If you've been listening in or following me for a while, you'll have heard me talk about my struggles with midlife changes. I have to be honest, I am not a fan of this whole aging process and I do really struggle with how quickly it has seemingly snuck up on me.

The thing is, despite knowing better, I have found myself falling into the comparison trap and measuring my own aging process against women who seem to be retaining their youth more successfully than me.

It's an easy trap to fall into. I mean, you don't have to scroll far on any social media platform to be bombarded with picture-perfect beauty, am I right? Or for that matter, picture-perfect lives, picture-perfect careers or businesses, picture-perfect health, picture-perfect relationships. It all looks so effortless and natural.

In fact, often it is explicitly stated that it's effortless and natural. We see endless posts telling us things like, I lost my stubborn belly fat in 10 days without giving up sugar. I took 15 years off my age using this one product. I gained 10,000 followers organically in 30 days of starting a brand new Instagram account. My personal favorite, I made $100,000 in the first 60 days of business selling a single $27 digital product working just 3 hours a week.

And if you're human like me, as I suspect you might be, as much as we know these kinds of stories are unrealistic, and maybe not even true, it's still easy to fall into the trap of believing that you are somehow a failure if it's not as effortless and natural for you to achieve these same kind of results. That you somehow measure up less than.

Just last week, I got jolted out of the Measuring Up Mindset I had fallen into around aging this year when a candid picture of a coach I follow surfaced in my feed. A coach who I have long held on a pedestal of perfection. She always looks amazing and with every passing year, it's like she's aging backwards. Something I am definitely not doing.

And in buying into my perception of her perfection, I have very much fallen into the trap of measuring myself against her. So much so that I had started telling myself a story this year that I cannot achieve her level of success as a coach because I'm not aging quite so perfectly, and I need to look as good as her to be successful as her.

Now, there's no question that this story has been feeding my resistance to showing up on social media this year in a way that I know I need to in order to not just grow my business, but better serve the women I want to help. Women like you. You'll know this is something else I've been talking a lot about and working through personally if you've been following my journey this year.

But the bubble of my picture-perfect perception of this coach and my story burst in an instant when I saw that candid picture of her in my feed. It showed her in her realness. It showed her arms aging just like mine. It showed her neck in an angle that revealed she too has neck creases and wrinkles just like me. It showed the creases under her eyes from her smile, just like the creases I get when I smile.

Now don't get me wrong, I thought she was every bit as beautiful in this picture as in every other picture I see of her. The thing is, seeing her in professional photos or in a well-lit studio when she's coaching on camera, in a setting where her arms don't show, where she's not turning her in a way that causes those wrinkles and folds to show, she's maybe not smiling as wildly so her eyes don't crease quite so much, this is what I had been using as a measure of her perfection and my own. But this isn't her in all her realness.

And so many of us are measuring ourselves against a perception of perfection that just doesn't exist, and we don't stop to question it. Instead, we question ourselves. We question our worth and our potential based on this non-existent perfection that we perceive in those we often see for microseconds as we scroll mindlessly through social media.

We judge ourselves and hold ourselves back based on measures of success that are simply not real or not the full story. And I want to call this out in my life, and I want to encourage you to do the same. So today, let's talk about the Measuring Up Mindset and who and what you are buying into that maybe doesn't deserve that spot on your perfection pedestal.

Let's dive in.

Welcome to The Self-Creation School podcast, for women who are ready to ditch mediocrity, step up and get more of what they want, and finally say YES! to a life that sets their soul on fire. I'm your host Leanne Letica, Self-Creation Coach, founder of The Self-Creation School AND Queen of YES!. If you're ready to play life by your own personal rule book, and give yourself permission to say YES! to yourself and your wildest dreams, this podcast is the place for you.

Well, another hot and humid hello from Koh Samui in Thailand, where I am now three weeks into my two-month living in the question work-play adventure. I have to say, I am feeling very relaxed and very in love with this slower pace of travel.

I did wonder how I would go with blending in much more downtime throughout my working week because I am admittedly a workaholic. My creative brain rarely stops. But I am deliberately challenging my work norms on this trip and saying YES! to new possibilities.

So far, it is all turning out far better than I expected and later today, we have friends from Australia joining us for the next 10 days. So I am super excited for their arrival and the time we get to spend together.

