- Quick, think of the person you are always
comparing yourself to, you know how there's
definitely at least one who you think about the most?
Get into their mind, why are they doing
all the things that they're doing?
Do you even know, do you know what their why is?
Because if you don't, then it can't your why,
and if it's not your why, then what is?
And when you think about your why,
how is it relevant to that person,
and why you're comparing yourself to them?
This is why we need to stop.
(electronic dance music)
Good morning good life, welcome back to Amy TV
where we come together to help you go after
the life that you want, not what someone else wants,
and that's why I wanted to talk today about comparing.
Have we all been in this situation, yes.
Have I compared myself to somebody today, yes.
The old saying, if you're old, like me,
is that you gotta keep up with the Jones', right,
we're always paying attention to the guy next door,
what car he's driving, how big the house is,
are they doing renovations, well the modern day
of that now is social media, we see everything
that everyone's doing, that is cool.
And sometimes, that's not so cool.
But most of the time we're paying attention
to the things that are aspirational, or envy worthy.
This obviously equates to a lot of comparison.
And so much so that it's very obvious at this point
that social media has completely destroyed
so many people, especially young, young people,
who haven't really come up with their own
original thought yet, and are only
thinking in terms of what they see.
I can totally relate to this, when you're discovering
yourself, you're trying to find anything
that is similar to you, or potential for you,
as you're learning more about yourself,
and even in high school, the number of times
I can count in my head, wishing I had someone else's life,
is incredible, and now I can actually count that
on a hand, or two hands, or it doesn't even matter,
because I see now how crazy that is,
and I genuinely feel so grateful for the life I have.
Does it necessarily mean that I'm not always
doing the things I wish I was doing?
Uhh, no, I definitely think about the things
I'm not doing all the time, but it's not as significant
as when you are thinking in terms
of switching places with someone.
And maybe that's not you, maybe you're just
comparing yourself to the little things,
maybe somebody is very similar to you,
but they seem to be achieving more,
or getting more, and you just don't feel it's fair,
and so you're constantly comparing, and you're constantly
thinking you're behind because of that.
You don't necessarily want to have someone's life
all the time, but you may want things that they have.
They're pretty much the same, all of it equates
to a lack of gratefulness, and also,
a lack of mindfulness, and understanding
where you are at this time in your journey.
Alright, so how do you stop comparing yourself to others?
My first piece of advice is to
look at social media differently.
I don't wanna say don't look at social media,
I don't think that's good advice,
I don't think it's possible, I mean,
it's just so hard to tell people to avoid it altogether.
That being said, does it make sense
to take a social break sometimes, absolutely.
But it's kinda similar to ignoring the news,
or ignoring talking to people when they're updating you
during small talk, the reality is social media
has just expedited that messaging,
and gives you a place to make it look a lot nicer.
So I want you to look at social differently.
I don't think you should completely take it away
from your life, unless you feel that you are in that season,
and you need a significant break.
If you don't wanna be on that kind of a break,
you just have to do a little bit
of your social media scrolling differently.
The first thing is to look for accounts
that you do not feel good about when you look at them.
When you see a person or a brand or whatever,
whenever you see their latest content,
do you open up when you see it,
or do you kinda cave in, and get more insecure?
When you recognize that feeling,
and I'm sure you can think of somebody,
maybe it was the first person I made you think of
at the beginning of this video, maybe it was somebody else,
but when you think of an account
that you are following, do you genuinely
not feel better after you've seen
whatever they've posted, even if they posted
bad news, do you feel like you would be
closed off more than you would be open?
This is a strong indication that you should
not be following those accounts.
If they do not make you feel good about yourself
they are not good options for you.
I like to share my highlights on social media,
I like to share good news, but I also
like to be as authentic as possible.
No matter what I post, I would hope
that nobody is following me if I don't make them
feel better about themselves, which is why
I take the content super seriously,
both here on YouTube and on Instagram.
Twitter, Facebook, you name it,
it doesn't matter what social network it is,
it has to do with how I make people feel
when they interact with me in those spaces.
