Social media can be a wonderful thing. It is a way to keep in contact with friends and family scattered far and wide and it can be a great tool for promoting your business, your brand and your life. We all love to see photos and pictures of family and friends in the pursuit of what makes their lives great! For those of us looking for business opportunities and looking to promote a product or service, social media is a great tool for putting information into the hands of millions of people with nothing but a catchy phrase and a “click here”.
Sadly, in this day and age with the speed and wide range that social media allows we often times find ourselves comparing our lives to those of others. For instance, for those people who are down on their luck, maybe struggling in life both personally and financially a carefully placed AD or workshop can give them the hope that if they just do this or that their lives will turn around and they will get rich quick and have the life they are currently only dreaming of. Truthfully, it is mostly all a disappointing sham!
There is no get rich quick and there is no magic wand that will miraculously bring the windfall. In fact people who are perceived as rich have had to learn the skill of getting that way AND staying that way. They did not get rich overnight and they have not stayed rich by becoming complacent. It is not just an appearance, it is an entire lifestyle and it is not as easy as some would be led to believe.
And the truth about magic is this… Magic exists, and it takes skill and constant attention to the goal and all of the minute details of that goal in order for magic to work!
Magic Takes Time!
There is also the idea to “Be careful what you wish for… You just might get it.” Sometimes when we live in the idea that we want to have someone else’s life, we forget that in order to do that we have to take the victories with the losses and that price tag is sometimes too high. Magic requires that you be uber focused on what it is YOU want to create in your life for YOU and what you’re willing to sacrifice to attain it. Magic requires that YOU live your life for YOU! When we are living our lives vicariously through others, we are doing ourselves a great disservice in that we are minimizing what we can all bring to the world, those sacred gifts that we were given to share with others, and this eventually causes great discord and even more distress.
“Just be YOU, everyone else is taken.”
It is natural for all of us to see the “highlight reel” of someone else’s life and to feel envious or even jealous. In truth the, old adage of “walk a mile in my shoes” applies to us all. We all have strengths and weaknesses and we all want to share in the “wins” of life. I don’t know many people who would candidly talk about the failures and defeats that they have had to endure to get to the eventual win and that is exactly why we should process those feelings of envy and jealousy and then blow them away like a strong wind. How many times have you seen an AD or workshop offered on social media around navigating through failure or financial disaster? Recently I saw an AD for a webinar series all about how to attract clients into your business and make 6 figures in 60 days. My very first thought was this, “I wonder if there is a webinar series for those people who buy into this stuff and fail?” Now I don’t like to think in negative terms however I am being very real here when I say that only a small percent of the opt in customers for this webinar would ever actually achieve that goal in 60 days. And of those, how many could sustain that kind of commitment for the long term? And yet if you “click now” to learn more there are pictures and testimonials of happy, shiny people who have supposedly reached their goal in 60 days. What you won’t find are the stories of people who invested a few of their last dollars and a whole lot of hope and faith only to NOT succeed in their 60-day plan.
Perspective… We never want people to see what we have had to sacrifice or the failures we’ve had to endure. Only the victories are cause for celebration.
The next time you are cruising through social media, I would I would encourage you to pause before passing any sort of judgement on anything or anyone that may NOT make you feel so great about YOU. I encourage you to pause and to think about all the times that you have posted something or told someone something because it was what they wanted to hear. Just pause and remember the last time you posted or told someone about an utter failure in your life; something that probably cost you a piece of your soul and maybe your bank account as well.
The reason we struggle with insecurity is because we compare our behind-the-scenes with everyone else’s highlights reel.
~ Steve Furtick
Where do you fit? Do you find yourself falling for the “highlights reel” more often than not? The very next time you are scrolling through social media and you feel those emotions coming up of envy, jealousy, anger, frustration, despair, sadness, inadequacy, (insert your “word” here), I would encourage you to take a moment to just pause. After a moment of pause, I challenge you to get curious instead about how that person got to their success and even if it is real. A lot of people brag about successes that they have never achieved… probably because they were tired of their “word” too. Understanding that alone can bring a sense of reality back into focus. Overall there is this, Curiosity eliminates Judgement and that takes the charge of emotions out of the equation.
A good friend of mine said this to me recently and it fits perfectly into the whole idea behind getting curious. She said:
“What do I wanna know when I know nothing?”
So, what do you want to or need to know and why? What is the important take-away from getting curious about others for you? How about simply letting go of the charge of negative emotions that you feel to allow for healing and positive change within yourself? How about taking the important lessons and incorporating them into workable solutions for your own life and situations? How are you going to benefit from what you’ve learned and what you’ve left behind? How are you going to find ways to work toward bringing the magic into your own life and your own situation? What skills and resources do you have at your disposal? What do you still need to learn and who or what is going to provide you with that information? Who are your mentors going to be?
Can you stop living everyone else’s Highlights Reel?
Absolutely AND you can do it right! Allow other people’s success stories to serve as motivation as you follow your own life path. Clean out the negative thoughts, emotions and habits and allow space for positive change and growth within yourself. Surround yourself with mentors and influencers who are not afraid to show you their “behind-the-scenes” and then learn all that you can from those opportunities. When it is your turn, and it will come, share with others all about your successes and bask in how good the wins feel. Don’t forget to also share all about the setbacks, the failures and how you had to change your mindset and your lifestyle to be who you have become; never be ashamed of your “behind-the-scenes”, it might be just what someone else is seeking in their own curiosity.
Be human, be humble, be a mentor, supporter, encourager and friend. Share in the celebrations of the highlights of not only your life but in the lives of others as well and never forget that your “behind-the-scenes” is just as important… because just like you are watching everyone else, everyone else is watching you too through the lens of life..
