Dr Katzenstein continues,
“Welcome to Emotional Wellness Daily,
A project of SIMHA, the Sephardic Initiative for Mental Health Awareness. We've been discussing social comparison. We must emphasize yet another risk of overly engaging in this phenomenon called social comparison, to our relationships.
Social comparison can strain our relationships, especially when we constantly compare ourselves to our peers, our friends, or even our spouses. It can lead to jealousy, competition, a lack of empathy and resentment. It erodes the foundation of healthy and supportive connections. This cannot be understated: If we constantly see people as being either better than us or worse than us (whatever that even is supposed to mean), then every interaction becomes tense. Every interaction becomes a place where we're not comfortable with ourselves, because we're constantly checking, Is this person ahead of where I want to be? Is this person behind where I'd like to be?
This creates a high level of anxiety literally, in every one of our interactions, in the various relationships we have.
As we have said before, a lot of this is natural. We live in a world with others. We don't live on our own. So, it is quite natural to compare ourselves to those around us. But how we can mitigate the negative impacts of social comparison?
We need to recalibrate and reestablish that we're going through our own paths in life, not somebody else's. We're not supposed to be somebody else. That's not the way God created us. God created us to fulfill our potential, and each of our potentials is unique to us.
So how do we focus on ourselves? How we can cultivate self-awareness. What are we capable of? Of course, we should always work on creating within ourselves, the ability to go even higher than our capacity. But we have to balance that with developing a healthy perspective of who we are.
This focus on personal growth, the growth that we ourselves are capable of, includes celebrating our own achievements, setting realistic goals, and very importantly, practicing what we'll call gratitude- the ability to recognize within ourselves the good that we have, the good that God has given us.
And, as we've mentioned before, it can be very beneficial to limit exposure to social media platforms. It can't be overstated, how much of a negative impact social media has had on our ability to limit social comparison.
It fosters such an excessive amount of comparison to others- not just to their real livesbut what they're showing us, which is very different than what's actually occurring in their lives (let's be honest, we have no idea what's going on in somebody else's life).
Instead, we need to prioritize authenticity of ourselves and self-acceptance of ourselves, including the use of positive self-talk.
How do we speak to ourselves in a way that can create positivity, not just based on what others might perceive as successful, but in a way that truly and genuinely defines our own success.
This is extremely important, especially when we live within a particular culture or community that defines success a certain way. This is true for any culture or community. Each one has specific ways of measuring success, whether it's money, family, or the amount of Torah being learned…. Every community has a different sense of what's at the top of the totem pole. We end up looking at who is that the top of the totem pole.
We need to create our own totem poles, and find out where we take our next step, regardless of who's on top of us, or who's behind us.
This is just the start. As we move forward with our daily messages, we will go more in depth into how we can achieve this, and in a sense, learn to put on blinders, to focus on our own pathways. The race is not between us and others, but between us and ourselves.
Thank you.”