I am a bit saddened by how much the students’ and young employees’ blogging community has changed since I started writing years ago, and I am just as guilty as the next guy of falling into the “comparison trap.”
Back in the day, we all had our eyes on our own prizes; we all just wanted a little piece of the internet to document our personal journeys. We could get all set in our own ways to write our stories, express our love for whatever physical activity, or get further educated by taking online math tests if it would be some educational necessity that it was that moved us.
I wrote with passion; I didn’t care who read it; I made some awesome friends along the way, and I had no problem with my 10 hits a day. I was blogging for the sheer joy of having a place to talk about myself all the time.
Then the student blogging industry started booming. Everyone wanted to be strong, smart, smarter, and more successful. Everyone was fighting for spots in the next ambassador program and wanted to sling giveaways for the newest, hottest products and gear; somewhere along the line, a lot of us lost our unique voices.
I get it. You work hard to keep a solid training routine. You strive to be the best at what you do. But no matter what, there’s always someone out there who is faster, stronger, fitter, getting all these great sponsorships and millions of hits on their blog, and you wonder… WHAT AM I DOING WRONG? Why do THEY deserve it more than I do?
Seriously guys… KNOCK IT OFF.
I like blogging. I like reading others’ blogs. I read a wide variety of blogs, but mainly those rooted in health, fitness, and mental well-being. But sometimes, I stop. Sometimes I get fed up. Sometimes I want to claw my eyeballs out because I get really frustrated when I see folks’ healthy lifestyles start going down the tubes because they are too busy worrying about how they stack up to those around them.
Comparing yourself to everyone around you can lead you down some dark-ass alleyways.
On the surface, there’s the blogging side of it – right now, “building your brand” is like the most crucial element for any up-and-comer. I personally know that I don’t have a brand; I am all over the damn place, and my internal conflict doesn’t allow me to box myself in.
This has been frustrating for me because, for a while, I wanted so desperately to fit in. My entrepreneurial DNA kicked in. I wanted to have a pretty page and get along with everybody and shoot rainbows out of my butt on a daily basis. However, that’s not me. And trying to be that girl hurts worse than accepting the fact that I’m better off just freestyling and writing for fun.
Dig a Little Deeper, though – and you will find an even more disturbing side of the comparison.
We all do it, and you know it. We look at people who run faster, lift heavier, are seemingly always doing epic shit, and we start beating ourselves up because our menial little lives will never stack up to theirs. So we start exercising more. Or we start eating less.
We make something as simple as filling our tanks into a glorious process that requires planning, prepping, counting, and weighing… instead of focusing on trying to fit fitness into our lifestyles, we try and adapt our entire lives around our quest to be like someone who may be more genetically blessed, have a different work schedule, have an athletic background, have more time on their hands, or are just sitting behind a keyboard lying their asses off about how they ONLY squatted 300 pounds today and damn they could have done more if they didn’t eat so much gluten over the weekend.
This comparison leads to negative self-esteem, especially for Gen Y. It can also lead to disordered eating, thinking, and living… this needs to be addressed promptly and then fixed.