anything goes with emma chamberlain - comparison

Episode Date: October 5, 2023

throughout my life, i've gone through phases of low self-esteem. this is normal, we all experience this. i'm not super excited to admit this, but for as long as i can remember, phases of low self-esteem have caused me to fixate on one person that i believe is better than me, and compare myself to them. their appearance, their relationship or lack thereof, their friend group, their job, their family situation… everything. i chose to admit this today because i'm talking about comparison. it’s a pretty normal human instinct, and it's important that we have the ability to compare, but when it comes to comparing ourselves, it gets a little bit more complicated. so let's figure out why we compare ourselves to others. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I'm not super excited to admit this, but I'm going to anyway. Throughout my life, I've gone through phases of low self-esteem. Now this, I'm not embarrassed to admit. This is normal. We all experience this. What I am embarrassed to admit is one of the things that happens during these phases of low self-esteem. For as long as I can remember, phases of low self-esteem has caused me to fixate on one person to

compare myself to. One specific person. Now it changes every time. Each phase of low self-esteem comes with a new person to compare myself to incessantly, but without fail, I always find one person that I believe is better than me in every single way that I decide to compare myself to throughout the duration of the phase. Part of me is like impressed by my subconscious that my brain just decides to pick one person that for whatever reason is my God during the duration of the phase. It's so bizarre

that my brain decides to choose one person, but for whatever reason, it does. And usually, it's through social media, not always, but usually. And I will compare myself to this person And I will compare myself to this person in every single way. Their appearance, their relationship, or lack thereof, their friend group, their job, their family situation, like everything. I choose one person and I just use them as a weapon against myself. And I will never admit to anyone who those people are. I mean, there's been probably 50 of them throughout my life, but it's always one person.

I chose to admit this today because I'm talking about comparison today. I was particularly inspired to do this because I'm in a phase where I sort of have low self-esteem. I'm going to be honest. My self-esteem is a bit low right now, not exactly sure why. There are some things going on in my life that I think could be causing it, but I'm in a phase where I'm clinging on to one person. There's one person right now that I cannot stop comparing myself to. They're out there, they're in the world, and you know, I hope they're doing really well.

And I hope that they're not comparing themselves to anyone. In my brain, they're not comparing themselves to anyone because in my mind, they have a perfect life. That's how this shit works. But in reality, they probably are. They're human, you know. Let's start with what comparison is. Comparison is a consideration or estimate of the similarities or dissimilarities between two things or people a pretty normal human instinct Using comparison is helpful when comparing inanimate objects like when you're at the grocery store and you need to choose which apple To put in your cart Right, you look at one apple and

it's perfect in red and delicious looking and then there's another apple that has a little patch of mold on it. If we didn't have the ingrained ability to compare things, we wouldn't know to compare things and we would just grab the first apple that we saw. It's important that we have the ability to compare. But when it comes to comparing ourselves, it gets a little bit more complicated. We can compare ourselves to others in two different ways. One, upward comparison. This is when we compare ourselves to someone who we feel is better than us.

Downward comparison is when we compare ourselves to someone who we feel is worse off than ourselves. Today we're talking about self comparison because comparison in any other scenario is so boring. Can you imagine if I spent like a half hour today just talking about why it's good that we compare apples to apples when we're at the grocery store. You know what I mean? That's how you would know that I maybe shouldn't have a podcast anymore. Like that's bad.

We're just talking about comparing ourselves to others today because that's really when it gets complicated. That's when this ability that a brain has gets a little tricky, right? It gets a little messy. I personally go through phases and I think we all probably do. Sometimes I don't compare myself to others at all.

Or if I do, I only compare myself in a motivational way. You know, I'm looking at people who are maybe doing better than me in some area as motivation, as inspiration, as a role model. And this is usually when I'm in a more comfortable and confident state of mind. I'm feeling content and happy where I'm at. And I'm looking at the world through a very positive, happy lens. And then sometimes I go through phases where I'm in an insecure frame of mind. And I'm comparing myself to everyone and everything, and my special one person,

that for whatever reason is my beacon of success, and it's really miserable. So let's figure out why we compare ourselves to others. I did a little research because I didn't know. Well, to start, it's human nature. It's completely normal to compare ourselves to others. We're social animals and we're wired to pay attention to what others are doing for our own survival

and well-being. We start comparing ourselves at a very young age. I read an example online, when you're a kid and you see your friend with a toy that you don't have, you feel angry, you feel jealous. Why? Because you're comparing yourself to your friend. As a kid, you don't quite understand material value. The only explanation for that feeling to come in a child is this ingrained ability to compare.

