[SPEAKER_00]: You've tried unfollowing people, making those gratitude lists, and staying in your own lane.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you still compare yourself to others, so, you know, what gets?
[SPEAKER_00]: You can't stop comparing because you were never supposed to.
[SPEAKER_00]: And comparison isn't a bad habit, you can just decide to quit.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's the problem.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a cognitive function.
[SPEAKER_00]: and you can't opt out of cognitive functions.
[SPEAKER_00]: Every piece of advice that tells you to do, just stop is working against your own brain, which is exactly why it never sticks.
[SPEAKER_00]: So today you'll learn why comparison is hard-wired into you, why the standard advice fails, why some people get pulled into it kind of more painfully than others, and the specific shifts that actually make a difference, so stay tuned.
[SPEAKER_00]: Welcome to the Relationships Made Easy Podcast, where I give you the exact steps to create connection, joy and ease and all your relationships, whether it's with your partner, your family, your friends, or most importantly yourself.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm Dr. Abby Medkath, psychologist, bestselling author, TEDx, speaker, and the bossy Jewish mom you didn't know you needed.
[SPEAKER_00]: Each week you'll get no nonsense, research back strategies, serve with humor and love, so you can stop second-guessing yourself and start having the relationships you deserve.
[SPEAKER_00]: You'll always leave knowing exactly what to say and do to shift your relationships for the better.
[SPEAKER_00]: So let's get to it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Welcome back to the Relationships Made Easy Podcast.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know who I am?
[SPEAKER_00]: You're a host, Dr. Abbey Medcaf.
[SPEAKER_00]: And, this one, this comes up so, so much.
[SPEAKER_00]: This comparison thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: I did an episode on FOMO, fear missing out a long time ago.
[SPEAKER_00]: I will link to that, but we're gonna get really deep into this.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm so sick of people getting the wrong advice around this.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I'm hoping to fix something today.
[SPEAKER_00]: So let's talk about why your brain is wired to compare.
[SPEAKER_00]: You keep comparing yourself to others because your brain is doing exactly what it was designed to do.
[SPEAKER_00]: And in
[SPEAKER_00]: 1954, there was a psychologist named Leon Festinger, and he developed what is called social comparison theory.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, since the 50s people, it's been a while.
[SPEAKER_00]: And what he found was that human beings can't actually define themselves independently.
[SPEAKER_00]: We can only understand who we are in relation to other people.
[SPEAKER_00]: So this isn't a modern problem created by TikTok or Instagram or something, it's ancient.
[SPEAKER_00]: Your ancestors survival depended on knowing where they stood in the group, whether they had enough, whether they were safe, whether they needed to work harder to stay connected and be protected.
[SPEAKER_00]: comparison, I mean, really think about it was a critical survival tool, long before social media existed, and I'm not saying that social media hasn't exploited that hard wiring, of course it has, mines much smarter than me are figuring out how to keep you on media platforms, and I am a smarty pants, but I know they're smarter.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, so, but, but this, this has been
[SPEAKER_00]: added since festinger's work is equally important, I think.
[SPEAKER_00]: So when you perceive a gap between yourself and someone else, particularly someone you see as similar to you, your brain registers that as a threat, okay?
[SPEAKER_00]: So the same neural circuits that fire when you're in physical danger, also activate when you're scrolling through someone's highlight reel and feeling like you
[SPEAKER_00]: tight sinking feeling in your chest or in your stomach when a friend mentions her promotion or you see someone in your age like buying their dream house on social media, that's not something to be ashamed of, okay?
[SPEAKER_00]: That feeling is not to be ashamed of.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's your threat detection system doing its job.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, research also shows that we compare ourselves most intensely to people we see a similar again to ourselves in some meaningful way.
[SPEAKER_00]: So this could be someone who's really famous, but there's something that we sort of compare in a meaningful way.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're far more likely to feel destabilized by a colleague at your same level, landing a big client than by a celebrity doing the same thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Do you know what I mean?
[SPEAKER_00]: So I do want to say that.
[SPEAKER_00]: If there's a meaningful connection with celebrity, you'll have that too.
