“Be yourself!” As it turns out, this childhood adage is a lot easier said than done.

One obstacle to being fully and confidently ourselves is comparison. Money, career, looks, education, and popularity—these are just some of the categories in which we’re likely to compare ourselves to others. 

Here are five simple ways to avoid falling down the comparison rabbit hole.

1. Accept where you are and go from there

Comparison can stem from dissatisfaction with where you are in life. But, comparison also does nothing to solve that dissatisfaction. Instead, it fans the flame.

Having trouble accepting where you are in life? Consider this: it’s easier to accept where you are on your life path once you’ve acknowledged not only where you want that path to take you but your capability to make it happen. 

Think about it, if you know where you’re going, you’ll be more likely to get there. Set a goal, assess the practical steps necessary to achieving that goal, and get started! 

Remember, admiring someone for what they have accomplished is not the same thing as comparing yourself. It isn’t a competition! Try not to stack your accomplishments up against someone else’s and judge yourself for it. Instead, learn what it took for that person to accomplish what it is you’re wanting to accomplish, then set your mind to leveling up the needed skills to achieve it for yourself.

Redirecting your attention away from comparisons and toward self-improvement can help you get where you want to be.

If you’re not happy with how your life looks right now, redirecting your attention away from comparisons and toward self-improvement can help you get where you want to be. And the sooner you recognize this, the sooner where you are in life will start to change!

2. Do a social media detox

When you compare yourself to someone on social media, you’re comparing your real life with someone’s carefully curated ideal life. 

Typically, anyone’s social media shows you the “highlights” of that person’s life and is unlikely to feature any struggles or feelings of inadequacy that person has. So, don’t compare the actual reality of your life to the cherry-picked reality of someone else’s. All this will get you is a boatload of self-doubt and frustration. 

If you notice social media giving you anxiety in this way, log off and take a break for a few days and consider reading a book or drama that tells a more honest story of life

3. Take time for gratitude

Practicing gratitude is a way to appreciate what you have instead of always reaching for something new in the hopes it will make you happier or more satisfied with life. 

In fact, gratitude is proven to benefit mental health and improve happiness. 

So, take a little time each day and think about what you’re grateful for; slowly but surely, this will help you feel more positive about your life and make it less appealing to compare it to someone else’s.

4. Transform comparison into inspiration

Let whoever you’re comparing yourself to be a source of inspiration for what you can be, do and have in life. 

Think: what do you want and how can you get it? If you’re jealous of your neighbor’s new car, consider a plan for how you can start saving money and maximize your earning potential. Wish you had a big group of friends like your brother does? Join a local kickball league! 

5. Look beyond the surface

When you compare yourself to others, what are you focusing on? Is it something superficial, like the number of followers you have on Instagram? Or is it something meaningful, like virtue?

Pretend your best friend is a saint. If you had a saint as a best friend, then your best friend’s joy, love, and peace would probably make you jealous. Especially on those days that you feel grumpy and fed up with the world! But, rather than getting caught up in jealousy and simply wishing you had a better attitude, consider where those virtues come from. Find what is motivating your best friend to be so full of joy, love, and peace and discover a way to tap into it.

You got this!

When left unchecked, comparison can take away valuable time and energy—not to mention joy!

We hope these five tips can help you start to focus more on you and less on comparing yourself to other people. When you water and nurture your own grass, there’s no point to worrying if the grass is greener on the other side.

The word FOMO made the official cut for the Oxford English Dictionary in 2013, but the feeling’s been around a lot longer: “fear of missing out” is an anxiety so common, it got its own acronym.

FOMO can affect all people of all ages, but you could say it’s especially common among young adults. In fact, nearly three quarters of young adults report having experienced it. 

The side effects? Checking your phone and social media to follow what’s going on, over and over and over again. When we think we’re missing out, we use technology like a window to keep tabs on events or people.

Maybe this helps us feel involved in whatever experience it is we’re missing, but probably not. More than likely, it just creates anxiety and resentment.