When your kid, societal, pressures, societal norms don't play a role. The point is, it's something that's ingrained in us. Comparison is ingrained in us. Low self-esteem can also cause us to compare ourselves to others. When we believe that we suck, we try to look around to find proof that that's true. Our brain likes to find facts. And when we have low self-esteem, we believe that we suck. We believe that we're shit. And so our brains start trying to find proof

that that's true. So we'll look around and start comparing ourselves to others to prove to ourselves that we suck, that that hypothesis is true. We also compare ourselves to others to figure out where we sit in society to ensure that we're keeping up with the pack. Because again, we're social animals and we use other people as a gauge to see how we're

doing. We're wired to pay attention to what other people are doing, to compare ourselves to what other people are doing, to ensure that we're doing what we got to do. Compare us in sort of keeps us in check in a way. It keeps us on track. It helps us figure out how we measure up to other people in our community and world. Because we want to bring something of value to our community, to the world. We want to be successful.

We also compare ourselves to help us determine what areas we need some self-improvement, comparing ourselves to people we admire can motivate us to grow and be better people. This is sort of the idea of having a role model, right? Now, comparison can be good and bad for us, okay? But let's start out with how it's bad for us. Because the list of how it's bad for us is far longer. So let's start there. You've probably heard the quote, comparison is the thief of joy. What a great Pinterest quote. You've probably pinned that before

under your Pinterest. Go under your Pinterest right now and go down to your inspirational quote board and find that quote because you will. Huge quote, the Beyonce of quotes. It's a simple quote, but I think it does hold a lot of truth. Comparison can really ruin moments of joy in life by convincing us that we could and should have more. For example, we may have a perfectly happy, healthy, fulfilling relationship, romantic relationship. This relationship brings us so much joy. But if we start comparing our relationship to other relationships that look perfect at

face value, we might destroy the joy that could come from that relationship because we're looking around and we're like, they look even happier than we are. So maybe our relationship isn't so great after all. When in reality, the relationship that you're in is gorgeous and amazing and healthy and happy and fulfilling. Comparison can destroy something that is incredible. Another example, we may have a perfect enjoyable job

that pays the bills and gives us joy through community and maybe financial freedom, who knows. But there's always someone out there who has a better job, who makes more money, who hasn't even stronger community. And if we decide to compare ourselves to that person, we will strip all the joy from the job that we used to love and feel fulfilled by. Last example, we may feel confident in our appearance in a way that brings us joy. Maybe we like putting makeup on or wearing

certain outfits or just looking in the mirror with no makeup on and finding the things that we like about ourselves. It sounds hard to imagine for me anyway because the moments that I have where I feel confident my appearance are fleeting, I tend to find confidence and joy and other elements of my personality and myself. I have a really hard time with the appearance bit of it, but there are moments where I'm like, okay, cute, okay, she's cute, but it's rare. But we may feel confident in our appearance in a way that brings us joy.

But there's always someone out there that we're going to find that we think is better looking than us. Always, always, always, always, always. And that can destroy the experience of joy that we have around our appearance. It can destroy the joy that we get from waking up the morning and looking in the mirror and being like, okay, actually kind of cute. It can destroy the joy that we get from getting dressed in an outfit that we find cute. All of a sudden, we're seeing the way that our body looks like in this outfit and we're like, oh, but this other person looks so much better in this outfit, you get the idea.

Comparison can also be harmful because it's usually largely inaccurate and or unfair to ourselves in the sense that we'll never be able to live up to the comparison because we set ourselves up for failure. We almost never know the full story of other people's lives. We usually just see the highlight reel or the low light reel. We're not seeing the full picture. We're seeing and hearing about the biggest moments, usually. We never see the full picture, which means that we're

seeing people's lives through a distorted lens. We're not seeing things accurately. So when we compare ourselves to other people, we're comparing ourselves to something that is not completely well-rounded. Everyone's life is complicated and dynamic, nothing is ever completely perfect or completely terrible. We only see our own lives accurately. And even at times we don't see our own lives accurately, because we actually can have a distorted lens about our own lives as well. But we definitely see other people's lives through a distorted lens. I would argue 99% of the time.