[SPEAKER_00]: The closer the comparison feels is really what I want to say, the louder the signal.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's really why comparison can feel just so damn relentless in your immediate circle at work, in your neighborhood, on your social media, because on social media, that's where algorithms are specifically designed to serve you content from people whose lives look
[SPEAKER_00]: just adjacent enough to yours to sting, how do you like that?
[SPEAKER_00]: And by the way, every time I say in the research and all that, when this is for my new people, if there's always new people, everything, every link, when I'm going to have an amazing free download for today, I have an incredible therapy to go bundle for today.
[SPEAKER_00]: All those things, any downloads, any research, anything I mentioned past episodes, everything is linked.
[SPEAKER_00]: below the video if you're watching on YouTube.
[SPEAKER_00]: And on my website, AbbieMedCraft.com, you can just go to this episode.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's all there.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I write a full blog for every episode, and I'd like to tell people that because it's not a transcript.
[SPEAKER_00]: I spend time writing this blog, because I know a lot of you will want to go, but you don't have time maybe to listen to the podcast again, but you, there were some notes you wanted to take or some things you wanted to remember that I said,
[SPEAKER_00]: I write a full blog, it's really good.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm very proud of them on the website.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can just go over there.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can copy and paste.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can do whatever your little heart desires.
[SPEAKER_00]: Or maybe you have someone you think should listen to this, but they won't listen to a podcast, but they'll read a blog 10 minutes, seven minutes, eight minutes, whatever a blog is, right to read, set them over there.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: So why the standard advice doesn't work?
[SPEAKER_00]: And here's what you've probably been told.
[SPEAKER_00]: Unfollow anyone who makes you feel bad, practice gratitude, focus on your own, path, your own life, and again, none of that obviously is wrong, okay?
[SPEAKER_00]: It's, but it doesn't work as a solution because as I said earlier, comparison isn't a habit,
[SPEAKER_00]: and you can't opt out of it any more than you can opt out of forming memories or making a prediction or anything else your brain does.
[SPEAKER_00]: Telling yourself to just stop is like telling yourself to stop breathing when you're anxious.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean the instruction makes
[SPEAKER_00]: no contact with what's actually happening and that's the problem.
[SPEAKER_00]: We know from and again, a no-bondance of research that gratitude practices have really genuine benefits for well-being and of course I recommend them, but gratitude doesn't switch off your threat detection system exactly.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can feel genuinely grateful for your life and still feel a painful,
[SPEAKER_00]: lurch when someone your age announces they've paid off their mortgage.
[SPEAKER_00]: Both things are true at the same time and that's not a failure of your gratitude practice.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's just how just how your brain is built and I'm thinking of the mortgage thing because I had a client recently and this came up and so I was explaining all this to him.
[SPEAKER_00]: He, you know, he had somebody knew who he's in his circle, one of his old college buddies who paid off his mortgage already and he's just like, what am I doing?
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, it's like
[SPEAKER_00]: Good.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, okay, so let me get back to why other advice fails.
[SPEAKER_00]: The other thing I hear a lot is, you know, compare yourself only to your past self, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, the only one you should be comparing to yourself too is your past self.
[SPEAKER_00]: That advice really runs into the same wall I'm talking about.
[SPEAKER_00]: It sounds clean and logical.
[SPEAKER_00]: But your nervous system is an interested in logic when it's been activated and unfulowing people on social media only, I mean, it helps, but it only helps it kind of the margins because the comparison doesn't live in your phone, it lives in your brain.
[SPEAKER_00]: So you'll find plenty of material at your kid's school pickup.
[SPEAKER_00]: or your family dinner table without any help from your social media feed, okay?
[SPEAKER_00]: Having said that, I do suggest getting rid of your social media feed.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm just telling you, you know, when there's things in there that really make you crazy.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's people I compare my, so I do sometimes Mel Robbins makes me crazy, you all know that.
[SPEAKER_00]: I, you know, and I, I've gone back and forth in my jealous.
[SPEAKER_00]: And what is, I just, I think she's a grifter.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm just going to say that out loud.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like many other people have said, I'm not the only one.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, that woman, it's horrible.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know what she's selling now.