In case you are joining me for the first time in this episode, I am all about challenging your norms and saying YES! to a life you love. And doing exactly that is something I talk about every Wednesday here on this podcast, as well as in my free weekly email that I send out called CREATED. So if you'd like to wake up every day to a life you can't wait to live out, hit the subscribe button to follow this show and make sure you add your name to my email list for my free weekly tips on doing just that. You'll find that link in the show notes.

Today, I want to have a conversation about this measuring up business. More specifically, the need we feel to measure up and the stick we're using to make that measure. Because getting caught up in a Measuring Up Mindset can and will hold you back from saying YES! to you and creating a life you love.

Like I said just a moment ago, even though I know better, I still find myself falling into the trap of a Measuring Up Mindset. It's a sneaky little mindset that slips into your thoughts often unnoticed and very often the moment you start scrolling mindlessly on social media, which is where a lot of us are spending a great deal of time these days. That's why it's important to have a system of checks and balances to help you stop falling into that trap or to recognize it when you do and avoid getting stuck there.

And listen, the Measuring Up Mindset can be triggered by a lot of different situations, not just social media. Situations like seeing someone who has lost weight, or hearing about a friend's new promotion, maybe pulling up alongside a car you dream of owning, or even just that nagging thought that you are not quite where you “should” be.

So I want you to keep in mind as you listen to this episode that you can take what I discuss here today and apply it to any situation where your Measuring Up Mindset gets triggered. But in this conversation, I do want to highlight social media because we don't always realize just how much social media amplifies this mindset and we are all spending so much time scrolling through our social feeds.

Now, probably like me, you follow accounts on social media that inspire you, that you want to learn from, maybe businesses you simply want to support. And yes, also accounts you feel obligated to follow, like those of family and friends. So when you jump on to check your social feeds, I think also like me, you genuinely hope to feel connected and inspired, maybe even entertained by what you see.

Then you start scrolling and you come face to face with a picture-perfect version of someone's life or business, post after post. Both the accounts you choose to follow and those that get promoted to you. You see the flawless skin, the wildly successful businesses, the relationships that look like they're straight out of a rom-com. And it all looks so wonderful and effortless, doesn't it?

The problem is these posts are rarely showing you the full story or the reality. And you do know deep down the rational truth that no one's life is perfect. You do deep down know that what you see online is carefully curated, filtered and edited. Yet, even knowing that, it's easy to forget, because you get so brainwashed with these picture-perfect posts, post after post after post, you start to think, this is a norm.

And when you're in that scrolling trance, it's all too easy to start comparing your messy real life to someone else's highlight reel. It's easy to start to wonder, what am I doing wrong? Why don't I look like that? Why isn't my business as successful? Why isn't my life as polished? Before you know it, your Measuring Up Mindset is the life of the party.

Social media actually rolls out the carpet for the Measuring Up Mindset, because here's the thing. You tend to be on social media when you're at your most vulnerable. Maybe you're tired. Maybe you're feeling a little insecure or overwhelmed with life's challenges. How many of us jump onto our socials to waste some time to avoid facing the things that we really ought to be doing? I've been guilty of this and if you're honest, you'll admit that you are too.

And in this physical, mental, or emotionally compromised state, you are well primed to start using those filtered images and posts as a measuring stick for your own life. The worst part is, it's never a fair comparison. You're comparing your entire life, the good, the bad, the messy parts, to someone else's best moments. The parts they've carefully chosen to show you. What you don't see, or rarely see, are the challenges. The insecurities, the struggles behind the scenes. All you see is the perfect outcome.

I know for sure, and I shared this with you earlier in this conversation, I've looked at other coaches and women I admire online and thought, wow, they're really doing it all and they're doing it so much better than me. And in those moments, I start measuring myself up against them, thinking I need to be at that level to be accepted, valued, and successful.

But the truth is, that level doesn't exist. At least not in the way we think it does. It's a snapshot. A carefully constructed moment. It's not the full reality. And when you fall into this trap of measuring up to these snapshots, you're really setting yourself up for disappointment. Because you're holding yourself to an impossible standard. A standard that's not real. A standard that might not even be true or right for you.

And on that note, I want to talk a little about the false promises that often underscore the Measuring Up Mindset. How often have you looked at someone's life and thought, if I just had a life like that, a job like that, a husband like that, a house like that, a bank account like that, my life would be perfect. You feel the allure, that promise of perfection and the happiness that supposedly comes with it.