We're not in their brain. We're not living there every day. We don't know everything that they're feeling experiencing, thinking about, dealing with. We just don't know, and we never will. Not to mention, a lot of people exaggerate things, and that further leads to distortion. It's unhealthy for us to compare ourselves to others

in a way that's too cut and dry because we're comparing ourselves to something that is inevitably going to be somewhat inaccurate. We can't take other people's lives at face value and not take it with a grain of salt a little bit. Let's see, you're comparing yourself to someone who you think is better than you. Like, someone who makes more money than you. You might compare yourself to them and think that you're a fucking loser.

Because this other person makes more money than you is more successful in their career than you. But what you don't see is how miserable their job is. You just see them on Instagram on vacation. But what you don't see is them at work every day, fucking miserable. Maybe the community at their work sucks. Maybe their hours are terrible. They have no flexibility.

They're never going to see their family. But you're comparing yourself to their wealth, to their Instagram or their on vacation for the one week a year they get off. And that's all you're seeing. That's an example of how our delusions can lead to comparison that it's somewhat unnecessary. Because if you knew the full story,

you'd probably be like, I don't know if that's actually worth it. That's not a situation that I actually envy. This also applies to downward comparison when you're comparing yourself to someone who you think is worse off than you. So for example, you may compare yourself to somebody who makes less money than you. Now, you might be miserable in your job, but you're like, at least I make X amount of money. And this person makes a third of how much I make. That sucks. That's miserable. But what you might not see is how much they love their job. Maybe they make a third of what you make, but they have an incredible community at their work. And they really enjoy what they're doing and it's fulfilling for them.

If you were to see that side of it, you might say, ah, you know, this person is actually doing really well. They're actually not worse off than me, right? Maybe in some ways they're actually better off than me. We can compare ourselves to ourselves as well. And at times, we have a realistic view of our lives and who we are and how things are going. But at times, that can be distorted as well. Depending on our frame of mind, we can have a completely distorted lens on our own lives.

We can have a completely distorted lens on our own lives. I think we all tend to compare ourselves to our past selves. Our memories tend to be distorted. Sometimes they're not, but a lot of times they are. We might look back at a time of our life and think, wow, that was my golden age. You're looking at photos and you're like, oh, that was my peak. But there's a good chance that that sort of distorted. In moments when we're comparing ourselves to our past, it might not be as accurate as it should be in order to compare in a way

that is helpful. I think social media really exacerbates inaccurate and unfair comparison because these days, we tend to compare ourselves to people's social media presence, which is always inaccurate. I'm going to come out with a crazy claim right now and say that social media is always inaccurate. It is never, ever, ever, ever accurate. I would say that I'm myself on social media. I don't think I'm not being myself, but I am absolutely posting the highlight reel of my life on my social media. Absolutely! I'm posting in my best outfits.

I'm posting with my prettiest makeup on, I'm posting the best angles of myself because that's just sort of ingrained in what we do. I mean, there are times when I post maybe an unflattering angle or something or something a bit more accurate, but not really. Like, I'm not posting on Instagram when I'm having a full mental breakdown. I've done that. Okay, I actually have done that before, but even that is like romanticized. It's like usually like a cute picture of me crying.

It's at least a cute one. It's impossible for social media to be accurate. The only way it could ever be accurate is if you were live streaming what you were doing 24 hours a day. That's the only way that you could ever have a truly accurate social media presence. No one does.

And these days, we see most people through social media and that's where we compare ourselves. And that's a huge issue because as we all know, it's the highlight reel. It's all the best moments. On top of that, so many things are faked, exaggerated, face-tuneduned, Photoshopped, filtered, the list goes on. We should really strive to never compare ourselves to people on social media, because it's so painfully inaccurate that we're never gonna win that battle. The way I look at it is like,

someone on social media is the idealized version of themselves, right? This is not new news. We see ourselves as a fully dynamic person. We see the good, we see the bad, we see the ugly. We're never going to win the battle of comparison when we're comparing ourselves to an idealized version of someone. We'll just never win that battle, so we shouldn't even try.

