Get Over Yourself

In a recent issue of Women’s Health, Lauren Cohan (Maggie Greene on the Walking Dead) explains how she discovered a way to avoid the comparison trap. The article opens:

While scrolling through Instagram this Spring, actress Lauren Cohan unwittingly found herself competing as a contestant in The Comparison Game. You know the rules: Endlessly swipe through friends’ and followers’ successes, then measure your own professional wins and happiness against theirs. Now, if you’ve ever played, you probably know the harsh reality of this game—you can never win.

Lauren learned the hard way. “I felt like I was not at the right level,”

Lauren’s pause from social media was a key stop on her path to positive thinking, but then a close friend gave her a piece of advice that prompted even more emotional digging. “You’ll never be happy as long as you’re worrying about yourself,” she recalls her friend saying. To her, that meant “when I’m in a stressful state, it’s not because I actually need something,” Lauren says. 

“It’s because I’m letting my ego spin out of control. I worry about job security, losing something, not getting something I thought I was supposed to achieve. I just didn’t want that inner monologue anymore.”

Now, when Lauren’s feeling anxious, she chooses to redirect. “I see where I can be useful somewhere else.” She checks in with friends and volunteers at the Atlanta Music Project (an after-school program where kids get help with homework and take music lessons). She explains:

“When I’m not focused on my output, and I’m looking at the energy I can give on-set or in a social situation instead, I immediately feel so much relief. I’m able to be present and see things the way they really are. It’s a relief to remember that you’re a speck, and that there is a big picture, and to get over yourself.”

In other words, she has found that the solution to depression and anxiety just might not be more focus on self, but on others.