Social media in particular is rife with false promises like this. But it's not just the carefully curated, not intentionally deceitful, perfect life and business kind of posts that we see. If your feed is anything like mine, you are also likely seeing a whole lot of posts that intentionally don't tell you the full story. They are intentionally deceitful, and this is a really big problem when it comes to measuring yourself against them.

I make no secret that I am very passionate about growing my coaching business. I'm also a very big believer in investing into my education, into my mindset and self-development, and I am constantly on the lookout for new ways I can do things to help me grow so I can fulfill my ultimate goal of helping more women like you grow. Because of this, I have a lot of business-related posts in my feed, and I get exposed to a whole lot of very big promises.

Recently, a business coach came up in my feed who was promoting herself as a seven-figure coach to mums with young children. Now, my babies are all grown up, but what she was talking about resonated with me all the same, and I decided to look a little further.

And further, I absolutely looked. Because some of the results she was claiming were possible not just for her, but for her clients, seemed like a dream. And despite having been around the block more than once in business, despite knowing deep down this all sounded too good to be true, and it likely wasn't, my Measuring Up Mindset still kicked in.

I found myself thinking, why is this so much easier for them than it is for me? What's wrong with me that I haven't achieved these same kind of results in this same kind of timeframe? And because I was so tuned into my Measuring Up Mindset being alive and well around aging, I knew I had to question the source of my questions. I had to look for the full story before I allowed myself to buy into the surface stories that were being presented to me on a silver platter.

Now, I'm not suggesting for a moment that we should all become pessimists and start to think that everyone is out to scam us. I think there are still more well-intentioned people in the world than there are people out to get me. But the reality is we do need to be careful about who and what we are buying into to measure our success.

As I investigated this coach and her claims a whole lot further, things started to not add up. I pieced together her actual story and her actual timeline of results. It was a very, very different picture. It wasn't all that extraordinary, and in fact it wasn't out of the ordinary at all. And it certainly provided a much different measuring stick of success to the one she wanted the world to see.

The thing is, ordinary results, realistic results, they're not all that sexy. They don't sell. If you've ever been involved in marketing, you'll know this to be true. People want fast results, people want effortless results, people want to turn rags into riches overnight. And people get burned because true success, lasting success, is rarely an overnight story. It is rarely effortless.

So when you buy into the false promises of effortless overnight success, in anything by the way – your health, your business, your mindset, your relationships – when you buy into these false promises and you fall far short, you might blame the person who sold you on those promises, but likely you will question you more.

You will question why these kind of things can't happen for you even though, and I know but this is part of being human, you will question your failure even though you know you've been sold a pup. You will store this experience as a failure. And whether you do that consciously or subconsciously, either way it will erode your belief in yourself and what's possible for you.

The other thing that happens when you get burnt like this is that you lose trust, not just in yourself, but in others. And you stop seeking out the education, the mentorship, the coaching, and guidance that you will still greatly benefit from. And I'll go so far as to say you need to invest into for a healthy and happy life.

I've invested hundreds of thousands of dollars over my lifetime into myself, into my education and my growth. And I can tell you, not all of that money delivered on its promise, but it all delivered valuably to the life I get to experience today. I know it's probably a little cliche, but it is true. There are lessons in the things that don't go to plan, that don't deliver like you wanted them to. This includes the false promises you buy into, and sometimes, pay a lot of money to buy into.

Listen, the greatest growth you will ever experience is to take responsibility for your outcomes, good and bad, false promises and all, tap into the lessons that these outcomes deliver and learn from them. Then get back in the saddle with greater wisdom, use that wisdom to question more wisely who and what you buy into, and invest into yourself and your growth again and again.

I personally made the mistake after being exposed to the self-improvement industry and mentorship in my early 20s and creating some truly extraordinary results in my life when I went from cleaning the homes of multi-millionaires to being one, I made the mistake of thinking I didn't need to work on myself anymore. At least, not at the level I had been.

And it is not a coincidence that the quality of my life experience declined in line with my effort to work on myself, in line with my willingness to invest into myself and my growth. Now, that led me to probably one of the lowest points in my life. And so I learned a hard lesson, but a lesson that drives me to do what I do today. Which is to work on myself, on who I be, first and foremost, every single day, and to help women like you do the same.

And since I've recommitted to doing this work on myself, to investing in myself and my growth every single day, my extraordinary life that became ordinary in the absence of doing this work has once again become something that I find truly extraordinary. Extraordinary to me, by the way, not necessarily to you.

