Today’s adulting hack is all how to stop comparing yourself to other people.

When we feel lost and unhappy in our lives, the first thing we all do is play the comparison game. We look at ourselves, and wonder, “What did I do wrong?”. We start to look outside of ourselves to figure out what we’re missing.

It’s human nature to look at other people as a measuring stick of our own success or failure.

We all know our friends aren’t as happy and content as they present themselves on social media, but for some reason while we know this intellectually, we just can’t get past it emotionally.

The problem is when you scrolling through your Instagram feed on a particularly depressing, raining Sunday, that emotional part of your brain will override the intellectual part and ultimately you won’t be able to objectively look at yourself and the problems in your life.

If you’re not happy in your life, the answers are never outside of you, you will always find the answers by examining your thoughts and how they’re affecting your behavior.

Here’s your hack:

So take a deep breath because I want you to take a social media break. Wait…hold on…hear me out.

This isn’t forever, but I challenge you to try it out for one week.

Before you start deleting Instagram from you phone, take out a piece of paper and write down, “From a scale of 1 to 10, how content am I with my life?” This is going to help you determine how much social media is hurting your sense of self. When the week is over, ask yourself that question again, “From a scale of 1 to 10 how content am I?”

Don’t skip this part of the process because that number is going to give you a lot of information. If the number is higher than it was a week ago – it’s telling you social media is affecting you more than you think.