Perfection On Social Media Is Not Real

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My name is Boom Shaka and I welcome you to my channel.

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It's kind of hilarious to me this introduction that I do.

A couple of people,

Actually just one person,

Has said that it sounded fake and I'm like,

It's an introduction.

I see it every single day.

I try to make it as vibrant as possible but it is the same thing every single day.

So I mean sometimes I'm sure it does sound kind of stilted.

I apologize for that.

In this one I want to speak to you guys about the fact that I'm kind of a little bit annoyed with some of the people on this planet.

Kind of weird to start that way but I am kind of annoyed with not only just people on this planet that I know but a lot of people that I don't know.

And the reason for that is perfectionism and putting your life out there as perfect when it's not.

Let me start off with a story.

Recently a friend of mine,

Actually a student of mine,

She messaged me and she said,

Can I have a quick conversation with you because you know I'm feeling blah blah blah.

And so I was like yeah of course let's have a conversation and so we did a Skype call and she is in university and she lives in Slovakia.

I think Slovakia.

And she is kind of perturbed because she's a little bit chubby.

She's beautiful though.

I mean like absolutely gorgeous but has a little bit of weight on her which is fine,

Absolutely fine.

She has this absolutely beautiful beautiful face,

Beautiful body.

But because of that little bit of extra weight she always feels bad about herself of course right.

And no more so because also she looks at social media right and she looks at all the different people,

Other teenagers or other people in her age bracket.

I think she's 21 and she looks at all these people,

All these people online,

On social media,

On Instagram and they're perfect,

They're beautiful,

They're thin,

They're skinny.

They're making oodles of money on Instagram,

They're doing cool things,

They're traveling all over the world.

And she called me and she said to say exactly this thing where she's like you know I look at all these people and I just feel so terrible about what I'm doing by myself,

With myself,

With my life.

Even though she's doing a lot and seriously this guy,

Guys,

This girl is absolutely a top performer.

She does a lot of things not only in university but she has a full,

She works part-time and she's always applying to scholarships and getting them.

And she's doing a lot with her life.

She is,

She's definitely a high performance student but because of the fact that she kind of compares herself to all of these people on social media who portray only the good things in their life,

Only the perfect things,

Only the awesome things in their life.

Not showing obviously the dark side of being alive.

Then she believes that her life is not good enough because or she's not doing enough because she's not doing as much as some of these people.

And of course I think a lot of us,

All of us,

Every one of us goes through this sometimes in our lives because you know you might compare yourself and think oh well I am 25 years old but by the time Mark Zuckerberg was 25 he'd already made a billion dollar company.

Or you know you might look at yourself and think oh yeah I'm 35 but by the time Elizabeth Gilbert or JK Rowling was 35 she already was a billionaire author.

So you kind of like do that in your head to yourself which is terrible that we do this to ourselves but we do.

And we sit down and we say okay you know let me look at Instagram because first of all why do we do that to ourselves?

Why do we go online deliberately looking for people who have perfect lives,

Perfect and in quotes because really they do not.

And they only portray the perfection.

They don't actually portray of course a negative aspect of being whatever their life is about.

And we look at it and we feel bad about ourselves because we're like well our lives aren't perfect.

We have issues and we have problems and we have things going on that are not perfect and we berate ourselves and we hate ourselves and we put ourselves down and we push ourselves harder and we burn ourselves out.

And so you know that's basically what I told this girl as well.

But more so I just wanted to kind of talk about the fact that what you see in on social media what you see in the perfect lives of people around you is only I would say 40 or 30 percent of the story.

Maybe 50 percent of the story max.

Literally only half of the story.

The rest of it is hidden and is not talked about and people don't mostly talk about this stuff.

That's why we love Brené Brown so much.

That's why we love people who are wonderful online and who share the negative aspects of their life and share what's going on with them which makes them cry,

Which makes them angry,

Which makes them sad,

Which makes them bitter.

We love that about those people because they're doing that.

You know they're not perfect.

No one has a perfect life.

Even billionaires,

Even celebrities of course.

They do not have perfect lives.

And so we love people who are able to show that wonderful side to us because we're like oh right yeah they're not perfect.

They have a lot of good things in their life and a lot of us do.

We're very lucky that we have a lot of good things in our life.

But there are also some things that are not perfect and we need to work on it perhaps or we need to just accept it.

But either way you have to realize that most of these people are only sharing 40 percent of the story.

50 percent of the story.

Half the story.

And I really noticed this for myself especially because I have a lot of friends who are on social media and who have a big following and who are putting themselves out there.

It's kind of ironic to me that you know a lot of them will be crying to me you know one moment on the phone by the fact that they're broken up with their boyfriend or they're sad or they feel pathetic or things like that.

And the next moment they'll share something on Instagram that says oh life is perfect I'm on the beach and things couldn't be better and we're just so lucky kind of thing right.