Living a life of you love, really love, every minute of every single day. That is what is extraordinary to me. And that is going to look a whole lot different to you than it does to me. The key is to know what your extraordinary life looks like and feels like to you and you alone. And then avoid measuring yourself up against the lives and success of others. No one's extraordinary will ever look quite the same as your own.

And so this brings me back to what it is we are talking about here today. Stopping this business of measuring yourself and your success or progress in life against false measures. Against those false promises and pretenses that you, and me, are often too readily buying into that do not truly serve you or support you in having the kind of life actually want.

Remember we, are not talking about the life you think you should want here. We're talking about the life you want aside from the shoulds, aside from the norms and expectations you hold yourself to that don't, if we are honest, delight you or fulfill you or make you feel like you are living your best life.

You've got to be mindful of who and what you are allowing yourself to buy into as a measure of your worth, as a measure of your potential and your success. You've got to take control of the measures you choose to use to evaluate your potential, your progress, and your success.

It is good, by the way, to have a measure to help you understand where maybe more effort is required to continue to move you forward to the life you want. This is Goal Setting and Accountability 101. But that measure needs to be relevant to what you want, to your goals, and no one else's. It needs to be appropriate for your goals, and it needs to be empowering, not judgmental and limiting. Most of all, it needs to be firmly grounded in reality, not false pretenses like those we are brainwashed with on social media.

So, how can you break free from this Measuring Up Mindset and start to be more mindful of who and what you are buying into? Who and what you are placing on your perfectionist pedestal?

I am going to keep this really simple for you because it doesn't need to be all that complicated. I have just three tips for you and my first tip is to question your questions.

Here's what I mean. Whenever you find yourself asking questions of yourself like those I mentioned earlier, questions like, what am I doing wrong? Why don't I look like that? Why isn't my business as successful? Why isn't my life as polished? Whenever questions of self-doubt, self-judgment, or comparison come up for you, I want you to pause and question the source of these questions.

Start questioning what you see and hold on your picture-perfect pedestal that is triggering you to feel like you are not measuring up. Don't let those questions take root without asking where they came from. Who or what triggered these feelings and these thoughts? What are you really seeing here? Is this the full story or just a highlight reel?

Remember, it is easy to forget that what you see online or in someone else's life is often carefully curated. You rarely see the struggles, the behind-the-scenes work, or the messy parts of their journey. So whenever you start feeling like you are not enough, take a step back and remind yourself that you are comparing your whole life to someone's edited moments. Look deeper and question what's real and what's missing from the picture. And is this really a true measure or the right measure for you?

The goal for you is to become aware of who and what you are buying into as a measure of your worth, potential and progress. Why you're questioning yourself and what you're measuring yourself against. Because I can guarantee, most of the time you'll realize you are measuring yourself up against something that is unrealistic, incomplete or irrelevant to you. This is going to help you very quickly squash your Measuring up mindset.

Questioning always challenges validity. So question the source of your self-judgment.

My second tip is to set your own standards. You must do the work to get clear on what your best life looks like to you and you alone aside from all the shoulds, aside from all the norms and expectations, you've been brainwashed to believe are the only path or the right path to a happy and fulfilled life.

There is more than one way to do life and there is no right or wrong way to do life. What's right for someone else is not always going to be right for you. I chased other people's version of success and I successfully achieved it, and I felt like a complete failure because it didn't make me happy and it didn't make me feel fulfilled. Their success simply wasn't right for me.

You have got to know what your best life looks like to you, free from all the noise you are measuring yourself against. So tune out from other people's version of success, other people's beauty, other people's happiness, and get clear on what you want for you in your life. What does your best life look like? What does good health, success and happiness mean to you? What do rewarding relationships look like to you? What does a day in the life of you who loves every minute of her life look like to you?

Set your own goals and standards based on what's important to you, not what you think you should want based on someone else's life. Then whenever you find yourself falling into the trap of not measuring up, refer back to your own measures. Are you making progress towards the things that truly matter to you? Are you holding yourself accountable to real, relevant standards? Or are you using someone else's picture-perfect measures that are, maybe once again, unrealistic, incomplete or irrelevant to you?

Doing this will help you stay grounded in your reality and your goals, and it ensures that you are measuring yourself in a way that is healthy and true to your values.

Now my third and final tip is to invest in keeping your mindset healthy.

