The Pressure of Others’ Fancy Success: Social Media and Else
I open my Instagram; someone had their story of 10k followers in 2 months and someone enjoying a fully sponsored trip to Singapore.
I open Twitter and read someone’s tweet celebrating $20k monthly sales.
I open Facebook and someone is having a big fancy party on a LUXURY cruise.
I open LinkedIn and see multiple posts all with the same style. The saddest rejections followed by securing high-paying jobs or creating a solopreneur million-dollar business.
On YouTube, fancy people vlog their fancy universities, luxurious daily lives, and going to another country just for a newly opened restaurant.
I think you can relate to this feeling because that is why you are still reading this.
How do these social media fantasies affect us? Confirmation bias, fear of missing out, unrealistic expectations, addiction to validation, and social comparison.
You might be thinking, “Farhan, why is that happening to us?”.
Well, I am not an expert, so I do not have a certain answer to it, but I do know, from my personal experience, one thing for sure, is that our own mistake of not accepting who we are and not exploring our talents.
These fancy social media influencers are setting our minds for a lifestyle where there is only happiness, good, and success. We compare that life with ours, it makes us mentally disturbed, and we feel this pressure of showing to the world that we are living such fancy lives too. So, we post, I don’t know, maybe fake scenarios or only one-sided pictures.
We fancy the muscular body from Instagram. So, we start working out — pushups, pullups, jogging. Our focus is that fancy body so we can also post it. But we give up eventually because we only love the goals, not the process — the process of showing up daily.
There are many examples. You name it.
And what happens is this mental torture “I am a failure”, “I can never be successful”, and “I can only daydream.”
You might have guessed that “Farhan will now tell me how to overcome it in 4 steps.”
No. I am not going to repeat what is already there on the internet. Neither do I say that “Stop using social media” or “Stop admiring influencers”. I am not going to dictate to you what to choose and whom not to like.
I will just share how I overcame that life of hoping to live the life of another person from Instagram.
The first thing that I understood was what triggers me to want that life or to admire that person. I acknowledged it. Is it their accomplishment that I secretly wanted for myself? Is it the lack of those luxuries?
Then, I made it clear to myself what I admire the most; my admirer’s whole life or just a part of it. Of course, we just admire a part of their lives only.
Ask yourself the right question.
How can I have it?
I remember from the Rich Dad, Poor Dad book. Robert (the author) says that I have no money to buy that thing and How can I make money to buy that thing are two different beliefs.
I will be rude here. If you admire that influencers or celebrities’ lifestyle or a part of their lifestyles that much that it makes you depressed and distressed about not having that then you idi*t cabbage work for it.
If you admire a life of buying something without looking at a price tag, then work for it without looking at how hard it is.
Get out of that f*king corner.
Just stop imagining and hoping for a luxurious life lying on your bed and stop blaming yourself or your parents for not being able to have that life. F*ck that shiny sh*t from social media and build your lifestyle.
Show the world that life is not always waking up in a nice comfy bed, going to the gym, having a full-stomach meal, and then hopping on the MacBook to create content and earn millions from international clients. Show the world that life is balanced.
I do not know what else to do or how to motivate you to start working for yourself.
See you in the next blog.
