The Toxic Comparison

"Happiness is letting go of what you think your life is supposed to look like and celebrating it for everything that it is." 

- MANDY HALE

Recently this quote has become some what of a blessing to my clouded mind. I am just about to start my last year at university, therefore, I am yet another dreary step closer to becoming what society would represent as a 'mature adult.' Although for those who know me will agree this is untrue.

I have noticed a lot of my friends/acquaintances on social media such as Facebook/Instagram/Twitter posting regular exciting and positive updates about their lives. From people I have known since nursery, high-school, university and work people are moving house, being promoted to their dream job, meeting the love of their lives and even giving birth, and basically these posts put me under tremendous pressure that my life is not going how it should be.

It is difficult enough when you are unsure of which direction that your own life is heading, never mind when everyone else seems to own a one way ticket to the perfect life plastered all over my timeline.  However, I have learned that although these exciting and positive outcomes of my friends lives are all very well, it would not suit for everyone to be the same. I have came to understand that worrying will not solve anything or show me the path to my own happiness and to compare your own life to that lived by others is probably the most toxic way of thinking that an individual can indulge in. By comparing our lives to others it is essentially undermining your own and creating a negative energy that 'you're not good enough because you're not the same.' 

We must accept ourselves to become truly content and happy, it would not do to be the same as everyone else. Life has a journey for each and everyone of us and it doesn't all come together at the same time.