To avoid falling into the comparison trap, you need to keep your mindset in shape. Just like a garden, if you don't tend to it daily, it will get overrun with weeds. The key to staying out of the Measuring Up Mindset is consistently working on your mindset. Strengthening it and nurturing it every single day just like you would to create a beautifully landscaped garden.

Let me give you some ideas for how you can do this.

Number one, read books that expand and grow your mindset. Just be careful here not to fall into reading the kind of books that place your focus on fixing you in some way because you are not broken. You do not need fixing.

Can you become a more expansive version of you? A version who is better aligned with being able to achieve your goals and dreams? YES! But it's about changing who you be, not because you are broken, but because there is more potential in who you can be in your lifetime. So make sure that what you read is growth-oriented or potential-oriented and not fixing-oriented.

The second thing I will suggest is to listen to empowering podcasts like this one. And also, find podcasts specific to your goals that help you maintain a healthy mindset in that area of your life. For example, for me currently, I am on the lookout for podcasts that will help me expand my mindset around midlife and all the wondrous experiences that come with it, because it is one of my goals to come out the other side of this whole aging process better and stronger than ever.

Now personally, I understand the power of an identity-based approach to mindset work and to creating a life you love. So, I would definitely highly encourage you to seek out podcasts that embrace an identity approach. Focusing on who I be first and foremost has been the key to every success I have ever experienced in my lifetime.

And the final thing I suggest, and I strongly suggest, is to do regular mindset work. Like the tips I share in my weekly email, Created. Remember the link to add your name to get that email is in the show notes. So, if you haven't joined the thousands of women who receive my weekly email, make sure you grab yourself a free backstage pass today.

I also have a lot of other free resources that you can use to help you work on your mindset, and you'll find the links to some of those in the show notes as well, or feel free to take a look around over on my website at https://selfcreationschool.com.

But whatever mindset work feels right for you, do it daily. No ifs, no buts. The more you tend to it, the less likely you'll fall into the perfectionist trap of measuring yourself against false ideals. Treat nourishing your mind daily like you do eating food to nourish your body daily.

Honestly, daily mindset work for me is simply a non-negotiable. Like I said before, there is a direct link between how much I loved my life and how much I took care of my mindset. And personally for me, I love using journaling every single day to help me look after my mindset in this way.

I also like to ensure that I surround myself with empowered, like-minded people who inspire me. As the saying goes, you are the sum of the five people you spend the most time with. So, consider curating your social feeds and clearing out those accounts that are maybe too picture-perfect, for example, that don't help you maintain a healthy mindset and that don't contribute in a meaningful way to the life experience you want.

Just be careful that you don't avoid doing the real work that is needed here which is to clean up your own self-judgment mindset first and foremost, set your own standards, and then tend to your mindset to nurture these standards. I recommend you do the internal work first and then look at your feeds with fresh eyes. You'll probably find that some of the accounts that triggered a Measuring Up Mindset for you will no longer have that effect.

And last but certainly not least, I always, always, always have some form of mentorship in my life, whether it's a coach, a mentor, or someone that holds me accountable and supports my growth.

This has been invaluable in my life, and it continues to be invaluable. The return on investment for me, including those investments that didn't seem to pay out all that well initially, isn't something that I can truly calculate because it is now so far beyond the initial investment, and it compounds with each and every year that passes.

But here's the thing, when it comes to choosing a mentor, integrity and authenticity are key. There are a lot of grand promises out there, we have been talking about that today, and it's easy to get caught up in the hype of the quick and easy. But there really are no shortcuts, my friend, to doing this work.

Listen, you may not want to hear this, but I am committed to not being part of the hype. I personally am a coach who is deeply committed to helping women like you grow in a way that is realistic and honest.

Challenging your norms and creating a life you love does take effort. It does take time. And whilst it does take time and effort, I also want to encourage you that it can and often does happen a whole lot faster than you think. You can fall in love with the process, and the effort can be the most rewarding effort you'll ever experience in your lifetime.

There is no greater work you can do than the work on yourself. And there is no such thing as a cookie cutter approach to you becoming you and you are not ever going to be an overnight success story. I mean that in a good way. You are a success story from beginning to end, my friend. As a coach, my job is to help you see that. To help you stop measuring yourself against the success of others, and instead embrace your strength to help you say YES! to your even greater potential.

