Get Over the Greener Grass

A few years ago, I had a knee injury that stopped me from being able to stand or walk for prolonged periods. After twelve months of setbacks, I saw a specialist who prescribed a three month “reset” of daily strength exercises and as little walking and standing as possible. I was limited to incidental movement around the house and occasional car journeys to go and sit somewhere new for a change of scene.

At that time, I was also recommended a therapist who specialised in chronic pain to guide me through. I explained to her that I was having a hard time scrolling through Instagram, because as soon as I saw someone run, jump, hop, skip, walk… it would remind me that I could not.

“Imagine you’re on a diet”, she said. “Would you print photographs of delicious chocolate desserts and flick through them all day? Then why are you doing the same staring at activities you can’t do?”

I couldn’t argue — and when I came off Instagram, the first feeling I felt was relief: I was no longer focused on the luscious green grass of the neighbour’s garden, and I was busy watering my own.

The Grass is Greener

“The grass is always greener on the other side” is a tale as old as time: it can be traced back to Ovid’s poetry in 43 B.C. “the harvest is always more fruitful in another man’s fields”. It’s a natural human tendency, perhaps because “survival of the fittest” means you need to know who you’re up against if resources are scarce.

To create sticky social networks, technology companies have taken advantage of our innate cognitive bias towards keeping up with the Joneses. Except, we’re no longer confined to keeping up with neighbours in the house next door whose lives are relatively similar to ours: we can keep an eye on the luxurious lives of celebrities and influencers who live anywhere in the world.

In today’s social media landscape, comparison knows no bounds. But until now, the only prescribed treatment has been to go “cold turkey”.

Enjoying this? Try my weekly 5-point newsletter full of hacks for more enjoyable work and better conversations.

What’s the Antidote?

In my experience, giving up social media is not a solution to the grass is greener problem. It’s purely a panacea. We can’t resolve our yearning for better by giving things up and closing ourselves off from the outside world. It simply doesn’t get to the root of the problem. And although I’m no longer on Instagram, it doesn’t stop me finding plenty of other green lawns to lust after.

The alternative to “going cold turkey” that supposedly addresses the root of the problem often shows up in the form of a ‘helpful’ reminder not to compare yourself to others. Where on earth to start with that?

We read social norms by comparing our behaviour to others, and fashions and trends emerge because we want to be like others — comparison is in our human nature.

If being repeatedly told to “stop comparing yourself to others” and sheltering under a rock from the perils of social media aren’t working for us… what next?

A new school of thought is emerging to counteract the “stop wanting what you can’t have” rhetoric: get clear on what you want.

Get Clear on What You Want

The only way to escape comparison thieving joy once again is to get clearer on what we really want. The more clarity and conviction we have, the less we’re seduced by a world of potential ‘wants’ around us.

The thing is, most of our ‘wants’ emerge as a result of the context in which we live. We rarely ‘want’ within a vacuum. We often want something because someone else has it, or because advertising made it look sexy, or because someone told us their airfryer has changed their life and it will surely change ours too.

To get clear on what we truly want, we need to peel back the layers and separate our motivations from the influence of trusted friends and commercial advertisements.

How to get there?

Last year, I was recommended an exercise to get to the bottom of this: write down at least one hundred things you really want. It could be things you want to do, goals you want to achieve, experiences you want to have or items you want to buy.

My first reaction: one hundred things is a lot of things to want! Will I be able to find that many? The key is having time and space to think clearly and avoid outside influence. Get creative and come back to your list over several sessions if you have to.

Once you have your full list, cluster them by theme. Ximena Vengoechea’s Life Audit exercise is similar, and she smartly suggests one “want” per post-it, so you can easily sort them into groups.

Perhaps you notice themes emerging? Maybe a “health” category or a “material things” group. Are some groups bigger or smaller than you imagined? I went into the exercise expecting to see a long list of material things out of my reach and was surprised to see how many were non-material things well within my grasp.

Keep your list items top-of-mind: Vengoechea suggests reviewing on an annual basis to see what’s changed. The result? The more you know what you want, the easier it is to let new ‘wants’ that come your way on TV adverts or Instagram posts drift on past. You know they’re not aligned with the things you truly crave.

Our increasingly connected world isn’t going to make the grass on the other side feel any less green. It’s far too effective as a marketing tool for companies of all shapes and sizes. Instead, it’s up to us to work out what matters most to us on our own side of the fence, dulling the appeal of the beautifully manicured lawns to our left and right.

Thanks for reading. If you enjoyed this, try my weekly 5-point newsletter full of hacks for more enjoyable work and better conversations.