The Comparison Trap is Bullsh*t
Quit Letting Everyone Else Define What Success Means for Your Life
Behold the green-eyed social media sh*tstorm, infecting millions with anxiety, inadequacy and envy 24/7.
Deleting that crap app yet? Didn’t think so. We gobble up carefully curated lives pretending they’re real then feel like failures for not having glam vacations, shiny toys, babies, and bangin’ beach bodies too. These hollow highlight reels screw with our heads, make us lose days questioning choices, missed chances, if we’re ENOUGH. But #blessed is almost always bullsh*t.
Time to stop outsourcing what a “good life” means and finally live your own instead.
Why Comparison is Bullsh*t
Remember high school?
Jockeying to impress complete strangers you neither liked nor respected? Exhausting. Social media fuels our appetite for the imaginary cool kids table well into adulthood. Pathetic.
We envy applause fueling six-figure ambition, votes affirming beautiful illusion, hearts rewarding bullshit intimacy. We crave the same damn gold stars from kindergarten. WHEN will it ever end?
Here’s what the highlight reel leaves out: crippling debt, dissolved marriages, anxiety meds, forced smiles hiding pain. No one escapes adversity.
Don’t compare your behind-the-scenes footage to someone else’s public façade.
Envy Rots You from the Inside Out
You lose days, weeks, years poisoning your one precious life with:
WHAT IF — I married my college boyfriend? Took that job offer in Seattle? Had a baby sooner like Nicole?
It’s pointless.
The more we compare, the worse we feel. When we constantly measure our worth by others’ worlds — money, babies, bodies, clout — we always fall short. How could we not? Even “winning” these things guarantees nothing.
Joy and fulfillment have their own timelines.
What Has Comparison Cost You Lately?
Missed sunsets, friends, adventures, moments lost envying fakeness, judging your reality lacking?
Worried about the wrong sh*t, you numb out and sleepwalk through your ONE chance — while fantasizing about imaginary better lives? Are you f*cking kidding me??
Worth, success — YOU must define these! When you finally do, comparison loses all meaning.
Until then, it eclipses life-giving quests for truth, purpose, belonging and joy.
Choose Your Own Yardstick
We all desire validation.
But bank accounts, Twitter fans and two-car families mean NOTHING if you’re disconnected from what’s essential: creativity, love, harmony with your values.
Tune out the static and GET REAL with yourself: What external accolades temporarily dull your core fears and pain? How long does relief last before that hole opens back up?
Don’t outsource your self-worth to strangers’ standards; it will always ring hollow. Only YOU can nourish inner peace.
Light your own way.
Off the Hamster Wheel
Once you call bullsh*t on counterfeit lifestyles, you can live ON PURPOSE.
When admiration no longer dictates priorities, you’ll have energy and courage to walk uncommon roads. The world wants compliance; posts promising 12 life hacks to mimic achievement.
F*ck. That. Noise.
Burn down limitations and DEFINE WHAT YOU WANT — money, family, art? — then give yourself permission to go create it!
Your life is no dress rehearsal.
Quit waiting for cues and climb on stage ALREADY.
Owning Your Story
The freedom hitting delete on comparisons brings is sweeter than any envy high.
All those mental hang-ups holding you back? Let them go and FINALLY inhale the beauty around you. Your story alone holds magic. Dust off long-ignored passions. Who gives a sh*t about reasonable — paint, launch a company at 65, adopt a kid solo. Live boldly by your values, not others. Stay in your creative lane; block out anything hijacking your spirit. You no longer have time for petty anxieties about keeping up appearances.
You’ve wasted too much of your potential already.
This is IT.
It’s Time to Flip the Script
When we stop chasing mirages — start ripping up scorecards judging human worth — we make room for gratitude … for the breath-stealing everyday moments we overlook.
Sunsets.
Laughter.
Possibility hiding in plain sight.
Find beauty rooted in reality, your truth. Let go conjured timelines, off-the-rack identities. Withhold judgment and watch people around you come into fuller dimension.
If you can see their pain, honor their resilience too. This wisdom neutralizes envy, keeps us present. Humanizes “perfect” lives rather than putting them on an altar.
Owning our power means releasing control games; welcoming each new sunrise from a place of love not fear; staying open no matter how raw.
We win freedom to appreciate our imperfect, perfect life when we drop pretend ones that were never real anyway.
Your Life: Own It
Climb out of holes you didn’t dig but sure as hell became traps: draining jobs, relationships not built for YOU.
These cement shoes drown dreams. Lose ‘em.
Your life fits no template, so shake off “supposed to” while you still have precious time left. Craft each waking moment by design not default, through your vision.
Did you learn and love fully?
Leave things better?
THAT is success.
Let imperfectly beautiful realities of your specific journey wash over you in Technicolor.
Then go share your story to light torches for wanderers who bought the same hollow myths you did — before you knew better too. Show them glittering lies. Help wake them up.
Choose to stop raising your glass to manufactured lives. Toast your own instead — messy, raw, REAL — then drink up.
This is it.
Make it count.
If this piece struck a chord with you, consider throwing some applause my way — click those clapping hands 👏.
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Cheers,
Archie Bee
Want to read more? My page on Buy Me a Coffee are all unfiltered, and I always post there first, usually all my long form contents.