[SPEAKER_00]: She's a, she's a lawyer.
[SPEAKER_00]: I get angry because I think it demeans my profession.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I see someone so huge, and I'm like,
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'll start to compare and I don't compare, you're completely different people.
[SPEAKER_00]: She's a lawyer.
[SPEAKER_00]: She's doing something completely different than you are, and then by the way, I really, you know what, I end up, I pray a lot for Mel Robbins.
[SPEAKER_00]: I pray for her to kind of be a little different, but I also remember, I do try to remember this.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think a lot of people really are helped by her and maybe one of you somebody listening right now has been helped by her.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I don't like, you know, if they're helped great, it's just a lot of people are hurt also with this sort of anyway, I'm not going to get into that.
[SPEAKER_00]: But so I think that's why I try to focus on it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I really do what I start the comparison thing and like, oh my god, what is with this woman and I really don't want.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've never wanted to be famous.
[SPEAKER_00]: I want to be well-known and respected in my field.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't want the...
[SPEAKER_00]: the microscope that fame comes with, even a little.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, no thanks.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, you know, I try to do my thing and we are worldwide, this podcast is 190, something countries right now.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I love that and thank you.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I also love that I have some, you know, if I'm walking down the street, people recognize me sometimes, but most of the time I have a lot of anonymity and I can just be in my life and be normal and it feels really good.
[SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, sometimes I compare, I do it, I do it, I'm with you, it's really hard not to, so I admit like on my feeds she's blocked.
[SPEAKER_00]: I like I can't see her, I don't go as many of you know, I'm not really on social media very much, but when I am on, I just don't want to see it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't want to look.
[SPEAKER_00]: The president and all his stuff is blocked too.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's things I don't want to see because they upset me.
[SPEAKER_00]: So better to just not have to see it, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: So I will say there's something to it.
[SPEAKER_00]: You just, you can't leave it there and then wonder why you won't keep comparing.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so, and that's the reason these strategies feel so exhausting is that they really require constant effort to suppress
[SPEAKER_00]: Something your brain will just keep generating over and over.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're fighting your own wiring and when it doesn't work, which it won't, at least not fully, you conclude you think something's wrong with you, but nothing is wrong with you.
[SPEAKER_00]: The strategy is just aimed at the wrong target.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: So why do some people get stuck in comparison more than others?
[SPEAKER_00]: And again, as I'm saying this, like, I've done all the work so that I don't do this a lot, but even I get caught in it.
[SPEAKER_00]: But there's some people who are just, I mean, and you might know them or you might be this person yourself, who really get hung, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: And it,
[SPEAKER_00]: And so if it's universal, why does it seem to consume some people far more than others, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: And this is where it really does get more personal.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I hopefully more useful for you.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I've been doing this work for 40 years, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: And when I've seen consistently, is that how intensely you compare yourself to others is generally closely tied to your baseline sense of internal security.
[SPEAKER_00]: and that baseline was largely shaped in your earliest relationships, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: You know me, I talk about attachment theory quite a bit and the research on attachment theory shows that people with anxious attachment patterns.
[SPEAKER_00]: So those who grew up with caregivers who were inconsistent,
[SPEAKER_00]: unpredictable, emotionally unavailable, neglectful, they tend to have a more sensitive threat detection system in general.
[SPEAKER_00]: Their nervous systems learned early that the environment wasn't reliably safe, so they developed a habit of scanning for signs of danger, for signs of rejection, for signs of where they stood over and over, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: And that scanning does not go away in adult
[SPEAKER_00]: It finds new targets is what it does, and one of those targets is other people's lives.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you grew up not quite sure whether you were enough, whether you were loved consistently, whether you're a place in your family felt secure, your brain of course learned to keep checking.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what it does.
[SPEAKER_00]: comparison is in part that checking behavior showing up in a grown-up form.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's your nervous system asking over and over.
[SPEAKER_00]: Am I okay?
[SPEAKER_00]: Am I safe?
[SPEAKER_00]: Am I enough?
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay?