And my focus as a coach and in delivering this podcast every week is always going to be to offer support that's grounded in truth, not in shortcuts or false promises. If you want to skip doing the work or you're looking for a magic pill, this isn't the place for you. But if you want tips and strategies that work if you do the work, then you are in the right place. And I am so glad you're here.

At the end of the day, whether it's me or another coach or mentor, in whatever capacity you have, I encourage you to find a way to have the regular support of someone who helps you say YES! to who you can be and create the life you can live.

Now, these three steps, questioning what you see, setting your own standards, and investing into your mindset daily, they might be simple, but they will very powerfully help you stop comparing yourself to others and start living in alignment with your own truth.

My friend, you do not need to measure up to anyone else's life. You just need to stay focused on creating the life you want. One that feels authentic, fulfilling, and uniquely yours. No person outside of you, no picture-perfect post in your feeds can provide a measure for how well you do you.

Challenge your Measuring Up Mindset. Curate your own picture-perfect measure of success. Put your mindset on a pedestal each and every day. And I promise, you will not only feel freer, but you will feel so much more empowered to start saying YES! to the only thing that truly matters, you.

With that, I'm bringing today's episode to a close. As always, I'd love to hear about your biggest takeaways and your thoughts on today's topic. So, join me in my DMs over on my socials or drop me a line by email and tell me all the things. I do love reading your messages, I can't say that enough, and I do reply personally to every single one.

I'll be back next Wednesday with more Self-Creation insights and tips to help you say YES! to a life you love. I do hope you'll join me.

Until then, be the woman who says YES!

Hey, want to know what's stopping you from saying YES! to you and a life you love?

Head over to https://selfcreationschool.com/yesblock and take my FREE 60 second quiz to find out what's standing in your way today and I'll send you my Self-Creation Shift process for shifting it.

That's https://selfcreationschool.com/yesblock. I’ll see you there.

If you've been listening in or following me for a while, you'll have heard me talk about my struggles with midlife changes. I have to be honest, I am not a fan of this whole aging process and I do really struggle with how quickly it has seemingly snuck up on me.

The thing is, despite knowing better, I have found myself falling into the comparison trap and measuring my own aging process against women who seem to be retaining their youth more successfully than me.

It's an easy trap to fall into. I mean, you don't have to scroll far on any social media platform to be bombarded with picture-perfect beauty, am I right? Or for that matter, picture-perfect lives, picture-perfect careers or businesses, picture-perfect health, picture-perfect relationships. It all looks so effortless and natural.

In fact, often it is explicitly stated that it's effortless and natural. We see endless posts telling us things like, I lost my stubborn belly fat in 10 days without giving up sugar. I took 15 years off my age using this one product. I gained 10,000 followers organically in 30 days of starting a brand new Instagram account. My personal favorite, I made $100,000 in the first 60 days of business selling a single $27 digital product working just 3 hours a week.

And if you're human like me, as I suspect you might be, as much as we know these kinds of stories are unrealistic, and maybe not even true, it's still easy to fall into the trap of believing that you are somehow a failure if it's not as effortless and natural for you to achieve these same kind of results. That you somehow measure up less than.

Just last week, I got jolted out of the Measuring Up Mindset I had fallen into around aging this year when a candid picture of a coach I follow surfaced in my feed. A coach who I have long held on a pedestal of perfection. She always looks amazing and with every passing year, it's like she's aging backwards. Something I am definitely not doing.

And in buying into my perception of her perfection, I have very much fallen into the trap of measuring myself against her. So much so that I had started telling myself a story this year that I cannot achieve her level of success as a coach because I'm not aging quite so perfectly, and I need to look as good as her to be successful as her.

Now, there's no question that this story has been feeding my resistance to showing up on social media this year in a way that I know I need to in order to not just grow my business, but better serve the women I want to help. Women like you. You'll know this is something else I've been talking a lot about and working through personally if you've been following my journey this year.

But the bubble of my picture-perfect perception of this coach and my story burst in an instant when I saw that candid picture of her in my feed. It showed her in her realness. It showed her arms aging just like mine. It showed her neck in an angle that revealed she too has neck creases and wrinkles just like me. It showed the creases under her eyes from her smile, just like the creases I get when I smile.

Now don't get me wrong, I thought she was every bit as beautiful in this picture as in every other picture I see of her. The thing is, seeing her in professional photos or in a well-lit studio when she's coaching on camera, in a setting where her arms don't show, where she's not turning her in a way that causes those wrinkles and folds to show, she's maybe not smiling as wildly so her eyes don't crease quite so much, this is what I had been using as a measure of her perfection and my own. But this isn't her in all her realness.