And that's what I try to do. But as I mentioned in the beginning of the episode, I have these moments where I'll find a person that, for whatever reason, I think is just doing better than me in every category of life. And I'll cling onto them, and I'll fixate on them and compare myself to them in every single way. And nine times out of 10, it's someone that I found on social media. Quite don't even know. I've never even met them. But when I'm in a moment where my self-esteem is low, I can't help myself. I don't have the mental strength to self-talk and remind myself that social media is not accurate. So it's all

fun and games until you're in a vulnerable moment and you don't have the strength to see through that. It's tough. This episode is brought to you by BetterHelp. Life is full of crossroads. And a lot of times it's very unclear which path is best. Maybe you're considering a career change, a relationship change, the best way forward looks a little different for everybody. And we have to figure that out for ourselves. And therapy can help you do that. I can't even express how much talking through issues has helped me throughout my life. I'm someone who heavily relies on talking with others to help me get through a challenge, whether it's just getting something off my chest or it's getting advice from somebody who is

wiser than me about something, talking through challenges can be so beneficial. And no matter who you are, therapy can be a great option. It gives you somebody to talk to who isn't directly involved in your life and has no bias. If you're thinking of starting therapy, give better help but try. It's entirely online designed to be convenient, flexible, and suited to your schedule.

Just fill out a brief questionnaire to get matched with a credentialed therapist and switch therapists at any time for no additional charge. Visit BetterHelp.com slash anything today to get 10% off your first month. That's betteraglp.com slash anything. Tap the banner or visit this episodes page to learn more. Comparison can also convince you that you are a terrible, embarrassing piece of shit failure when that is not the reality. In reality, you could be doing really well.

Maybe you're in a healthy, happy relationship. You have a good group of friends. You have a good job. You're up in the ranks at the job. You could be doing really well on paper, but comparison can convince you otherwise. When we become addicted in a way to upward comparing ourselves to harshly and unfairly, we can convince ourselves that we are doing bad. We can undermine our accomplishments, successes in personal journey, ruin all

chances for celebration, and just convince ourselves that we're failing. And this is unfortunate when in all reality we're succeeding because we should celebrate our success. But there have been so many times in my life when I've been doing really well, but I've convinced myself that I was failing, and it ruined the experience for me. I'm able to see that now in retrospect, but in the moment, I couldn't see how great my life was. I couldn't see how successful I was

because I was so convinced that I wasn't shit because there were hundreds of people doing better than me. Comparison can also be harmful when you fall into a state where you're relying on it for your self-esteem and confidence. We can fall into a state where comparison, upward and downward determines our self-esteem and confidence. The problem with that is it makes your self-esteem and confidence painfully inconsistent. Having a healthy sense of self-esteem is crucial for well-being. And ideally, we find our self-esteem is crucial for well-being.

And ideally, we find our self-esteem in confidence from within. Finding self-esteem in confidence through comparison is not finding it from within. Deep down, we should feel good about our morals and our work ethic and our inner beauty and our outer beauty because we look in the mirror, we reflect on our actions, we reflect on our

work ethic, and we feel good about ourselves. That's the healthiest way to find self-esteem and confidence by determining it based on what we know about ourselves. But at times, we can't find that from within, and we start searching for it through comparison outside of ourselves. And when you're looking outside of yourself, you'll constantly be met with different extremes. You'll compare yourself to somebody who's far below you and you'll get this boost of self-esteem and confidence. I'm fucking slaying, I'm nailing it, I'm slaying, I'm doing so well, they're shit.

