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