And of course it's hypocrisy of course but also life.

I guess also it's business.

It's also media the way it works.

It hides the bad and shows the good.

Or sometimes it shows the bad and hides the good.

But in general a lot of the Instagram posts that you're watching it's only showing you half the story and you really have to sit down and realize that fact because literally that is the truth of it.

I'm not even joking at how many times this has happened to me where someone is on the phone with me crying and bawling and the next minute I'll see them post something on their social media saying that life is perfect and they're awesome.

And people saying oh my god you're so perfect you're so beautiful.

I'm thinking to myself oh my god what is going on here why is this world like this right.

Now I'm not saying everyone does this of course.

There are a lot of people who are being vulnerable out there.

But this post or this video is for you guys who are believing these stories.

I'm sure you don't.

I'm sure you don't because I mean this girl who messaged me she was also very young and I think younger people tend to believe more maybe.

Maybe they don't have as much critical thinking but a lot of us tend to end up believing these stories.

And we're like oh my god I wish I was this person because she seems to have a perfect life or I wish I was that person because he seems to have the perfect wife or things like that.

You know like people who are jealous of Ryan Reynolds or things like that or people who are jealous of Blake Lively you know.

And you're like well yeah I mean like they seem like they're perfect from the outside in but you don't really know what's going on within their lives.

You have no idea what's going on within their real story.

You have no idea.

I'm sure there's I'm sure there's a lot of good things going on in their life but also a lot of bad things.

And we don't see all of it so we cannot make a judgment about someone and we cannot compare ourselves to them.

Because what we're seeing is the whole story for ourselves.

When you look at yourself you see the whole story you know exactly what's going on with you.

Whereas when you see someone else you're only seeing half the story or less.

How can you compare the two?

It's like comparing apples and bananas or oranges and orangutans.

You know it's like a completely baseless comparison.

It does not make any sense.

So stop doing that basically is the idea behind this video.

And the idea is also that realize that a lot of people are lying on social media.

They are they are and that's social media that's supposed to be the reason why we go there is because we want to forget about our lives for a bit and look at perfection.

Right perfect pictures,

Perfect colors,

Perfect beauty,

All of that.

And then we look at that and then what we don't do we shouldn't do is compare ourselves to it.

That's not what it's about it's just about kind of enjoying it for a bit and being like oh my god look at these beautiful colors and look at the beauty in the world and that's it.

But not going down the rabbit hole of oh my god this person's beautiful she has beautiful lips and and she doesn't have any freckles and I have freckles and I'm terrible and I should have taken better care of myself and things like that.

You know I'm sure you guys have gone kind of gone through I've gone through it for sure.

And that's one of the reasons why I really restrict my time on Instagram and if I do go on Instagram it's for food pictures.

Food!

I look at a lot of food.

Oh my god I really look at a lot of food guys.

But in general I only look at food and try not to compare myself to the people who show up on my feed literally especially if they're celebrities because that's a completely baseless comparison or anyone else really.

And a lot of times my friends are you know kind of are up and about and doing their thing and they're in beautiful places you know posting beautiful pictures.

I always remind myself you know that they're only showing the good because that's what social media is about you know you know the real truth.

And that's one of the things that I really despise about social media is the fact that sometimes we really do only see half the truth and we're made to feel bad about it.

We're made to feel bad by the media by other people you know other people will look at the pictures and be like oh my god look at that person they have an amazing life why aren't you like this?

A lot of parents will do that actually you know they'll look at someone else's children they'll be like oh look at them they do this for their for their for their you know parent or they do that for their parent.

What would you do what do you have an IV done for me?

And I'm like mom or dad like you only are seeing half the picture you have no idea what they're what they're really like they might be abusing their parents or saying terrible things to them.

You have no idea you're just looking at half the picture so don't compare me to someone like that where you have really no idea you know compare me to myself you know tell me that I'm a terrible daughter because I did that this or that but don't say I'm a terrible daughter because you didn't do this and that person did that.

Do you know what I'm saying?

The comparison is the problem I'm not saying that we should never improve or that we're perfect of course that we always have to keep on improving is a fact.

But the fact is that we're not comparing ourselves to someone else but we're comparing ourselves to ourselves you know where was I a year ago am I better than where I was a year ago yes okay good then you're making progress I'm not well then I need to do something about it right.

So compare yourself to yourself but not to someone else because you have no idea what they're really all about really you have no idea you have no idea.

I don't know if I've said that enough I think I hope this makes sense I hope that I was able to explain myself to you seriously this topic really irks me and it's actually a point of contention for me I'm really trying to be positive about it but I could really start yelling about it because it really does make me angry.

Again I hope this made sense if you guys have any questions please do comment below I hope you're safe and sound wherever you are in the world and I shall see you guys the next time around bye for now.