The Social Media Trap Destroying Your Motivation

Your social media feed is destroying your motivation.

Say you want to grow on social media. You find a new big account in your niche. So naturally you start following them for inspiration. Then your own metrics make you feel like a failure.

They're at 500,000 followers while you're at 1,000.
They're posting screenshots of $50k months while you had one $2k month.
They're getting dozens of "I love your content" comments while you just have your mom commenting "great post sweetie."

You think their success should motivate you... but that gap between you and them makes your brain shut down.

Most people think comparison is the problem. "Comparison is the thief of joy" they say. They're half right.

Comparison can help you - but it's hurting you right now because you're using the wrong reference points.

Your brain is doing math with bad data.

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Wired for Comparison

Your brain uses other people as reference points to calculate whether a goal is worth pursuing.

Leon Festinger's 1954 study showed humans have a fundamental drive to evaluate their abilities through comparison to similar people. Your brain is constantly asking: "is this goal attainable given what people like me achieve?"

If you're only looking at people who are years ahead of you, your brain calculates "they're at 500,000 followers while I'm at 1,000, so at my current rate, I will never close the gap." This registers as "goal statistically unattainable" which triggers motivation shutdown. On the surface, this feels like laziness, but it's a neurological defense mechanism to stop you from wasting resources (time, energy, attention).

Lockwood & Kunda's "Superstars and Me" study showed role models inspire us when their success seems attainable, but cause "self-deflation" when it seems unattainable. A success story has a completely different effect depending on perceived attainability.

Everyone says "stop comparing yourself to others" or "focus on your own journey." That's like telling someone to stop worrying about something. It's a worthless cliche.

Your brain is wired to compare. It's a feature, not a bug. The problem is your social media feed is showing you people years ahead of you, so when your brain runs its comparisons, it concludes you're failing. Wrong inputs, incorrect calculations, reduced motivation.

So, instead of "don't compare yourself to others bro", try changing who you're comparing yourself to.

I like creating systems (and giving them names to help me remember them). So let's talk about Reference Frame Recalibration.

It has three parts that each feed your brain better data: Distance Calibration, Reference Pool Curation, and Baseline Tracking. Each is designed to give your brain better data points so it makes better calculations - and keeps your motivation higher.

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Distance Calibration

We've established that your brain constantly calculates whether goals are attainable using other people as measuring sticks.

Think of it like Google Maps. If it's wrong about where you are - it thinks you're in Atlanta when you're actually in Phoenix - and the ETA becomes meaningless. Then it'll constantly be telling you to turn around even when you're going the right way.

Your social media feed is feeding your brain Atlanta when you're in Phoenix.

You're comparing your Day 13 to someone else's Day 1,300 - but your brain doesn't know about that part.

It only sees they have 500,000 followers while you have 1,000. It doesn't see the 1,287 days more work they've put in that you haven't yet. It runs a simple calculation: "They're way ahead, so at my current rate, I'll never catch up."

When you perceive someone as similar - same starting point, similar trajectory, roughly your level - comparison actually inspires you. Researchers call this assimilation. But when you perceive them as dissimilar - already at the end game while you're in the tutorial zone - comparison deflates you. That's the contrast effect.

This is why:
- You don't post YouTube videos after seeing a feed full of 200,000 view videos
- You can't work on your business after following another million follower creator
- You feel a sense of "I'm not lucky like they are" that keeps you from taking action

You expected to feel inspired but all your brain gave you was a sense of impossibility.

If you ever played World of Warcraft, it's like standing in Stormwind City comparing your wimpy Level 5 self to the geared out Level 80 jumping around on their cool ass mount. You see the gap between the two of you but not the 300 hours of grinding it took to get where they are.

Your brain does the math, triggers the quit response, and you log out.

A pattern I've seen with the people I've coached over the years is that we often compare the BEST attribute of many different people to ourselves. His income. Her following. Their editing quality. The brain aggregates these into an impossible standard no single person actually meets. We compete against a composite image of perfection that doesn't exist.

This is one of the worst things about social media. Your brain evolved to put people in "leagues" - family, classmates, coworkers. But social media tricks your brain into thinking strangers are peers because you see intimate parts of their lives.

You see their Instagram story about eating a Rice Krispie Treat before the gym, so your brain thinks "we're basically friends", so it compares their outcomes to yours.

Your brain is running comparative calculations with irrelevant inputs.

Open your Instagram following list right now. Look at the first 20 accounts. How many are 3+ years ahead of where you are? That's your problem - those accounts are feeding your brain impossible math every time you open the app.

