game that we will never win. By doing so, our real life will never feel good enough.

• Contentment - I've learned that contentment is a place that we get to emotionally and spiritually. It's a peace in your spirit that knows what you have, no matter how much or how little, is enough

• Comparison - I've learned that comparison is a problem of our own making. It is pressure we put on ourselves.

The first key to contentment is gratitude, and the second key us humility. Stop looking for something and realize that what you were searching for has been lying within you this whole time.