How Do You Measure Success?

Social media is a depressing place to hang out. At least it has been for me this past year.

As we all know, social media is where everybody shows their “best lives.” We see all the awesome trips, all the happy families, all the great accomplishments, and yet we see none of the failure, sadness and loneliness. If you are judging your life by comparing it to others on social media, you are sure to live a very depressed life, feeling like a failure.

How I Spent My Time In 2019

I’ve been learning a lot about myself over this last year. One of the big things I have learned is that I have these negative core beliefs about myself. Somewhere along the line I learned to hate myself. I felt like I was always destined to fail because I was a loser. This isn’t always a conscious thought, but it is always playing in the back of my head. So much so that it has become a core belief about myself.

So then I go out into the world and try to find evidence to prove this core belief. Social media is a great place to do that.

Whether it is how many monthly listeners somebody else has on Spotify or how many followers someone has on Instagram, I can always find plenty of people who are doing so much better than me. Then I only focus on those people. Instead of being grateful for the success I have had, I only look at people who are having more success because that proves my theory that I am a loser. I am destined to fail. Instagram and Spotify tells me that every day. As long as that is what I want to see.

What if I choose to see something else?

What if I choose to see the thousand people who do follow me on Instagram as a thousand actual human beings who want to interact with me. Or see the hundred monthly listeners on Spotify who actually keep coming back because they love my music.

I mean, how much is ever enough? If 1,000 followers isn’t enough, will I be happy with 10,000? Do I need 100,000 to be successful? That’s a game I can never win.

I guess my point is we will see what we want to see. If you want to prove you are a loser, then you will find all the evidence you need. But if you want to prove that you are killing it, the evidence is there to prove that as well. We become who we believe we are.

So How Do You Measure Success?

We should measure success by comparing ourselves today to ourselves yesterday. Are we better today than we were yesterday? If we can say yes, then that is success.

We should never compare ourselves to someone else. We always pick out some super hero who is doing amazing things, compare ourselves to them, fall way short, and then feel like a failure. Often this leads us to give up or at least be really down on ourselves.

But we are comparing their years of work to our days of work. We don’t know everything that went into getting them to where they are. Maybe they have been at it for 10 years and we have only been at it for 2. It’s unfair to expect us to be at the same place they are.

We waste too much time comparing ourselves to others. It’s useless. What we need to do is compare ourselves to ourselves. Have we made progress? Are we better today than we were yesterday? If we are growing and improving, then we are succeeding. That is how you define success.

Stop comparing your worst day to every one else’s best day.

Stop comparing your 2 years of work to someone else’s 10. Stop comparing your lonely day at home to someone else’s amazing vacation in Cancun. You can never win that game. All you will do is ware yourself down and make yourself depressed.

Focus on you. Focus on your growth. Measure your metrics and check in on them monthly. Are they improving?

If so, you are killing it. Keep doing what you are doing. Keep growing and striving. And when you get to your 10 year mark, you will be able to look back at year 2 and see how far you have come. You will be the new standard. You will be who you want to be so badly right now. It’s just a matter of time.

Finally, it is important to note that our self-worth should never come from social media numbers. Those numbers have nothing to do with happiness or contentment. Our worth comes from being a creation of God.

Our worth comes from a power that is bigger than us. This power loved us before there was Facebook or even My Space, so we have to keep this all in perspective. All this social media stuff is nonsense when you really look at the big picture. And if social media is making you hate yourself more, is it really worth it? Maybe it’s time to let it go and get back to living the real life you were meant to live.

We Are All A Bunch Of Liars

Have you ever walked down the street and looked into the eyes of people walking by you? I mean, really looked.

Most people are looking down (if they’re not looking at their phones). They look angry. Stressed. Depressed. And I bet if you walked up to any one of those people and asked them “How are you doing today?” they would pep up, put on a smile and say “I’m doing good!”

We are all a bunch of liars.

Every one of us is hurting. Deeply. And our pain is just beneath the surface. Some of us stuff it down more than others, but we all have that nagging feeling in our stomachs.

It’s the feeling that tells us we are alone. The feeling that tells us we aren’t ok.

It’s the fear that people don’t like us. It’s the fear that people may discover the real us, and abandon us forever.

Yet we go out into the world and tell everyone we are fine. And why wouldn’t they believe us?

We smile. Then we tell some self deprecating joke to lighten the mood. If it gets really bad, we will ask them how they are doing to take the attention off of ourselves.

What we really want to do is start crying, find someone to give us a hug and tell us it’s going to be ok.

Yet we don’t do it. We don’t ask for help.

We ignore our emotions. Tell ourselves we are ok. And then some tiny, little thing will go wrong and the next thing you know we are in a pint of ice cream crying asking…

What happened?

You’re hurt, that is what happened.

Someone hurt you a long time ago. Probably a lot of different people. It all starts when we are kids. Someone does something awful to us, even if they don’t mean to. Then we get programmed with some misinformation about ourselves (ie “I’m stupid” or “I’m ugly”) then we choose to believe it. Since we believe these lies, we attract people into our lives that will help reinforce them.

It’s crazy, right? We actually bring the people into our lives who make us feel the worst.

And then what happens? You become full of resentment, fear and shame. The next thing you know you are 35, walking down the street staring at the ground. Angry. Stressed. Depressed.

So what is the truth?

We never talk about this stuff. We are so scared to. We think that if we share our deepest, darkest secrets with another human, they would think we were nuts. At best, they would make fun of us. At worst, they would have us arrested or committed.

The opposite is actually true. Think about it. Since we are all walking around with this stuff, we are all waiting for the same thing.

We are desperately waiting for someone to open up to us and tell us their deepest, darkest secret.

Once someone opens up to us, then we feel like we can finally open up to them. We realize we are not the only one with secrets. We are not alone. We are not broken. We are just human.

Once we open up and share our secrets with someone, three things happen.

1. We get relief

2. The other person gets relief

3. The other person usually reacts with understanding and empathy because they have similar feelings and we both discover we are not alone.

All the pain we are holding onto can be let go through a simple conversation with another human being.

But someone has to go first.

The world is waiting to hear your story. Your deepest, darkest secrets could save someone’s life. Your deepest shame could be someone else’s hope. That is what you have inside of you. The opportunity to change or even save someone’s life.

We have to stop lying.

What if we started being totally honest with the next person who asked us how we were doing? Imagine how freeing that would be.

That is how you change the world. One honest conversation at a time.