It’s summertime. So let’s be honest. How many of us will find ourselves either in a conversation with someone about vacation and we begin thinking, “Wow, that sounds really cool! We only did __________. Must be nice to be them.”
Or . . . we scroll through Facebook, Instagram, or SnapChat and see the beautiful, fun pictures our friends post in their feed/story and we compare their great vacation pics to our own. And we find that we are feeling like we are lacking.
Seriously – when is the last time you compared yourself to someone else?
Or compared your spouse to someone else?
Or compared your kids to someone else?
This isn’t just a social media issue.
“Why did he/she get that promotion? I’m just as gifted as they are!”
“Why were they chosen to work on this new project?”
“Why wasn’t my child chosen to be the spotlight of the month” or “to start the game” or I could go on and on.
For some reason, we find we are often hardwired to compare ourselves to one another. Typically, not a day goes by that we don’t suffer from OCD (Obsessive Comparison Disorder). This is a term discussed by Kay Wills Wyma in her book I’m Happy for You (Sort Of . . . Not Really).
We measure ourselves against our peers and colleagues and find we come up short. It leads to our feeling exhausted and discontent.
Proverbs 14:30 Common English Bible (CEB)
30 A peaceful mind gives life to the body,
but jealousy rots the bones.
How could our lives be different if we stopped looking left and right at each other, scrolling up and down in our social media feeds?
What if instead of comparing ourselves and our lives to each other, we look at what we have and we work on being content?
Come to West let’s discuss this topic 10 am Sundays in July 2018 at Lake Norman High School.