When You Catch Yourself Comparing
You’re scrolling through Instagram. A designer you follow has just launched a beautiful new product line. A fellow maker has opened a shop. Someone else is celebrating a big feature in a magazine.
At first you’re just looking. But then a thought creeps in: Why am I not there yet?
That thought spirals into another: Maybe I’m not working hard enough.
And before long: I’ll never catch up. What’s the point?
The longer you stay in that space, the heavier it feels. The feed might look shiny and inspiring, but inside your body you feel smaller, tighter, more stuck.
This isn’t unusual. Our brains are wired to notice differences, and social media makes it effortless to compare ourselves to carefully curated fragments of someone else’s life. The problem is that it leaves us disconnected from our own reality, i.e. the actual work we’re doing, the progress we’ve made, the small things that matter.
So what do you do when you notice yourself in this spiral?
First, you need something that gets you out of your head and back into the present. A simple tool I often suggest is the 5-4-3-2-1 method. Name five things you can see, four things you can touch, three things you can hear, two things you can smell, and one thing you can taste. It’s a way of anchoring your attention back into your body and surroundings, rather than into someone else’s story.
Another helpful practice is gratitude. I do not mean the fluffy “just think positive” version, but rather the grounded act of noticing what’s already here. When you bring to mind specific things you’re grateful for, your brain releases dopamine and serotonin, the feel-good neurotransmitters that help shift your nervous system out of fight-or-flight. Even something small can reset your perspective.
You can also do something to actively calm your body. A few deep breaths, a stretch, stepping outside for fresh air, or even placing your hand over your heart can signal safety to your nervous system. When your body no longer feels under threat, your mind stops spinning quite so fast.
And then something shifts. You’re able to see possibilities again. Maybe you notice an idea you’ve been putting off, or you remember a small next step you can take. You move from feeling like a passive victim of circumstance to reconnecting with your own agency.
Here’s the most powerful part: you can choose to create something. Instead of staying stuck in comparison mode, put down your phone and make something small. Make a doodle in your notebook and write a few lines. It doesn’t matter what it is. The act of creating pulls you back into your own life, your own path, your own work.
Someone else’s IG life will always look shiny. But when you reconnect with your reality, you start to see that you have everything you need to move forward.