So if you can identify some accounts like that,
maybe it's time to let them go,
and if it's meant for you to follow them again
at some other point, then they might just come back.
But if the first thing that it does for you
is to alleviate some pain when you open up
some of your favorite apps, then why wouldn't you do that?
Not to mention it's so easy today,
you can literally mute on pretty much every social network
I think now, you can mute on Instagram,
you can mute on Twitter, so even if
you didn't want to unfollow, because maybe
you know the person, and it would be
a little bit awkward, you can just mute them.
It's kind of amazing how I'll think of somebody,
and go, oh my gosh, what have they been up to,
and then I'll go to their social media account
and realize, oh, I muted them.
And that is a cool moment, because now,
I'm like, oh, I do kinda wanna see what they're up to now,
I can unmute them, there's no friction involved,
they have no idea, and I'm in a different place now,
so I don't feel like I'm caving in when I see their content.
That's when you know something truly
has become special for you on social
and you're looking at things differently.
The next piece of advice I have
for you is just to think bigger.
You know, I talked recently about the scarcity mindset
on this channel, and again, I am a recovering
scarcity mindset type of person,
but we all have it happen, and the reality is
that if you are not cool with someone on social
or you're not cool with somebody around
that bothers you all the time,
and you're constantly comparing yourself to them,
even if you don't really even aspire
to what they're doing, but you can't stop yourself
from thinking, why is that happening for them,
or why is such good happening for them,
or what are they doing that I'm not doing,
or what have they got that I don't have,
think bigger than that, I mean, this world
is not the two of you, it is millions, billions,
gajillions of people, and all of those people
have some brands, and there's all this stuff going on now.
If you honestly think that so much good
can happen for one person, but there's not enough
good in the world that can happen to you,
you've gotta think bigger, that's scarcity
getting the best of you, and it's not affecting them at all.
Even if they're comparing themselves
to other people as well, you wouldn't know that,
'cause you're just living in this world
where you compare yourself to them,
that's all that's going on in that world.
Even if that person for some reason
knows this is going on, you're likely
not tripping them up whatsoever.
So that is indicative of the fact
that they're just doing their thing,
going after whatever is possible for them,
their calling, and not sitting there
thinking that there's only so much good
that can go around in the world,
and I have to take as much as possible.
We also don't necessarily think like that
on a daily basis, but we do think the opposite all the time.
There's not enough good to go around,
there's not enough money to go around,
there aren't enough awards to go around,
there's not enough of that for me, that's scarcity.
But the other think bigger piece is that
there could be so much more available to you,
so much more good, if you weren't so consumed
with the amount of good, or the things that are good
in someone else's life, and so you think to yourself,
you just want those things, because
you can see them, you can envision them,
because they already exist someplace else.
But what if you actually sat with your own thoughts,
thought about what you wanted, thought about
why you wanted it, that's special.
Now you're creating your own possibility of good
that you don't even have to be resentful
of anybody else having, 'cause maybe they do,
but it's not the same person you've been
resentful of all this time.
You need a better reason to want something
that you think can't be had because somebody else has it,
than the fact that somebody else has it.
You need your own reason, and you need hard work.
Usually, these things don't come easy,
if they did, you wouldn't care about it that much, okay?
Switch your mindset from scarcity to abundance,
and best way to do that is focus
on what you actually want, that's why
we emphasize the word you, in go after the life you want,
so that you can actually focus on the things that matter.
Another thing that might seem obvious,
and also might seem mean, is find better things to do.
(laughs) Why are you spending your time
consuming your brain with comparing yourself to people.
I mean, I feel like I had an excuse,
we didn't really have smartphones,
or other things that were annoying in high school,
you just had to sit there with your thoughts,
and your trapper keeper, and write on it,
and you're probably thinking things
based on what you saw in the hallways,
or who's sitting next to you in class.
The best thing we had was AOL instant messenger
when we got home, and those were private conversations, so.
