“Hey man, congrats on all your success. Can you talk me through how you’re doing it? You’ve got everything together. You’re always on the road, always working, producing tons of content, and you never miss a beat.”

What?!

That phone call came from a friend & colleague in the speaking industry…

At a time when I felt like I was struggling and grinding away, barely keeping my head above water.

He thought I was effortlessly crushing it. I thought I was failing miserably.

We were both wrong.

I was successful by any objective metric. And I had a lot of goals I’d yet to achieve. But that call made me realize that I wasn’t happy with my success or enjoying the journey.

Why?

Because of comparison culture.

That’s when I decided to mute or unfollow anyone in my industry whose social media posts made me feel “less than” on a regular basis.

Not everyone, and definitely not close friends. Just the people whose comparison negatively impacted my mood.

What’s wild is how quickly that decision transformed my day-to-day enjoyment of my life.

In the absence of (hundreds) of people I’d met once or never at all showing up in my daily social feeds, I regained the ability to…

Enjoy where I’d been,

Exist in the moment,

And eagerly anticipate the future.

Modest Mouse once said,

“Everyone’s unhappy, everyone’s ashamed.

We all just got caught looking at somebody else’s page.”

Comparison culture is pernicious – we’re so used to it, we don’t even realize we’re engaging in it anymore.

As a young magician my mentor once told me,

“Whenever necessary, retreat into a bubble. Ignore everyone else. Sometimes you need that in order to be creative and find yourself.”

The few colleagues who survived my social media purge are those who Simon Sinek calls “worthy rivals” – someone whose strengths reveal your weakness, and inspires you to work harder and reach higher.

Surround yourself with people who inspire you. Shun the rest.

This goes double for social media.