 What's up everybody? It's Chris from the rewired soul where we talk about the problem, but focus on the solution. If you're new to my channel, a couple things. First one is all my videos aren't like this. The second one is my channel is all about mental health. So if you're into that stuff, make sure you subscribe and ring that notification bell and I'm out of town right now. So make sure you're following me on social media at the rewired soul over on Instagram and Twitter. And especially because this video was inspired by all of you. It's Thanksgiving week. The holidays are rough for a lot of people. So sometimes what I do is I ask you guys questions and I put a question up on Instagram and I said what kind of mental health topics do you guys want me to talk about in regards to Thanksgiving and I got a bunch of great ones, but so I'm probably going to do a few leading up to Thanksgiving. But yeah, if you guys have any more suggestions for, you know, this holiday season, let me know. Like, let me know down in the comments or make sure you follow me on social media. All right, but yeah, I hope you guys enjoy this nice little chill kind of thing. Like I kind of feel like a blogger right now. You know how bloggers are just like, I'll record wherever, you know, so I'm laying on my beautiful girlfriend Tristan's little brother's bed while I record this. You guys saw the video yesterday where I recorded it outside, but I was doing a lot of work today and we had to go get my son at an inhaler because this California weather just gets him. I don't think he's used, used to all the trees and everything because we're from the desert. So yeah, I got pretty busy and by the time I sat down to record, it was dark outside. So I decided to record in here. So yeah, let's talk about social comparison. All right, so I had a few messages. One person just straight up said, yo, can you do some more stuff on social comparison? I'm like, hmm, maybe. But there were quite a few comments about dealing with like judgmental family members on Thanksgiving, right? And I was like, oh, I can combine this social comparison with judgmental family members, right? So something that I think a lot of us struggle with, especially if you're like younger, if you're going back home or hell, not even if you're younger, a lot of us travel, right? And traveling doesn't have much to do with it. But you know, we go and we hang out with our family members and everything. And the thing is, is like, first let's talk about our own judgments. We are constantly judging ourselves. Like this is something that I did to a terrible amount, right? And it was just destroying my mental health. And it took me a long time to get over it in hell. Like it's something I still struggle with. But for example, like when I graduated high school, my path wasn't the traditional path, right? Like I graduated high school, I went to college for a semester. It wasn't working out for me. I wanted to just start being an adult and making money. So I left school and just started working full time. And by the time I was, you know, 21, 22, 23 years old, everybody I went to high school with they were like graduating college and everything. And they were like starting, you know, their careers and all this. And I was just this loser drug addict alcoholic guy, you know what I mean? I was comparing myself to them. And that was a fair comparison because my life sucked, right? But it really got to me after I got sober because I wasted almost a decade of my life. So the first thing is, like especially around this holiday season, if you are somebody who is just, I don't know, if you're lonely around the holidays, if you look at other people and you're like, like this is something I used to do all the time was like, oh man, I wish my family was like their family, right? I was constantly comparing myself to others, right? Whatever I was doing on the holidays, and now social media makes it worse, we're constantly comparing ourselves to others. I made another, I made a video a while back about, you know, the real problem with social media, right? And it's social comparison. It's because we're constantly comparing ourselves. And I struggled with this comparing my life to others since I was a kid. I grew up with an alcoholic mom. And, you know, I just wish my Christmases would be like everybody else's Christmases. I wish my Thanksgiving's would be like everybody else's Thanksgiving's, all these other things, right? But one of the biggest lessons I learned, which I'll share with all of you, because I love each and every one of you so much, is this, and write this ish down, okay? You guys ready? Pause the video if you have to, write this down, okay? Don't compare your insides to other people's outsides, all right? And that confused me for a long time. But basically what it means is, don't compare how you're feeling or what you're thinking to what you see other people depicting, like especially on social media, especially, right? Like you might be sitting at home, you might be at your crazy family's Thanksgiving this, you know, this Thursday, and you're