Where was I going with that, I'm not really sure. (laughs)
My point is, if it's your job to know the news,
if it's your job to know what everybody's
doing all the time, then that's great,
if you're getting paid to know that information,
like if you're a news anchor, or some sort of
paid media person based on what everyone else is doing.
But when you always know what's going on in the world,
if it's not your job, and whether it's the intricacies
of political issues that you think you understand,
but are really just using as talking points.
Or what the people are saying at the water cooler,
because you have nothing else to do so you're just
listening to what people say at the water cooler.
Or every single trending topic on Twitter that day
so you can know what everyone else in the world
is talking about, or the highlights
of the evening news from last night
that scared the crap out of you, and so you called your mom.
When you know all of these things, and when someone says,
did you see what happened to so-and-so?
When you know all of these things,
you are taking away brain space for better things.
I personally don't prefer to have a response,
I actually get afraid that I know the answer
when someone comes to me and says,
oh my god, did you hear about so-and-so?
Because first of all, that is the epitome
of a gossip question, and secondly,
I don't wanna know what happened to so-and-so,
because if I did it means I wasn't spending time on things
that I care about, and that type of behavior
also has to do with comparison,
even if you're comparing yourself to someone
because you feel more high and mighty than them,
and it just makes you look good.
It's comparison, you can't not wanna compare yourself
negatively, and want to have the opposite,
because it's all comparison, and it's all behavior
that is not contributing to you.
If you have found you know all the things
about all the people, and all the world's happenings,
then try something new, do something
better with your time, okay?
Again, it doesn't have to be crazy,
you could just learn how to crochet.
Whatever, you could at least do that and watch Netflix,
at least you'd have a good reason to watch Netflix
if you were learning a skill that is passive.
But if you could learn a new sport,
if you could go meet new people,
if you could start a blog that you've been saying
is the dumbest thing ever, but yet now finally
we're going into 2020 and everyone's saying
it's very smart, you should definitely do that,
also, you should have an Instagram
and a Pinterest to go with it.
You can always spend your time on better things,
build your own thing, build your own building.
And the last piece of advice I wanna give you,
It has to do with the fact that comparison's
just always gonna happen, it's never gonna go away.
But I want you to have a new strategy,
and instead of letting it get you down,
try to come up with the silver lining.
So for instance, if you really, really, really
like Maseratis, and you happen to find out
that your friend Jill got one, lotta questions,
right, 'cause if you didn't see that coming,
you're like, how does Jill have a Maserati, right?
But the inclination is, oh my god,
did you hear that Jill got a Maserati?
Instead of leaving at that, especially if you hear yourself
saying this to someone, or if someone says this to you,
either finish their sentence for them,
or finish it for yourself, and say,
isn't that cool?
Because even if you don't believe yourself, (laughs)
first of all, you sound like you're on the right foot,
you're going in the right direction,
but secondly, isn't that cool?
If somebody randomly has something that you are like,
whoa, that's awesome, I wish I had that,
Grr, now I'm jealous of you, but for some reason,
the stars aligned for them, I mean,
lots of people can get cars if you just
sign your credit away and everything,
but just because it happened, you're resentful of it,
but the reality is, anything can happen.
And because somebody just proved it to you again,
you can spin it into a bad thing,
or you can make it a good thing.
So instead of, oh my gosh, she got that car,
it's oh my gosh, she got that car!
Isn't that cool?
I mean, I think it's cool, because if theoretical Jill
can get a theoretical Maserati, so can I,
and now, I'm gonna try to figure out how to do it.
But not if I don't have a good reason.
And if I don't have a good reason,
I just get to be happy for her.
That's where you're gonna start to see things change.
The biggest shift will be when you realize
you're spending your time on your own thing,
building your own thing, excited about your own thing,
and you don't know what's going on with everyone anymore,
and then when someone tells you,
oh my gosh, Jill got a Maserati,
and you're like whoa, really, I didn't know that,
why, 'cause I haven't been checking social media,
why, because I'm busy with my own thing,
why, because I love my own thing!
You're gonna be so much happier for her.