And I'm the princess of the all the land and I'm doing so well. Look at me. You know, I'm slaying and I'm more gorgeous than them. Ooh, I'm more gorgeous. You know, you get this meteoric rise of self esteem. And then you see somebody who makes more money than you, who has a hotter partner than you, who goes on more vacations than you, who has more friends than you. And all of a sudden, you have this meteoric fall, and you feel like shit about yourself, and your confidence is all the way down on the ground. When you're looking outside of yourself to determine yourself esteem, you are just going to be swinging back and forth to both extremes. And ideally, your self esteem should be more level and consistent, and the way to have that is to find yourself a steam within

yourself. But we all have moments where we rely on comparison for our self-esteem. And it's a matter of figuring out when you're in a phase like that and being like, okay, wait a minute, I need to look within. Being a person who compares a lot, can be unhealthy socially as well. It can make us toxic to be around. When we're constantly upward comparing ourselves to others, we may feel the urge to bring others down to our level. We might make rude remarks. We might sabotage others' success,

because we're upward comparing ourselves so much that we feel terrible. And we don't know what to do. So without even realizing we're doing it at times, we might turn into bad people, which is not good for us socially. On the other side of things, when we're constantly downward comparing ourselves to others, our ego might become terribly inflated in a way that makes us seem cocky en route, which again makes us not fun to be around. All of a sudden, all of this comparison that we're doing has led us to a worse life for ourselves. Now, what a bummer that is.

And how ironic that is. We're always comparing ourselves because in theory, we want to be the best version of ourselves. But if we compare ourselves too much, we can end up with a worse life. And that's kind of ironic because I'm of the belief that life is sort of about other people in a way, doing good for other people, creating meaningful connections with other people, loving other people. As I'm entering adulthood, I'm realizing how true that is.

And that was not something that I believed up until recently. I never thought that that was the meaning of life. I always thought that the meaning of life was more about happiness. And I still think that that's true to an extent. But I think happiness, a I still think that that's true to an extent, but I think happiness a lot of times comes from the things that we can do for other people, the connections that we can create with other people. I don't know. Listen, I'm still working through that philosophy to an extent. So, listen, don't take that too seriously, but you get the idea. that too seriously, but you get the idea. Comparison can also negatively boost our ego.

I know I kind of just said this, but let's zoom into it for a second. Downward comparison can destroy our humility and inflate our ego to a point where we believe that we're better than we are. Being confident is one thing, and we should all strive to be confident because we fucking deserve it. We all deserve it. If we're good people and we should all strive to be confident because we fucking deserve it.

We all deserve it. If we're good people and we're doing our best, we deserve to feel confident. End of story. But confidence is different than an inflated ego. An inflated ego is delusional. is delusional. Confidence is rooted in reality, right? It's acknowledging where we succeed while still acknowledging where we fall short. That's confidence to me. Inflated ego is just convincing ourselves that we're the fucking best when no one's the fucking best, no one.

And inflated ego, I feel like, is about you against the world. It's about you being better than other people. Confidence is not about you being better than other people. It's just about you being good period. I think that that's what separates the two. In reality, no one's the best. We're all flawed. We all have improvements to make. That's just the truth. That's fact. Yeah, okay. Maybe some people are more successful,

have better morals, have a better life than others. That's true. That's kind of an example of the unfairness of life. But also, that's impossible to calculate in a way, because we never know everything about everyone. So it's pointless to even try. And so we should never compare ourselves to others to inflate our ego. Being in this state of mind can prevent us from

being humble, which makes us, you know, better people, can prevent us from establishing a growth mindset. In order to have a growth mindset, you have to acknowledge the fact that you're not the best and you never will be. You'll always have more to improve upon. And what a beautiful thing that is that we're all on a journey where we all have shit, we have to improve upon. How cool is that? That nobody is perfect. Nobody is done working on themselves. We all have work to do.

How comforting is that? If you have an inflated ego, though, you're not thinking about that. You're like, no, I'm good. I'm fine. I'm on top of the world. I'm the best. And then you forget that you have more to work on.

So then you're not going to grow anymore. So those are all the ways that comparison can be harmful. But as with all things, it's not all bad, right? It's not all bad. Actually, okay, there are some things that are just all bad. I'm like thinking of various things that are just all bad. And now I'm like, well, you know, not everything has that duality to it, but I think comparison does.

I think there are times when comparison can be beneficial. And I did some research on it to make sure, and it was true. Comparison is not all bad. Upward comparison can help motivate us to improve ourselves in better our lives. Let's really think about it for a second. Would we get anything done if we didn't compare ourselves to others? Like a little healthy comparison? Motivates us to get shit done. It lights a fire under our ass to improve ourselves. It shows us where get shit done. It lights a fire under our ass to improve ourselves. It shows us where we can grow. It shows us where we can improve.