angry and upset about your family and you're scrolling through Instagram or Facebook and you see all these other happy families or whatever. Just remember, those people could have been having a massive fight, just fighting and screaming with each other. And then all of a sudden the grandma comes in and says, everybody calm down, we got to take a nice picture for Facebook. You know what I mean? And all you see is that best moment, right? So it's not fair to you to compare your insides to other people's outsides, all right? So the other thing is, going back home, we might have people in our family members who are judging us, right? Where we should be in life, right? Are you dating anybody? Why don't you have any kids yet? How's college going? How's your job going? Why aren't you running that business yet? And we start getting anxious and we start getting worried about what they're going to ask us. We start beating ourselves up, right? And I hope you all have been keeping up to date with the mental health blogs. I made one the other day on how expectations and a lack of acceptance is the root of our misery. So part of it is expectations, right? Expectations have a lot to do with social comparison. And excuse me, what we're doing is we're letting other people's expectations mess us up in the head, right? Like your aunt Sally or your uncle Johnny or, you know, your sister or whoever it is, or maybe it's even your own expectations, right? They think somebody, your age, somebody in your position should be a certain way. And I want you to ask yourself, and this is something that's great about REBT, rational emotive behavioral therapy, like rationally thinking about it. Like, what do you mean should? Where this should come from? Should equals expectation, right? So if they say you should be further along than, like, who said that? Where is that rule? Where is that law that says you should be a certain place, right? Like, for me, I'm a 34 year old man. And like I said, I wasted almost a decade in active addiction. I should be in a different place than I am now, right? But all those shoulds or the expectations that people put on me, they mess me up in the head. What we need to start working on is accepting exactly where we are right now, right? And we make small baby steps to progress. But we cannot allow other people's judgments of us to mess us up even more, right? Here's, here's a hack that I use, okay? When other people are judging us, ask yourself, like, ask yourself, do you want to be where they are? You know what I mean? And the, what I always imagine in my head, right? Because so many people struggle with the holiday season. Let's say you're, you're at Thanksgiving dinner and some relative is just busting your balls, right? About your love life, about your career, about your school, whatever it is. Ask yourself, are they happy, right? Is it, is it one of your relatives who's been divorced like seven times? Because if they are and they're judging your love life, maybe you just let that one roll off the shoulders, right? Is, is one of your relatives judging you about your career or lack of a career? But all the Thanksgiving, they've been complaining about how much they hate their job. If so, maybe there shouldn't, their opinion shouldn't affect you that much. You see what I'm saying? Like ask yourself, like, is this person happy? If that person is genuinely happy, and I don't mean like the ignorant happy, like they don't even realize how miserable they are. I mean, like, are they genuinely happy? Because if they are, soak it in. What they got to say, soak it in, right? But other than that, like, let people's judgments, even if it's your family members, like, listen to me, just because they're your family does not mean that they have this amazing ability to judge you for where you are in your life. So don't worry about it. All right, for a lot of us. Thanksgiving is just a single day where we meet up with family, maybe it's a few days, you know, whatever it is. Then we go back to our regular lives, do not let these, these few days or one day screw up your whole year or week or month or whatever it is, you know what I mean? Like, you got to do what you got to do to be who you want to be, right? Don't let other people influence that, whether it's your family or whether it's the people you're checking out on social media. All right, put in the work, become the person you want to become, and you'll be good, baby. Like, look at me. I'm a dude sitting here with 80,000 subscribers, just recording like this, living the dream, you know, happiness is our own subjective experience. So don't let other people make you think that a certain thing that you do will make you happy because I chased that for a long time. It didn't work. All right. But anyways, I hope you guys are having a great week and I have some more Thanksgiving topics that I'll be touching on for the holidays. If you, if you have more that you want me to touch on, let me know down in the comments below. Follow me on social media at the Rewired Soul, keep in touch, and yeah, I'll talk to y'all very soon.