I’ll be honest, I wasn’t fully sober when I came to this realization, and generally I have a lot of great insight on shrooms.
Btw this happened quite a while ago but I noticed using this trick helps a lot when you start comparing yourself to others not in your favour.
Honestly this is a very basic idea I’ve probably read many times, I’m almost embarrassed how I haven’t internalized it until now.So while on shrooms I started thinking about this podcast about Julia Fox I listened to. She is definitely not who I imagined.
She had a very interesting and tough life, and of course, we all make fun of how she was with Kanye for 10 seconds and made a career out of it, but think about this: how many girlfeinds he had? Thousands. Now, name one, besides Kim and Julia.Exactly.
He’s actually married now, and nobody knows her name, but people know Julia Fox. And listening to the podcast about her book, I came to realization how she’s effortlessly cool. She had things just come to her because of the energy she brings, even her name — Julia Fox, it’s surprisingly a real name not a stage name, is so effective.
She wasn’t born into privilege, her life was quite fucked, but she feels like privileged by nature of her character.
And I remember I got sad, how come some people are effortlessly charismatic and fun, get things easily while I dwell on whether I made an absolute fool of myself after every social interaction.
As many people, I tend to compare myself to people who are more successful then me, more fun then me, cooler than me.And then shrooms made me think beyond it. And this is the little trick that I still use.
Who decided Julia Fox is cool and successful? Why does it matter to me?I know who Julia Fox is, or other people who I call cool or successful, but I am the one who assigns these meanings to them.
She’s interesting in this way that she’s a celebrity but very, very niche, so had I not listened to that podcast, she wouldn’t cross my mind.
So I am the one who decided she’s cool. I am the one assigning everyone I meet with an adjective.
**When I am comparing myself to someone not in my favor, it’s because I decided they are better than me in some ways**. They might not think it, they might be miserable in their lives, or happy, or feeling unfulfilled, or scared — doesn’t matter, because everything that’s happening is happening in my head.
They might be more “objectively” successful by the eyes of the society (i.e. metrics society deems successful), but it wouldn’t matter to me, and wouldn’t make me feel bad, until I take this as a fact.
Had I been a crazy person, it wouldn’t matter to me. I wouldn’t care about success or confidence, I would just exist in my brain bubble unbothered by my current insecurities.
Than what’s objective truth? There isn’t any. Anything we view is from a lens of our own brains. How can you know objectively if someone is charismatic, fun, cool or successful? You can’t, all these qualities they seem to you.
Same with myself. All the negative adjectives I assign to myself — boring, insecure, erratic, traumatized, borderline — are made up in my head.
Time to let go of them.