[SPEAKER_00]: And I do think that's why I have an easier time with this personally, because I'm I have an avoid an attachment style.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now,
[SPEAKER_00]: I'd like to think pretty secure because I've worked on it all these years, but I am someone who's more avoidance.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I know like even when I when I do work with marketing people or something and they'll always ask me, well, who's your competition?
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm like, I don't know how competition.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, I don't, that's not how I do in the world.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I really don't.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, that's even my thing with Mel Robbins is not, I don't feel like I'm competing with her at all.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, my God, she's on some huge state, you know, she's whatever.
[SPEAKER_00]: And she's doing something completely different than I do to me.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, I don't even, like, so because that's been said to me, oh, we'll walk about Mel Robbins.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm like, no, I, but again, I don't even think necessarily in those ways.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's, that's one of those times that my avoiding attachments now is a fabulous thing because I'm not, but my anxious clients and so many people have more of an anxious attachment style.
[SPEAKER_00]: You guys suffer the most, you really do.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's also why reassurance from other people doesn't
[SPEAKER_00]: you could get a compliment and feel better for an hour, but then find yourself right back in the spiral.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because the reassurance lands on the surface, but doesn't touch the underlying question.
[SPEAKER_00]: Your nervous system is constantly asking, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: feeling insecure, whether in relationships, at your job or in life, in general, and chronic comparison are driven by the same thing underneath.
[SPEAKER_00]: What looks like an ego problem or a social media problem is almost always an anxious nervous system looking for evidence that you're okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: And of
[SPEAKER_00]: and that is the true, that is so true for insecurity, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: So, you know, there's a reason I will tell you the most visited pages on my website, insecurity.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yep, episode 174.
[SPEAKER_00]: I know what off the top of my head, why you feel insecure in your relationships and how to stop or something like that, it's called.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: And by the way, I'll link to all that because you might be going insecurity, that's me.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'll link to all that in again on the blog and under the video, but
[SPEAKER_00]: It's also worth saying that certain life stages make comparison worse regardless of your history.
[SPEAKER_00]: So anytime you're in a transition, starting a new job, becoming a parent, going through divorce, hitting a milestone birthday or anniversary, your brain naturally starts looking around to
[SPEAKER_00]: benchmark where you are, that's normal, but if your baseline security think about it is already lower, those transitions are gonna hit harder and the comparison spirals deeper, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, that's what happens.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I will say, I had a little trouble, you know, I turned 60 last year
[SPEAKER_00]: especially women.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a lot of women in my age who look kind of amazing, you know, you're looking at them going, Martha Stewart's like 80 something.
[SPEAKER_00]: They get a lot of work done, they do, and a lot of them get good work done, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: And they've been doing it for years and taking care of themselves, you know, the people I'm seeing in, you know, the spotlight, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: And I don't.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't.
[SPEAKER_00]: Other than some intermittent Botox over the years, I even now, I haven't had Botox in
[SPEAKER_00]: two or three year.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't even know how long it's been.
[SPEAKER_00]: I just don't do, you know, I'm very interested in lasers right now, I think, you know, but I haven't done anything.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm really behind me, ball with this and I'm not vain enough or I'm too vain or I don't even know what the problem is.
[SPEAKER_00]: I just haven't, I know, you know, for me because of the work I do, my face has to move.
[SPEAKER_00]: It has to move.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think I have to look
[SPEAKER_00]: um, natural for lack of a better term.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think if I was talking to someone and trying to get advice or suggestions or work from someone who really looked super fake, I would have, I'd be like, what, I don't know.
[SPEAKER_00]: I would, I judge it.
[SPEAKER_00]: See, I would judge that in my head is the receiver of that.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I don't judge people who get worked on.
[SPEAKER_00]: I need to sit at that right now.
[SPEAKER_00]: I admire you immensely.
[SPEAKER_00]: And people have good work done.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm like, oh my gosh, you know, Anne Hathaway.
[SPEAKER_00]: Hello, you know,
[SPEAKER_00]: I think she looks great.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, you can tell and she has a hard time moving her mouth, but still.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, you know, I just, it's like, so, but when you're, and you're comparing yourself, you know, to, to, you know, Jennifer Lopez looks or something.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm just like, oh my God.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I try, you know, it happens.
