let me know if this has happened to you
you just finished working
you ate dinner and now it is 8 p.m
and you’re sitting on your couch or on
your bed and you’re
relaxing but all of a sudden some
voice in the back of your head asks you
what are you doing with your life you
scroll on instagram
and see that your high school classmate
just got married the other day
or someone just bought their house for
the first time and those feelings of
guilt shame inadequacy
inferiority just all start creeping into
your mind
so what was supposed to be a relaxing
evening
after a long day of work you still feel
like you haven’t done
anything so why does this situation
feel so specific it’s because it
happened to me the other day
i was on my mindless scroll on social
media and i ended up coming across a
bunch of people
who have been doing all these amazing
things who i haven’t heard from in years
and it’s easy to see and think
wow these guys have done so much in the
past few years
like what have i done like this person
has more money than me this person has a
beautiful girlfriend that i would
never be able to get so if you’re
watching this video chances are you feel
this way too
like you feel like you’re behind your
peers and you’re falling back
on the race of life well in today’s
video
i wanted to remind you of a few things
that i had to remind myself
when i felt this way number one is that
happiness
is a choice i’ve pictured my definition
of success
to include a lavish lifestyle with
beautiful people on a beautiful island
where everything was great and no
problems existed in the world
unfortunately that is just a dream and
simply a fantasy
and it’s important to note that these
fantasies that you have
don’t necessarily accurately reflect how
they will actually be
after a certain point money doesn’t
actually bring you the happiness that
you think it will
i’m not saying money can’t afford things
that can bring you happiness
and i definitely think that you need to
have your physiological needs met
you know for food water shelter safety
but once you’re at
that threshold where you’re able to
comfortably survive a lot of studies say
75 000 is the threshold that everyone
needs to
be happy or at least where happiness
tends to wane
progressively as your income increases
but
i don’t know if that’s really true
maybe if you’re making 75 000 a year
in a low cost of living area
like in the suburbs or in the middle of
nowhere but
75 000 is not going to help you in a
city like new york or
san francisco but regardless of that
dollar amount that you’re chasing
unfortunately money may not bring you
that happiness that you’ve always wanted
i’m not saying that you can’t want
having a million dollars
because let’s be honest i think a lot of
us would like a million dollars
including me maybe except billionaires
but you get the point but if you think a
million dollars
or a hot girlfriend or hot boyfriend
or a nice house will suddenly rid you
of all of your problems in the world and
you are sorely mistaken
i want to share with you guys a
psychological trick that we tend to play
on ourselves and it’s called
effective forecasting effective
forecasting
is the prediction of one’s affect or
emotional state in the future
as a process that influences preferences
decisions and behavior
effective forecasting is studied by both
psychologists and economists with broad
applications
so essentially what effective
forecasting means is you try to predict
your emotional state
in the future when some certain event
happens
for example when you think that that
vacation
is going to make you so much happier
or when you eat that double cheeseburger
your cravings will be satisfied
see what you didn’t calculate for when
you were thinking about that double
cheeseburger
is how heavy and gross you would feel
afterward or at that beach vacation
you suddenly get sunburned for the after
the first day
or some something like that the point is
we tend to be inaccurate
about how we think we are going to feel
in the future
because the reality is like no matter
where we are in life
there are always going to be some
problems
just like how kim kardashian may have
all
all the money in the world not all the
money but like a lot of money
yet she still has problems like losing
30 000
earrings i mean it’s a nice problem to
have but she still has problems
so don’t let your happiness be
conditional
don’t think that you’ll be happy if
something happens or
when something happens you have to make
a choice
every day to be happy and be happy with
who you are and what you’ve become and
how you can make choices
i think it’s okay to strive to be better
and not be
satisfied with where you are at the
moment
but if that’s the case then you have to
start focusing
on the process over the outcome sure you
want a million dollars
but how are you going to get there i
find that having outcome goals can be
really great for motivation
but i argue that the process is equally
as important so what you need to do is
to create a process
or some sort of system that a not only
will get you to where you want to be
but it also has to be something that you
enjoy so you’re not dreading it
this is the main reason why fad diets
don’t really work
where after you lose the weight
temporarily you’re going to revert back
to old habits
because you just did not enjoy getting
to where you were
so if the feelings of shame and feeling
behind in life
start creeping in when you’ve done a lot
that day then you shouldn’t really feel
bad and recognize that you are
on your process you are in the right
place
the next thing to do when you’re feeling
behind is to actually
delete your social media now a lot of
you may have already heard this advice
but i really do believe in its
effectiveness
social media tends to be the main
culprit for why people feel left behind
because we’re always reading about
people’s highlights
we’re seeing that they’ve done so much
over the past few years
but what we tend to forget is what we
have done in the past few years
if you think about the time since you’ve
graduated to the present where you’re
seeing a lot of your
classmates do all these cool stuff
chances are that you’ve actually been up
to things too
i’ve graduated high school about five
five years ago
oh my god anyway i graduated high school
a while ago
so it shouldn’t be surprising that other
people were living their lives while i
was also living my own
i also consider myself to be a much
different person
than i was since i was in high school so
it’s just not a fair comparison to
think that this person
this old classmate of yours has done all
these things
when you’re just looking at yourself
from like the past few days
or the past year thinking oh
i haven’t done anything and even if you
haven’t you’re going to focus on your
process
or your system that’ll help you get to
where you want to be
the point of deleting social media is to
just stop
comparing yourself to others you can’t
compare
your step one to someone’s step
100 in their journey of a thousand steps
gosh
confucius really everyone is born with
different circumstances
and we have to realize that everyone is
on their own
little journey and we don’t always start
at the same place
so try not to worry too much about where
others are and
just take some time to evaluate whether
or not you have been getting closer or
farther away from
your long-term goals i promise you that
if you are making
small consistent little changes
throughout your daily life you will be
happy with yourself
long term so don’t worry about other
people
or what they’re doing just focus on
yourself
so those are my thoughts if you guys
liked this video
please give it a like and subscribe if
you want to see more
and also i would love to hear your
thoughts down in the comments
is it often that you feel behind in life
and
what are you doing or not doing to
change that
let me know see you next time