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Reference Pool Curation

Your brain compares you to the people it sees - in real life, on television, and on social media.

So that means we need to curate who it sees.

We tend to follow "inspiring" accounts, wonder why we're still unmotivated, then follow MORE "inspiring" accounts to help. A brilliant strategy.

But this just adds even more irrelevant data points for our brain's calculations to work with.

A simple fix is to follow people who are about 1-2 years ahead of you - not 10 years. People close enough that your brain perceives similarity and triggers assimilation.

When you follow someone who is somewhat ahead of you, your brain sees: "They have 2,000 subscribers. I have 200 right now. At my current rate I could reach 2,000 in a few months." That feels possible, so your motivation increases, or at least it doesn't drop.

Flow research expert Steven Kotler found that ego-orientation (thinking about how you compare while performing) blocks your ability to become fully immersed in the task at hand (aka reaching flow state).

When you're constantly comparing yourself to people way ahead of you, you're stuck in ego-orientation, which reduces your performance in real-time.

Find people 1-2 years ahead in your domain. A YouTuber with 10000 subs, not 2,000,000. An entrepreneur at $10K MRR, not $100K. A lifter who deadlifts 315lbs, not 600lbs.

Your brain sees them as "a slightly better peer" instead of "an impossible standard."

So what do you do about the people who are way ahead of you?

It depends.

Pay attention to how you feel when you're scrolling your feeds. Does seeing a successful creator make you feel inspired or demotivated? If you only ever feel worse when you see someone's posts, that means they are bad data for your brain's calculations, and so you should unfollow (or at least mute) them.

Another key here is that their tactics probably won't work for you (at least right now). Someone at $20k MRR is solving different problems than you at $3K. Trying to follow a Level 80 character's stat optimization isn't going to do much for you when you're at Level 10.

Starting today:

Unfollow (or mute) people who are way ahead of you and make you feel worse.
Only follow people who are around your level and/or actually inspire you to do better.
Put a few (5-10) people who are 1-2 years ahead of you on a specific "inspiration" list to focus on.

Your brain will shift from demotivating contrast to inspiring assimilation within the next few days.

Note about unfollowing people - it's different when we're talking about friends. I'm not telling you to bail on your friends who are more successful than you. That's a whole other psychological rabbit hole we won't get into today.

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Baseline Tracking

You are the most important person you can compare yourself to.

Stay with me here - I'm not just regurgitating the "focus on your journey" bullshit.

Your brain needs two comparison types: 1) relative (how am I doing vs others?) and 2) absolute (how am I doing vs past me?). Most people only do the relative comparison we've been talking about. That means their progress perception depends entirely on who's in their feed.

Say you made $5,000 last month. It'd feel like failure if you just scrolled past someone who made $50,000. But it'd feel like incredible progress if you made $2,000 the month before. Same progress, but you feel completely different about it, because of what it was compared to.

Without baseline tracking, you're at the mercy of your feed. If you see people slightly behind you, you feel good. If you see people way ahead of you, you feel terrible. Tracking against your past self creates stability.

When you only compare yourself to others, your brain attributes their success to luck, talent, or other factors. This is related to something called an "external locus of control" in psychology.

When you compare yourself now against your past self, your brain attributes progress to your actions. This relates to an internal locus of control.

Your locus of control can either be external (your results are determined by factors you can't control) or internal (your results are determined by factors you can control).

Research shows having an internal locus of control is linked to stronger goal-setting, higher self-efficacy, and greater personal agency.

When you compare yourself to others, your brain goes "they got lucky with the algorithm." But when you compare yourself to your past self, your brain thinks "I improved because I posted consistently for 6 months."

I challenge you to start a new habit - on the first of every month, screenshot your current metrics (followers, revenue, PRs, whatever you're tracking). Then look at the progression from past months. You'll be able to see how far you've come - and it's likely a lot further than you've been thinking.

Try it right now. Record your current metrics. Then find your metrics from 6 months ago. Compare where you were then to where you are today.

If there's ANY upward movement, even 5%, that's positive momentum your brain might have been ignoring. Your brain will see your trajectory is upward which will give you a boost in motivation.

Doing this on a consistent basis anchors your motivation when social comparison tries to destroy it. When you feel like quitting because someone else hit 50,000 followers this month, you can pull up your data, and see you've grown 1000 followers in the past month.

That gives you proof you're moving forward - and it keeps your motivation alive.

Thank you for reading,

~ Joey Justice

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