[SPEAKER_00]: The benchmarks come, it gets a little harder and, you know, you shift back out.
[SPEAKER_00]: So four shifts that actually help with comparison, let's do it.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you, you know, that's the question, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: So Abby, if you can't eliminate comparison, you know, what can you do?
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, the goal shifts from stopping it to changing your relationship with it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that happens at a few different levels, okay?
[SPEAKER_00]: So I got, I think I four shifts for you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Shift number one is to treat comparison as information not a verdict, okay?
[SPEAKER_00]: This is the mindset change that has to come first because without it, I have to tell you that everything else is just, it's like white knuckling and who needs that.
[SPEAKER_00]: So when you notice that again, that tight sinking feeling in your chest or your stomach or something, instead of trying to push it away, instead of
[SPEAKER_00]: Get curious.
[SPEAKER_00]: Get curious about it.
[SPEAKER_00]: What is this comparison actually pointing at?
[SPEAKER_00]: Because comparison almost always highlights something you want or something you fear losing, okay?
[SPEAKER_00]: So the colleagues promotion makes you feel terrible, not because you begrudge her, but because it's highlighting a goal of your own that feels maybe feels far away or uncertain or even impossible.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's, to me, genuinely useful information.
[SPEAKER_00]: So the question becomes what to do with it, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: That's it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And, um,
[SPEAKER_00]: There's two researchers I want to mention here, Thomas Muswiler and Bettina Stahlberg, and they and again, I'll link to them.
[SPEAKER_00]: But they found that when you deliberately look for similarities between yourself and the person you're comparing yourself to, rather than the differences, the emotional staying dropped significantly.
[SPEAKER_00]: Your brain in comparison mode is a difference
[SPEAKER_00]: deliberately looking for common ground.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, she worked really hard for that.
[SPEAKER_00]: I know what that kind of wanting feels like, something like that.
[SPEAKER_00]: It doesn't erase the feeling, but it interrupts the spiral and brings your nervous system back down, and that's what you're looking to do.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's incredibly, again, really good research on that.
[SPEAKER_00]: So do that.
[SPEAKER_00]: The shift number two is to learn to tell inspiration
[SPEAKER_00]: will genuinely motivate you.
[SPEAKER_00]: It will.
[SPEAKER_00]: You see someone doing something you want to do and it's going to light something up, okay?
[SPEAKER_00]: That is so useful.
[SPEAKER_00]: Other comparison, it's just activate your threat system and leaves you feeling worse with no productive output at the other end.
[SPEAKER_00]: Getting better at telling those two apart and disengaging when it's purely activation,
[SPEAKER_00]: So, after, you know, if you're comparing yourself to someone, after that comparison moment, ask yourself, did that leave me feeling energized or depleted?
[SPEAKER_00]: That's it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Energized or what we call, elevated is the word for befeeling depleted or drained, okay?
[SPEAKER_00]: Just think of that.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, which way are you going when you compare?
[SPEAKER_00]: Energized comparisons, those are worth paying attention to, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: depleted ones would be signals to redirect.
[SPEAKER_00]: There you go.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right there.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm telling you huge.
[SPEAKER_00]: Just check in how I do it.
[SPEAKER_00]: When I think of this, when I look at this thing, I think I noticed my wonderful Gary who does, you know, travel on some Spartan races and his done all these things for so many years.
[SPEAKER_00]: He compares himself a lot, but again, in a very, to me, a positive, you know, energized direction.
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, not in a defeating, depleting one, because then he goes and does the things that he sees or he try and yet he'll be like, oh, that guy's big like me, I can maybe do it this way or something.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I see him doing it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I hear him doing it.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's inspiring.
[SPEAKER_00]: Non-spiring me to work out, okay, or to do a triathlon.
[SPEAKER_00]: Don't think it is, but otherwise.
[SPEAKER_00]: Shift number three.
[SPEAKER_00]: work with your nervous system, not just your thoughts.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can't think your way out of a threat response.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm gonna say that again.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can't, cannot.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't care who you are.