It gets us up out of bed. It's like, oh, I want to be like that person. And it also helps us set goals, which is very beneficial because having a goal to work towards makes life better. It keeps us busy in a healthy way. It gives us purpose. Some of the most depressing periods of my life were depressing because I didn't have a goal.

I had nothing I was working towards. And so I fell into this state of feeling like I had no purpose. I had nothing to do. And I had too much time to ruminate and compare myself to others in a negative way and, you know, just spiral because I didn't have anything better to do. Having goals is so important. And at times comparing ourselves to people who we admire can help us figure out what

our next goal is in life. And having that goal is really important. And it's interesting because I think having a goal prevents comparison. When you have a goal that you're working towards, you can develop a sort of tunnel vision where you're like, oh, I'm just so laser focused on on this goal and accomplishing this goal that you don't have all this extra time to compare yourself to others. I think we tend to compare ourselves to others when we're bored. We have nothing better to do. And our brain is trying to find something to fixate on, similar to how we tend to be more

anxious when we have nothing to do, because we have no distractions. And our brain just tries to find a problem to solve, tries to find something to work on. So it creates a rational anxiety just to give ourselves something to do. I think comparison can also help us boost self-esteem in a way that's well-deserved. I'll give an example. Let's say you're working at a coffee shop and you're a barista.

And there are 10 baristas working at a coffee shop and you're a barista. And there are 10 baristas working at this coffee shop. And let's say you get employee of the month. Why? Because you've been really working on bonding with the customers, you've been really working on improving your latte art, you've been really working on helping the new employees get integrated into the culture of your job.

You've been working really hard and you got recognized for that and what a beautiful thing that is. Comparing yourself to the other nine employees that didn't get in the employee of the month can help solidify your belief that you're working really hard and you're doing really well at your job. And this is sort of tricky because I think at times we can compare ourselves to others in a way that inflates our ego and that is not helpful. That's not good.

That's toxic, right? But there are also times when we can compare ourselves to others in a way that does not degrade the other people. It's sort of tricky, you know, because if you're comparison to other people who didn't do as well as you boost your ego and turns you into an asshole, then it didn't serve a purpose that was good. It has a negative impact. But if you just use it as validation that you're doing really well and it becomes more about you, then it does about them, I think it can be okay and I think it can't be healthy. But it can't impact the way that you treat other people. It can't impact your ego. It should just boost your confidence. Boost yourself a steam a little. So how do we prevent comparison

from ruining our lives? Well, there's a few things we should remember. To start, we don't ever see the full picture. When we find ourselves comparing ourselves to others, we need to remind ourselves, we're not seeing the full picture. There's a good chance that this is not fair to us. This is a battle that we could never win. We also should remember that other people's success doesn't take away from our own. We're on our own journey, we're on our own path. And we should just focus on that. We should also remember that there's always

gonna be somebody better than you. Sorry, there is. There's always gonna be somebody who has more money, somebody who's prettier, somebody who has a better looking nicer, more perfect, significant other in relationship. There's always going to be somebody with a better car. It's never ending. It's never ending.

If you look for it, you'll always find somebody who's better. So there's no need to fight that battle because you'll never win. It's also important to remember that there are probably people comparing themselves to you and you look at your own life and you're like, what the fuck? Why? But it's because we don't see everything accurately. There are so many people who just see a little snippet of your life and think, wait, that actually seems really great. A lot of times, you're being compared to too. I think it's so impactful to try to replace comparison with gratitude for what we do have.

This has been probably the most powerful thing for me when I'm in a phase of heavy comparison, toxic comparison. I really lean into gratitude for my life. You know, I look at my relationship with my parents and I'm like, what a beautiful relationship that is. I look at my health and I'm so grateful for my health. I look at my career. I'm like, things are great.

Look at the great things in your life and find contentment in that. And it's not always easy because there are periods of our life where things are really bad. Maybe our work situation is bad. Maybe our family situation is bad. Maybe our health situation is bad. And our family situation is bad. Maybe our health situation is bad and in those moments it can be really hard to

find gratitude and Find contentment with where we're at. But I think we can always find gratitude for Being alive because if you're able to even compare yourself to others, that means that you're alive. And sometimes that's all we have to be grateful for, but at least we can find gratitude in that. I think it's also important for us to take social media with a grain of salt and to consistently remind ourselves how inaccurate social media is because today we're comparing ourselves through a screen most of the time. I would say I think social media has made comparison a lot

worse. Actually I don't think that I know that and the only thing we can do is use mindfulness to remind ourselves that this shit is not accurate. It's just not accurate. It's self-talk. It's noticing yourself comparing yourself to someone online and then literally, actively in your mind saying, this is not real. I don't know what the fuck is going on in this person's life. This is not real.