And so many of us are measuring ourselves against a perception of perfection that just doesn't exist, and we don't stop to question it. Instead, we question ourselves. We question our worth and our potential based on this non-existent perfection that we perceive in those we often see for microseconds as we scroll mindlessly through social media.

We judge ourselves and hold ourselves back based on measures of success that are simply not real or not the full story. And I want to call this out in my life, and I want to encourage you to do the same. So today, let's talk about the Measuring Up Mindset and who and what you are buying into that maybe doesn't deserve that spot on your perfection pedestal.

Let's dive in.

Welcome to The Self-Creation School podcast, for women who are ready to ditch mediocrity, step up and get more of what they want, and finally say YES! to a life that sets their soul on fire. I'm your host Leanne Letica, Self-Creation Coach, founder of The Self-Creation School AND Queen of YES!. If you're ready to play life by your own personal rule book, and give yourself permission to say YES! to yourself and your wildest dreams, this podcast is the place for you.

Well, another hot and humid hello from Koh Samui in Thailand, where I am now three weeks into my two-month living in the question work-play adventure. I have to say, I am feeling very relaxed and very in love with this slower pace of travel.

I did wonder how I would go with blending in much more downtime throughout my working week because I am admittedly a workaholic. My creative brain rarely stops. But I am deliberately challenging my work norms on this trip and saying YES! to new possibilities.

So far, it is all turning out far better than I expected and later today, we have friends from Australia joining us for the next 10 days. So I am super excited for their arrival and the time we get to spend together.

In case you are joining me for the first time in this episode, I am all about challenging your norms and saying YES! to a life you love. And doing exactly that is something I talk about every Wednesday here on this podcast, as well as in my free weekly email that I send out called CREATED. So if you'd like to wake up every day to a life you can't wait to live out, hit the subscribe button to follow this show and make sure you add your name to my email list for my free weekly tips on doing just that. You'll find that link in the show notes.

Today, I want to have a conversation about this measuring up business. More specifically, the need we feel to measure up and the stick we're using to make that measure. Because getting caught up in a Measuring Up Mindset can and will hold you back from saying YES! to you and creating a life you love.

Like I said just a moment ago, even though I know better, I still find myself falling into the trap of a Measuring Up Mindset. It's a sneaky little mindset that slips into your thoughts often unnoticed and very often the moment you start scrolling mindlessly on social media, which is where a lot of us are spending a great deal of time these days. That's why it's important to have a system of checks and balances to help you stop falling into that trap or to recognize it when you do and avoid getting stuck there.

And listen, the Measuring Up Mindset can be triggered by a lot of different situations, not just social media. Situations like seeing someone who has lost weight, or hearing about a friend's new promotion, maybe pulling up alongside a car you dream of owning, or even just that nagging thought that you are not quite where you “should” be.

So I want you to keep in mind as you listen to this episode that you can take what I discuss here today and apply it to any situation where your Measuring Up Mindset gets triggered. But in this conversation, I do want to highlight social media because we don't always realize just how much social media amplifies this mindset and we are all spending so much time scrolling through our social feeds.

Now, probably like me, you follow accounts on social media that inspire you, that you want to learn from, maybe businesses you simply want to support. And yes, also accounts you feel obligated to follow, like those of family and friends. So when you jump on to check your social feeds, I think also like me, you genuinely hope to feel connected and inspired, maybe even entertained by what you see.

Then you start scrolling and you come face to face with a picture-perfect version of someone's life or business, post after post. Both the accounts you choose to follow and those that get promoted to you. You see the flawless skin, the wildly successful businesses, the relationships that look like they're straight out of a rom-com. And it all looks so wonderful and effortless, doesn't it?

The problem is these posts are rarely showing you the full story or the reality. And you do know deep down the rational truth that no one's life is perfect. You do deep down know that what you see online is carefully curated, filtered and edited. Yet, even knowing that, it's easy to forget, because you get so brainwashed with these picture-perfect posts, post after post after post, you start to think, this is a norm.

And when you're in that scrolling trance, it's all too easy to start comparing your messy real life to someone else's highlight reel. It's easy to start to wonder, what am I doing wrong? Why don't I look like that? Why isn't my business as successful? Why isn't my life as polished? Before you know it, your Measuring Up Mindset is the life of the party.