[SPEAKER_00]: Think your way out of a threat response.
[SPEAKER_00]: You have to regulate your way out of it.
[SPEAKER_00]: How much do I talk about regulation?
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh my gosh, so, so much.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that means working directly with your body, slowing your breath with a longer exhale, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Then you're in hell, grounding yourself in what's physically around you right now.
[SPEAKER_00]: And building a consistent mindfulness practice, I know I'll just shut up already.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I said it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I said mindfulness again.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not even a little sorry about it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Not even a little.
[SPEAKER_00]: The research on what a consistent practice mindfulness practice does to your threat detection system over time is so compelling.
[SPEAKER_00]: Again, I'll link to a little in the in the blog.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you haven't started one yet, again, I have a free mindfulness starter kit, get that.
[SPEAKER_00]: But it or just start one, I don't care.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's the foundation under everything else.
[SPEAKER_00]: And in my therapy to go bundle today, which I'll talk about at the end, I have I'm going to have a list of regulators in that
[SPEAKER_00]: All right, and beyond regulation in the moment, there's also the question of what you're feeding your brain in terms of social comparison, I'll say triggers.
[SPEAKER_00]: And this is different from the just on follow people, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Advice, because the intention behind it is different.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're not avoiding things because you can't handle them.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're making a deliberate choice about one information you want your brain processing.
[SPEAKER_00]: During times when you already know your system is more activated when you're tired, stressed in a transition, having a hard day or hard week, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Again, so this other study I read researchers found that people higher in social comparison or in like orientation are particularly vulnerable to negative effects and social media.
[SPEAKER_00]: I know.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you're in one of those stages or you're during any of those kind of windows, social media is particularly bad for you.
[SPEAKER_00]: So protecting your kind of windows, those times when it's you're having a hard time, you are tired, you are overwhelmed, you've had a bad week.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like I said, you're you just turned 60, whatever protecting those windows is nervous system hygiene, not avoid it.
[SPEAKER_00]: So those are good times to stay like off the social media or other things, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: And then shift number four, I'm probably gonna make this my last one, is to build genuine internal security.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is, and this is the longer game, and it's the most important one, but it's the longer game, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Chronic comparison again, at its root, is your nervous system outsourcing the question, am I okay to other people?
[SPEAKER_00]: You're outsourcing, am I okay?
[SPEAKER_00]: You need to enforce that.
[SPEAKER_00]: The last thing work is building an internal evidence base instead.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what you want to do.
[SPEAKER_00]: So your brain has somewhere to look that isn't everybody else.
[SPEAKER_00]: you got to build it internally and that starts with deliberately noticing your own confidence and not in a forced affirmation way, you know, I'm good, I'm fabulous, don't do that.
[SPEAKER_00]: But actually pausing when you handle something well and letting it register, what did you navigate this week?
[SPEAKER_00]: What do you know how to do?
[SPEAKER_00]: What have you built, survived?
[SPEAKER_00]: Figure it out.
[SPEAKER_00]: Your anxious brain will skip right past, right past that material to focus on the gap.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know it, we all know it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Your job is to make it harder to skip, okay?
[SPEAKER_00]: And I want to talk about something I talked about a long time ago here from
[SPEAKER_00]: uh, Chade Mang Tan, um, they call him Mang.
[SPEAKER_00]: Uh, he was, he wrote it really, uh, you wrote a few books I love.
[SPEAKER_00]: Search inside yourself in Joanne Demand.
[SPEAKER_00]: He was former Google employee 107 very famously.
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, and in that book, Joanne Demand, I really, it's so good.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he, he talks about, um, I caught thin slicing.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think he says thin slices of happiness is how he describes it.
[SPEAKER_00]: He,
[SPEAKER_00]: He says that basically you want to notice things that you usually put in the neutral column and consciously place them in your win column, because it builds resistance.
[SPEAKER_00]: Resilience.
[SPEAKER_00]: Sorry, not resistance.
[SPEAKER_00]: They opposite.