I think it's also helpful to use comparison as motivation, as a way to set goals. When we use comparison in this way, it can be really beneficial. When we catch ourselves having a negative and comparative thought, we can actively choose to turn it into a positive thing. Let's say we're jealous to somebody else's job. Maybe we reroute that and use it as motivation to improve our work life in some way. We use it to set a goal for our work life. An even more challenging example would be, let's say we're comparing ourselves to someone else's appearance.

How do we reroute that into something positive? Well, maybe we use it as motivation to lean into fashion a little bit more, experiment more with our sense of style. Maybe we use it as motivation to learn how to do make up in a way that is creatively exciting and fulfilling. Maybe we use it as motivation to improve ourselves in other ways that make our appearance less important to us. I think it's also important

to actively celebrate and acknowledge your strengths and successes. A lot of times we celebrate other people's strengths and other people's successes and ignore our own because it's sort of uncomfortable at times to be like, yeah, we're doing really good. It requires a level of mindfulness, you know, checking in with yourself every once in a while and saying, what have I been succeeding at recently? What has been a strength for me recently? We almost never take time to sit down and do that, to have that conversation with ourselves. And I think that that can be incredibly helpful. It helps us boost self-esteem, boost confidence so that we're less likely to go and compare

ourselves in a way that's toxic and unhealthy. We should also be celebrating other people's wins, too. It feels good to celebrate other people's successes and wins. In the moment it can be kind of hard. If we're comparing ourselves to them, it can be really, really challenging. Sometimes you even have to fake it, but showing yourself that you can celebrate another person's win will weirdly prove to yourself that other people's successes don't take away from your own, that everybody can have their little slice of the pie, you know?

In last but not least, focus on your own journey. Try to the best of your ability to focus on you. Find confidence from within. Find self-esteem from within. Compare yourself to who you were in the past. Look at how far you've come. And if you've kind of taken a few steps backwards, that's okay because look at what you used to do. You could

do it again. Focus on your own journey because that is the only thing that you can be certain about. Everything else, you don't see all the layers, you don't see all of the complexity. Focus on you because that's the only thing that you can control. All right, that's all I have. Honestly, that was like the pep talk I needed to hear. A lot of times, that's what these episodes are for for me. It's like just as much a reminder for myself as it is for anyone who's listening. A lot of times I say what I know is true, but I also am saying what I need to hear, you know, this episode was very much that for me.

Maybe you needed to hear this too. And if you did need to hear this, I hope that it was in some way helpful. If you enjoyed this episode, tune in Thursdays and Sundays to anything goes. You can stream audio anywhere you listen to podcasts, watch video exclusively on Spotify for video episodes. Majority of my episodes are also filmed so you can watch me talk if you want. This episode was audio only because I am in a hotel room in Milan, Italy. And the lighting in here is atrocious. And I don't even know how I'd fix it. So think of this as a phone call today. Most of my podcasts are like a FaceTime because you can see me. But sometimes we talk on the phone because that can be kind of fun too.

Follow anything goes on Instagram and anything goes. Give anything goes a rating if you like it. Give it a little five stars if you're enjoying the show. Help show me that you like what I'm doing. Follow me on Instagram at Emma Chamberlain. Check out my coffee company, Chamberlain Coffee. We have coffee, we have tea, we have cute little accessories, we have it all, well we don't have it all, but we have a lot of great things. Chamberlaincoffee.com for that. Use code AG15 for a little discount. Go to the store locator, see if there's Chamberlain Coffee in a store near you. That's all I have to say today. Thank

you all so much for listening and hanging out. It's always such a pleasure. I don't know, I just love and appreciate all of you and I'll talk to you soon. Bye. And I don't know, I just love and appreciate all of you, and I'll talk to you soon. Bye!