FOMO can come from discontent

It’s one thing to “miss out,” it’s another to fear missing out. The reality is we can’t be everywhere all the time, and so that means we naturally have to miss out on some experiences. Whether or not we can content ourselves with that is where FOMO comes in.

People who see the majority of their activities as obligations, such as studying or working, are more likely to experience a higher level of FOMO.

The sad thing is that FOMO is more likely to be experienced by those who feel unhappy. People with lower levels of general mood and life satisfaction tend toward higher levels of FOMO. 

Think about it: if you’re unhappy, you’re probably thinking other people are happier than you. And you’re probably thinking they’re having more fun. This creates the anxiety that you are missing out on these feelings of fun and happiness which you perceive other people having.

That said, FOMO is felt by everyone at some point or another, regardless of temperament. 

People who see the majority of their activities as obligations, such as studying or working, are more likely to experience a higher level of FOMO. Why? Well, because when the activity causing you to “miss out” isn’t fun or interesting, you’re prone to assume the activity you’re missing out on is fun or interesting. 

Along that line, you’re more likely to feel FOMO later in the day or over the weekend when people typically engage in fun activities and socializing. 

Stay off the socials

Ironically, just as social media is an effect of FOMO, it’s a cause of FOMO. When you’re experiencing FOMO, you scratch the itch by checking social media to see what you’re missing out on. When you do that, you see what you’re missing out on, and this only creates more FOMO.

Wonder where social media addiction comes from? Well, one answer is FOMO. 

Happiness research shows that comparing yourself and your life to others can lead to anxiety, unhappiness, and depression. Yet, that’s the very behavior social media encourages, by giving people a platform to put themselves and their lives on a cherry-picked display.

So, if you want to stop feeling like you’re missing out and feel at least a little happier with your own life, start by logging off social media. Or, deleting it altogether!

Pause and reflect

When we feel FOMO, we’re focusing on what other people are doing instead of what we are doing. In keeping our eyes peeled on other people’s lives, we deprive our own lives of our full attention.

This is not the way to live!

Think about the things in your life that you’re thankful for and that make you happy.

So, maybe you are a little sad to be missing that party, but instead of allowing yourself to get caught up in an experience you’re not having, try to focus on all the things you do have.

Think about the things in your life that you’re thankful for and that make you happy. Just think of all the wonderful things in your life you could be missing out on if you were in someone else’s shoes!

It’s easy to get caught up in all the stresses of everyday life—and forget how good we have it sometimes. 

If you’d like to start making more time for gratitude, follow these simple steps.

1. Find gratitude in hard times

Reflecting on negative or difficult situations in your life can actually help you nail down what you’re really grateful for. 

Dig a little deeper into some of these experiences and consider what virtues or strengths they’ve helped you develop or the relationships that have carried you through them. 

Perhaps your job is demanding a lot of you lately. What is there to be grateful for in this situation? Do you have good time management skills? If so, that’s something to be grateful for! Imagine how much more stressful things would be if you didn’t! 

This is just one example of how there’s always something or someone to be grateful for, even in hard times.

2. Start a gratitude journal

Gratitude journals are a tried and true method for practicing gratitude. 

A journal of the things you’re grateful for allows you to keep track of the positives in your life and serves as something you can always refer back to on days when it’s a little tougher than others to feel grateful.

And a gratitude journal can be as time-intensive or laid-back as you want! You can journal everyday or you can set aside a time once a week. 

Still too much of a commitment? Even journaling once a month can be an impactful step on your gratitude journey.

3. Volunteer

For many people, giving back to others in their local community is the key to gratitude, as volunteering can highlight and make you more grateful for the things that you may take for granted.

Plus, people who volunteered in the past year are reportedly more satisfied with their lives compared to people who didn’t volunteer. Additionally, researchers have found that people who volunteer at least once a month report better mental health than those who volunteer infrequently or not at all.

4. Say thank you

Expressing your gratitude for the people you care about can boost their happiness and yours!