[SPEAKER_00]: It builds resilience.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, and let me just explain that a little bit.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, in other words, if your car starts in the morning, you go out, you turn on your car, it starts, you go to work, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: you don't register that at all.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not a plus in your day.
[SPEAKER_00]: But if you had gone outside and the car had started, guess what?
[SPEAKER_00]: You would write, it would be a negative in your day, which feels really unfair.
[SPEAKER_00]: So there's nothing that gets in the plus cut.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's just in the neutral column or the negative column.
[SPEAKER_00]: That seems unfair to me.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I would say anything like that.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you said yourself, I'm going to stop using the snooze alarm
[SPEAKER_00]: every day, you know, right, which I hope you do.
[SPEAKER_00]: Don't use the snooze right away, you know, right to my alarm.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you do that.
[SPEAKER_00]: You have to take a minute and register it as a win, okay?
[SPEAKER_00]: Not as, you know, don't, again, don't be fake.
[SPEAKER_00]: Not like, oh my god, I'm the best.
[SPEAKER_00]: I woke up, you know, like, please, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I'm not saying that.
[SPEAKER_00]: So don't go there.
[SPEAKER_00]: I am just saying to take a moment and I call it savoring.
[SPEAKER_00]: And this is something from the research too.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's almost like there's a, you know, when there's a butter scotch in your mouth, you're just kind of savoring that or, you know, you have a little mint or something in your mouth.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're like savoring it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I just want you to notice it for a minute.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, hey, good job.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, good job.
[SPEAKER_00]: Good job, a little pat in the back.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, that feels good.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let it sit longer.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's all you're trying to do.
[SPEAKER_00]: And again, man calls us like thin slices of happiness.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you're really thirsty and you get yourself something to drink and you notice like, just notice like, oh my god, I had water right in my desk that was good, you know?
[SPEAKER_00]: You wanna put those because here's what happens.
[SPEAKER_00]: You go through, you know, this,
[SPEAKER_00]: your life and you're comparing and it's negative and so whatever or whatever you're doing and you're not when you take a withdrawal when you do screw up because you're gonna when you don't get the promotion when you do turn 60 hopefully everybody does you know when that happens you're gonna take a withdrawal and if you have no money in the bank that's why it feels bad or worse
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's why it's harder to bounce back from that.
[SPEAKER_00]: But when you create a lot of these, you know, you just keep putting this money in the bank, woke up on time, took a shower, even though I was depressed and didn't want to, oh, I've got to floss my teeth every night this week.
[SPEAKER_00]: What are three nights this week?
[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't do it every day, but I did it a few.
[SPEAKER_00]: Whatever it was, start putting them in, putting them in.
[SPEAKER_00]: Again, not fake real.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, hey, good job.
[SPEAKER_00]: That was good.
[SPEAKER_00]: I know, I know you have a hard time doing that.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's it.
[SPEAKER_00]: What happens is your brain really does remember this.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is like adding money into a bank account.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so that when you take it with draw, there's still money in the bank.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's called resilience.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm telling you this is one of the best things you can do every week in my I have a sub stack community that one love collective.
[SPEAKER_00]: and every week in there we do wins day on Wednesdays and I love it and it actually so motivating but basically I just the whole community or you know whoever wants to in the community they post two wins for that week and again it should be something that's the point it's to help you get better at this skill because it's a hard skill.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm telling you, you'll go through a week and be like, I don't remember any wins.
[SPEAKER_00]: That happens a lot in the beginning, and then as you do it, it's like a skill that you build.
[SPEAKER_00]: We always post, you know, we post two things, we've done well this past week, and then one thing we wanna work on for the coming week, because I'm not in toxic positivity, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, did you screw something up this week or is there something you didn't pay attention to?
[SPEAKER_00]: Hey, let's look at it for the next week, let's try to be better at it, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: So,
[SPEAKER_00]: All of this also means doing the deeper work on again, insecurity itself again, I can't say that enough because comparison and insecurity or two sides of that same coin and if you find
[SPEAKER_00]: If you're someone who finds a comparison follows you across maybe every era of your life and doesn't ease up even during generally good periods, you know, that's telling you something important about what's underneath it, it really is.
