Oct 30, 2019
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It might not be something other people talk about but I guarantee I’m not the only one to have these thoughts floating around my head, or maybe I am, in that case, this episode is for me to listen to the next time I find myself falling down the comparison and envy spiral. While social media can be an amazing tool for growing our businesses, connecting with friends and family and discovering new things, it also gives us a million opportunities to feel like we don’t measure up each day.
To help get to the bottom of these feelings as photographers I want to challenge you to ask yourself some of the following questions.
- Why is this really bugging me?
- Do I actually want to be doing what this person is doing and ALL that goes with it.
- If this is something I do actually want to do or achieve one day, how can I start taking steps to move towards this?
Tips for combating comparison and envy.
#1 Start your day off with some gratitude.
Take out a notebook or a piece of paper and jot down 5 things you are grateful for. I love doing this first thing in the morning so I can start my day off with a thankful heart. It doesn’t need to be life-changing things you write down, it could be someone held the door for you, or you enjoyed the conversation you had with your kids at the dinner table last night. The point is if you start writing these gratitude moments down, you’re going to start looking for these moments throughout the day and focus on them.
#2 Curate Your Feed
I actually debated about adding this to the list. Like I said if we are just trying to avoid something it’s only going to fester in our hearts, but I don’t think we need to torture ourselves while we work our way through it. When curating your feed you want to be mindful of who you are following and why. Try to pare down to only those accounts which you find useful or inspirational. You’ve seen the travel commercials where they are talking about not hate liking someone's trip pics don’t hate follow someone's feed either.
#3 focus on your own goals!
So what I mean by this is having clearly defined goals that we are constantly moving towards. If we don’t have clearly set goals for our business and for our lives then it's so easy to fall into the trap of wanting to chase after what everyone else is doing.
#4 step back for some perspective.
God really made me take a big step back during my husband's battle with infection and heart surgeries which you can listen to in episode one if you haven’t already. Basically I had to put growing my business on hold for almost 3 years while my husband battled infections after 3 heart valve replacements while I was pregnant with our second child. I had a lot of time to sit and think while we drove 16 hours each way to Rochester MN, for surgeries and appointments. My outlook on life and my work shifted so dramatically!
My advice is to take a step back and remember what is actually important in life.
You don’t need to go through something life-altering to understand this, but you do have to make a decision to actually take the step back and evaluate where you are and what matters to you in the long run.
#5 Make yourself say something nice.
When you hear your inner mean girl coming out, make yourself say 3 nice things about the person or situation instead. This one is hard sometimes for sure! I’ll be the first to admit that! We can be so conditioned to tear someone else down when we are unhappy with where we are and when we do tear someone else down it doesn’t do anyone any good.
#6 don’t focus on the numbers
It can be so depressing to see your Instagram numbers or facebook numbers when compared to others. Remember there are so many ways to generate false numbers ( comment pods, giveaway loops, bots, fake accounts) it's not a fair or accurate comparison.
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Thank you so much for tuning in I will see you in the next episode!