SoulPancake ran an experiment encouraging people to write a letter to someone they’re grateful for. People who did so experienced increased levels of happiness up to 4%. 

When the same people then made a phone call expressing their gratitude directly, their happiness levels jumped even further: from 4% to 19%.

5. Prayer or meditation

People who are religious can use prayer to cultivate gratitude. The Pray.com app is an awesome resource for people looking to make daily prayer a priority. 

Not your cup of tea? Try mindfulness meditation. For this sort of meditation, people will usually focus on a grounding word or phrase (such as “gratitude”), but it is also possible to focus on a particular aspect of your life that you’re grateful for (such as “family”). 

The Calm app and the Headspace app are full of guided meditations for those needing a little help with the practice.

Let’s get started.

Be patient with yourself as you start your gratitude journey! Studies show that practicing gratitude makes its most positive impact when done consistently over time.

In other words, just a week of practicing gratitude might not make you feel any different. But, don’t let that deter you! Over time, gratitude is sure to help you feel happier and more satisfied with life. 

Good luck!

Social media consuming too much of your time and/or zapping your energy? 

Here’s five ways to get your social media use under control, so that it doesn’t end up controlling you.

1. Get your social apps off the home screen

If the Instagram app is the first app you see when you open your phone, then it’s probably going to be the first app you open. 

Rather than having all your social media apps front and center on the home screen, put them somewhere else. On iPhone and Android, you can bundle apps together into folders so they’re not individually visible. Even making an organizational change as small as this could help you reduce your scrolling time!

Or, you can take the apps off your phone entirely. When you delete an app like Facebook or Instagram off your phone, it won’t delete your actual account. So, you’ll still be able to log in to your profiles on the computer. 

Having to sit down at a computer to look at social media prevents you from having the option to use social media in every spare moment of your day.

2. Turn off notifications

You can turn off notifications for specific apps in the settings of your phone. Doing this prevents constant notifications from your social media apps tempting you to open them! 

Not sure how? Here’s your how-to for iPhone and Android. 

3. Use apps to help you limit your time on social media

Using one app to make sure you’re not spending too much time on another app is definitely ironic, but that’s the world we live in! There are many apps out there designed to help users limit their social media use. Here’s a couple good ones.

If you’re an Instagram user, Instagram itself can actually help you limit your time on the app.

Forest lets you decide the amount of time (say, 30 minutes) that you want to be off your phone. During that time, a digital plant—hence the app’s name—will grow in the app. But if you use your phone before time’s up, your plant will die!

Another popular app for limiting social media use is Daywise. This app lets you schedule when you want to receive notifications and when you don’t. 

If you’re an Instagram user, Instagram itself can actually help you limit your time on the app. Go to “Your activity” in account settings and there you can see how much time you spend daily using the app. Below this you’ll see “Set Daily Reminder” where you can put in how much time you want to give yourself on the app each day, and Instagram will send you a daily reminder once you’ve reached your time limit.

iPhone has a similar function. Go to the “Screen Time” feature under “Settings” for daily and weekly reports on your screen time, as well as the option to set time limits on your phone use. 

Or, if you have Android, you can manage how you spend time on your phone with Digital Wellbeing. Click here for a step-by-step guide!

4. Dedicate time to a screen-free hobby

Pick a screen-free hobby and dedicate a certain amount of time to it each week. Find a yoga class, join a book club, start a garden: anything that doesn’t involve a screen. 

Finding more things you enjoy off-screen will make spending hours and hours glued to your screen and scrolling social media less appealing. 

5. Don’t sleep with your phone

Instead of scrolling through social media last thing before bed, turn your phone off and leave it to charge. And put it somewhere that isn’t right next to you. 

Not only will this keep you from needlessly delaying your own bed time, but it will improve the quality of your sleep, as studies show that the blue light from our phone screens is disruptive to healthy sleeping patterns.

Baby steps! 

Don’t expect yourself to jump from spending two hours a day on social media to 10 minutes in one fell swoop. 

Start by limiting your time by ten minutes a day, then check your progress in a week and go from there. 

You got this!