Who hasn’t seen on TV the very attractive ads from fast food restaurants selling hamburgers? Or seen the pictures of the burgers displayed on the restaurants?
Let’s take the example of the iconic BigMac from McDonald’s: on TV it looks massive, a perfect 3 layers’ burger with fluffy yellowish bread, thick brown patties, orange cheddar cheese with perfectly squared edges melting on the sides of the burger, a lot of green iceberg lettuce. This is looking delicious.
But for those of you who actually went to McDonalds (or any other similar chains) to eat a BigMac, what is the reality of all this…? You open the craft paper: you discover the burger, it looks much smaller than the vision you had from the ad, it is all squashed, you wonder if it will be enough. The bread is not that shiny, it is very flat, and the patties are much smaller than expected, they even look greyish. The cheddar is here but you can’t tell really because it is inside, not melting beautifully and spreading out as per the image you saw. There is a lot of salad, in fact a lot more that on the ad, it is getting out everywhere. A bit disappointing?
Here is a perfect demonstration of the impact of marketing and advertising. You were sold by the beautiful TV ad but what you experienced visually was quite far from what you imagined. We have expectations that the reality always reflects what we see and trust on the screen or on the pictures. But the reality is often very different.
Social media is no different from those TV ads. On Facebook, we see beautiful photos of people and many of us assume that what we see is exactly the reality, that we can never achieve that level. We often feel envious. But if we look deeper, we actually feel upset. And it is very bothering. Let’s explore what is happening to us…
What we’re going cover is:
1- Competing: yes, we are
2- The mirror effect
3- Your reality
Competing: yes, you are. Are you not?
How many times a day do you check Facebook? A few. Admit it. And there is always that girl posting pictures, videos and live posts. You think she must have an awesome life, as reflected through her posts, she is so positive, her friendships and family life looks ideal, she is living her passion for dance, travelling in gorgeous places, doing hard work-outs at the gym, has the courage to post what she thinks, she looks so good, so stylishly dressed, and she has amazing make-up skills.
As a matter of fact, it is hard to accept that you actually are being envious and also slightly jealous. You are comparing yourself to her.
And quickly your ego jumps in to save you, your inner chatter starts its action. You try to look at all defaults that you could find to minimize the situation in your head: “her nose is a bit fat anyway. She has small breast. And clearly, she is so arrogant, only looking at herself in the mirror all the time, look at her posing with her friends, all she tries to do is to stand out! I find it so fake, and unauthentic; how can she get so much more social reward? How can others buy into this?!”
But your intuition and inner self knows you are lying to yourself. You can simply not accept that you truly believe she is really good looking, and potentially “better looking than you”. You feel undermined: “Crap: she is more attractive than I am. She is gorgeous, and I am not that much. To be like her, it would take me so many hours of efforts”.
Hold on… what happened just here!?
In life you don’t want to miss out, and you want to be the best. And here she is, “the best”, according to your perception. She is totally competition for you: “If a man looks at her, they will surely think she is much more beautiful, sexy, interesting and successful than me. Which means that to gain the same Facebook comments for myself, I would need to dress and do amazing make-up like her, pose like that on camera, change my wardrobe, smile with that perfect white teeth all the time to look like if I am so happy.”
And the list is long. But it is not all…IT IS CONFRONTING.
This person is confronting you with yourself.
Truth is. It happened to me. I am not that girl and I don’t have those perfect curvy hips like her, those defined chocolate tabs abs (that I tried to shape since weeks), I don’t have her glossy long well brushed blond hair, her wide browny-greeny eyes, her pulpy lips, and this perfectly aligned and white smile, and always having fun. No. I am taller and less defined, I have a bit of cellulite, my hair is short and not colored, my lips are far from being that pulpy, my nose if not so perfect, I have long feet, I concede about my eyes – I like them – but it takes me so many effort to please myself in the mirror.
“It is totally unfair”.
So, what is it?
On the other side of the screen you also think that your life is boring, less sparkling, uninteresting, even inexistent. You feel you achieve less, that you are not making the most of life, that you look less good physically.
Ans she triggers something you would like to have or would like to have accomplished. Did she do something you wish you would have done? Such as embracing that passion for dancing in competition, travelling, doing modelling photos, changing your career?
In fact, it is not so much that specific person that is making you feel so miserable, but what she represents to you. She is the mirror of your desires for yourself, of those accomplishments you’ve been dreaming about, and that she is experiencing now and “over-posting” about. It is literally in your face, this idea is presented to you mostly every day, like a boomerang coming back again and again.
Look away from the screen.
Where is your reality?
Facebook acts like “marketing lives”. But is it true or false advertising? Isn’t is fictional reality? What is clear to you is that this girl seems successful and secure about herself.
AND RIGHT NOW, YOU ARE NOT.
You see only one part of her story. The virtual part. The beautiful, shining and sparkling moments. The perfect angle, smile, pose, filter. And you project that this is her all-day reality.
Despite the perfection that the images aim to illustrate, that person may actually not be that confident in herself or that fulfilled in her life. She is maybe very fragile, insecure and has low self-esteem. She may be struggling in her professional projects, sabotaging her love relationships, not finding her true purpose, and the list can expand infinitely. We do not consider all that time she spent on social media to post, checking the comments and number of “likes” which is actually time off the true reality: the non-virtual world!
Run your own race, at your own pace:
1- Get inspired by others, not more…
By looking at people’s lives, you escape your own world. You compare yourself and get overwhelmed to the point you don’t realize you are struggling to accept yourself with your past choices. Comparing and contrasting our lives to others is dysfunctional because we are all unique. Nobody is the same as you.
Be in tune with what you want. Get inspired about what others do, get ideas from them. That’s all.
2- Your vision
Assess what YOU want. Let’s come back to that girl’s posts about her dancing successes. “Well, where am I now? Do I still want to dance in competition, and is it the right time in my life? Am I ready to invest the time, or do I just want to dance without the hassle of the trainings, events and costumes?”
The answers lay inside you. You need to prioritize what is important for you now. And if it is what you want, make it your vision, and plan to make it happen by setting goals.
3- Set limited time to spend on Facebook
People post. They will continue. In order to allow yourself time to achieve your goals, you need to decrease the time you spend watching… because watching can inspire you, but it also brings you outside your reality. And you need to ground yourself back.
Before you know it, it has been 20minutes scrolling down already. And when you do that 3 times, it is one hour gone towards achieving YOUR vision.
All posts on Facebook do not make us react to the point we get envious. Thankfully not. People post on Facebook for different reasons. Travels, interesting articles and other relevant content, or else they post pictures of themselves to market their business, but let’s notice how this has such a lower impact on ourselves and is not going to make us react in the same way than someone posting fancy self-portraits all the time.
Influencers post a lot of amazing pictures. Being an influencer is a tiring job. It involves A LOT of posting. Constantly. It is very different from someone who is posting about some moments of their life. Influencers will post on a very specific theme, and most likely on Instagram. Let’s not forget it is very often linked to a business activity and it is true marketing of self. And it is important to notice those posts are to be seen by as many people as possible. You can get envious, but again, what does it trigger in you? What can you see in them that you are missing for yourself?
Facebook has changed the way we relate to one another. We have access to other’s lives like never before. And like the BigMac’s shinny ad, we often see other’s best portraits and best moments, carefully chosen to tell a story. On a video or a photo, we can add so many filters to make them look so much more attractive and desirable, that it affects our perception of the reality, OUR reality.
Isn’t it time to focus on yours?