[SPEAKER_00]: And again, I've spent a lot of time on this in other episodes and I've,
[SPEAKER_00]: I'll link to those.
[SPEAKER_00]: I also have a insecurity tool kit that you can buy if you want.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it's $29.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's, you know, got a ton in there.
[SPEAKER_00]: Really a ways to shift your insecurity.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you want, you know, it goes deep on exactly this.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's, you know,
[SPEAKER_00]: why some people chronically feel not enough, where that comes from, how to actually shift it from the inside out, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: All of that is in there.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's you really dealing with your insecurity is one of the most direct paths I know to quiet in the comparison spiral for good, because it's addressing the source, not just the symptom.
[SPEAKER_00]: All right, so let me wrap this up.
[SPEAKER_00]: What do I want to say?
[SPEAKER_00]: Comparison isn't a character flaw you need to overcome.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the fact that you haven't been able to stop it doesn't mean you haven't tried hard enough.
[SPEAKER_00]: It means you've been working against your own biology, your own brain.
[SPEAKER_00]: Your nervous system is doing what it was built to do and what it needs isn't suppression.
[SPEAKER_00]: It needs understanding.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then it needs the conditions that help it feel safe enough to quiet down.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's it.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's the real work.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's genuinely doable.
[SPEAKER_00]: Generally doable.
[SPEAKER_00]: All right.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, and if you don't, you don't have to spend a penny with me as you well know.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: I always you know, I sell things.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's great.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you want to buy stuff, you can, but always always what I just gave you all those great tips.
[SPEAKER_00]: I give it away.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I have a really great great free download for today.
[SPEAKER_00]: I spent a lot of time in this download.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you want to just start there do that.
[SPEAKER_00]: I put together.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a worksheet called I call it I'm calling it what is this comparison really telling you.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's gonna walk you through sort of identifying your own comparison triggers what they're actually pointing at how to redirect when the spiral starts that kind of thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: And if you want to go deeper, I do have, as I have for every episode, a therapy to go bundle for this episode.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that would include that free downloads.
[SPEAKER_00]: You don't have to download a twice.
[SPEAKER_00]: And there's also a comparison patterns inventory where this comparison shows up in your life and how hard does it hit.
[SPEAKER_00]: There are journaling prompts to uncover your comparison beliefs, you know, really getting to the roots of that, am I enough question.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a nervous system reset for comparison spirals.
[SPEAKER_00]: So what to do when you're with with your body when you're brain won't quit comparing like I mentioned earlier.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have an inner score card, which is.
[SPEAKER_00]: trying to help you build the internal evidence base your brain has been outsourcing kind of thing, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: And then there's a self-compassion reset for, you know, so after the spiral has passed and the self-criticism has moved in, you know, I kind of give you a reset for what to do.
[SPEAKER_00]: All that is $10.
[SPEAKER_00]: $10.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I know that a lot of people cannot afford to maybe see me, plus I've a weightless, you know, or can't afford to go to therapy or can't figure out how to access it or whatever the things are.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I try to give you, again, like, therapy to go.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like something that's meaningful for $10 that you where you can actually do the work you need to do to make some serious shifts.
[SPEAKER_00]: And, but again, you can just do everything for free, too, because I've got your back either way.
[SPEAKER_00]: Hopefully it's helpful as I think it was or should be or can be and hopefully you learned a lot of new information today.
[SPEAKER_00]: If no one told you this week, you are, I love you.
[SPEAKER_00]: I love you.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm so grateful to be here with you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, thank you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you for being here.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you for listening to the end.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'll see you next week.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you for spending time with me today.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you're loving what you're learning here, come join my one love collective.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's my private community.
[SPEAKER_00]: We'll be take these conversations even deeper.
[SPEAKER_00]: You'll get a ton of bonus content.
[SPEAKER_00]: Live Q&As with me, guided visualizations, journaling prompts, scripts,
[SPEAKER_00]: and an incredible community of like-minded people ready to support you as you create more ease and joy in all your relationships.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's all waiting for you at AppieMedCraft.com or right-on-substack.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'll see you next week.