You're gonna be so much happier for her
because you just did the math in your head
that you're going after the life you want,
and you're not letting other peoples paths
and journeys consume you, and disturb you
from staying on your own path toward the life you want.
That's really special, and it starts to become
addicting to focus on what's in front of you,
not what's in front of others.
I just wanna say one more thing,
and I ain't gon' cry, okay, I compare myself to two people.
And it used to only be one person, but now it's two.
I compare myself to myself, what was I like yesterday,
that's all the data I need, am I better today,
am I worse today, am I about the same?
Are there ways to measure that,
what are those ways that I'm measuring that,
what can I teach myself about what's going on
that could make me feel better
that I am improving every day?
That's the first person, the second person
I compare myself to is my brother.
If you don't know, my brother's no longer with us.
Johnny didn't want me to record that apparently,
'cause (laughs) the file maxed out.
If you don't already know, there was a video about this
about this time last year, my brother's no longer with us.
So now the question is, am I above ground.
Am I better than I was yesterday, and am I above ground.
I feel really fortunate, because Ryan Holiday
sent me his new book, and the coin that he sent with it
is a memento mori, and I haven't read
the book yet, and I also don't really know
what this means yet, but the back
of the coin says, you could leave life right now.
If you're sitting there comparing yourself
to somebody who either knows who you are,
or doesn't know who you are yet,
I'm virtually handing you this coin,
and I want you to hold it in your hand,
and I want you to look at it, and I want you to read it.
And after thinking of that person,
I want you to read, you could leave life right now.
Would you wanna spend that moment
consuming yourself with what somebody else is doing
and you're not, probably not, worse,
do you wanna leave life not doing the thing
that you wish you were doing?
Comparing yourself to somebody is just one metric
of do you wish you were really doing that.
Why aren't you?
So, that's the only thing I have right now,
the only thing I have to compare myself to
is myself, and my brother, my brother's
a real world example of what the alternative is.
The alternative is not somebody else's life,
the alternative is not having one anymore.
Ouch, got really depressing. (laughs)
I can hear my brother going ouch. (laughs)
But that's real, and I'm just being honest with you
and I want you to really take that to heart.
Also, I've been really working hard
on not crying when I talk about my brother,
very proud of my progress there.
Question of the day, do you know your why
when it comes to the aspirations that you feel,
and if you do, what are you doing about it?
Leave that in the comments below.
What was your favorite part of this video,
if there was one I'd love for you
to join me on Instagram and let me know
in a comment in my last video what that was,
it helps me kind of identify more faces with names,
and lets me know what you enjoy
so I can do more of it on this channel.
Sidebar, 'cause I feel like I have to say it,
I don't know what's going on with the lighting in this room,
I think it changed, last time we did a video in here,
the lighting changed a bit too much,
I have some things I have not told you yet,
and also I'm beating this chair,
which is probably making the mic situation
very bad, I'm sorry, it's just getting crazy in here.
My thought process on making videos is very different now,
there are things I have not told you yet, that's my point.
Amy get to the point.
There are things I would like to announce to you very soon,
there are changes happening on this channel,
you've seen them, you haven't seen them,
there's a whole thing, there's so much more good to come,
and so if there's variables and things happening,
like now I spin in my chair, and that happens
more often, (laughs) because I can't stand
the squeaky chair anymore, I'm using something else,
just, thanks for being here, thank you for subscribing,
I know that YouTube changes every day,
and people are asking for subscribers and everything,
I just appreciate you watching,
if you keep coming back that means the world to me,
and thanks for hanging with me while we move and shake
at Amy TV, 'cause it's only gonna
be good stuff, more to come.
That's all for today, thank you so much for tuning in,
I appreciate it as always.
Make sure you subscribe for good vibes,
kiss the ones you love, go after the life you want, cheers.
(electronic dance music)
Action.
If you see me looking down my shirt
I'm making sure my microphone's still there. (laughs)
I did not check any levels whatsoever, amateur.
Not letting you be in frame this time, iPad.
(grunts)
I don't know what's going on. (laughs)