Social media actually rolls out the carpet for the Measuring Up Mindset, because here's the thing. You tend to be on social media when you're at your most vulnerable. Maybe you're tired. Maybe you're feeling a little insecure or overwhelmed with life's challenges. How many of us jump onto our socials to waste some time to avoid facing the things that we really ought to be doing? I've been guilty of this and if you're honest, you'll admit that you are too.

And in this physical, mental, or emotionally compromised state, you are well primed to start using those filtered images and posts as a measuring stick for your own life. The worst part is, it's never a fair comparison. You're comparing your entire life, the good, the bad, the messy parts, to someone else's best moments. The parts they've carefully chosen to show you. What you don't see, or rarely see, are the challenges. The insecurities, the struggles behind the scenes. All you see is the perfect outcome.

I know for sure, and I shared this with you earlier in this conversation, I've looked at other coaches and women I admire online and thought, wow, they're really doing it all and they're doing it so much better than me. And in those moments, I start measuring myself up against them, thinking I need to be at that level to be accepted, valued, and successful.

But the truth is, that level doesn't exist. At least not in the way we think it does. It's a snapshot. A carefully constructed moment. It's not the full reality. And when you fall into this trap of measuring up to these snapshots, you're really setting yourself up for disappointment. Because you're holding yourself to an impossible standard. A standard that's not real. A standard that might not even be true or right for you.

And on that note, I want to talk a little about the false promises that often underscore the Measuring Up Mindset. How often have you looked at someone's life and thought, if I just had a life like that, a job like that, a husband like that, a house like that, a bank account like that, my life would be perfect. You feel the allure, that promise of perfection and the happiness that supposedly comes with it.

Social media in particular is rife with false promises like this. But it's not just the carefully curated, not intentionally deceitful, perfect life and business kind of posts that we see. If your feed is anything like mine, you are also likely seeing a whole lot of posts that intentionally don't tell you the full story. They are intentionally deceitful, and this is a really big problem when it comes to measuring yourself against them.

I make no secret that I am very passionate about growing my coaching business. I'm also a very big believer in investing into my education, into my mindset and self-development, and I am constantly on the lookout for new ways I can do things to help me grow so I can fulfill my ultimate goal of helping more women like you grow. Because of this, I have a lot of business-related posts in my feed, and I get exposed to a whole lot of very big promises.

Recently, a business coach came up in my feed who was promoting herself as a seven-figure coach to mums with young children. Now, my babies are all grown up, but what she was talking about resonated with me all the same, and I decided to look a little further.

And further, I absolutely looked. Because some of the results she was claiming were possible not just for her, but for her clients, seemed like a dream. And despite having been around the block more than once in business, despite knowing deep down this all sounded too good to be true, and it likely wasn't, my Measuring Up Mindset still kicked in.

I found myself thinking, why is this so much easier for them than it is for me? What's wrong with me that I haven't achieved these same kind of results in this same kind of timeframe? And because I was so tuned into my Measuring Up Mindset being alive and well around aging, I knew I had to question the source of my questions. I had to look for the full story before I allowed myself to buy into the surface stories that were being presented to me on a silver platter.

Now, I'm not suggesting for a moment that we should all become pessimists and start to think that everyone is out to scam us. I think there are still more well-intentioned people in the world than there are people out to get me. But the reality is we do need to be careful about who and what we are buying into to measure our success.

As I investigated this coach and her claims a whole lot further, things started to not add up. I pieced together her actual story and her actual timeline of results. It was a very, very different picture. It wasn't all that extraordinary, and in fact it wasn't out of the ordinary at all. And it certainly provided a much different measuring stick of success to the one she wanted the world to see.

The thing is, ordinary results, realistic results, they're not all that sexy. They don't sell. If you've ever been involved in marketing, you'll know this to be true. People want fast results, people want effortless results, people want to turn rags into riches overnight. And people get burned because true success, lasting success, is rarely an overnight story. It is rarely effortless.

So when you buy into the false promises of effortless overnight success, in anything by the way – your health, your business, your mindset, your relationships – when you buy into these false promises and you fall far short, you might blame the person who sold you on those promises, but likely you will question you more.

You will question why these kind of things can't happen for you even though, and I know but this is part of being human, you will question your failure even though you know you've been sold a pup. You will store this experience as a failure. And whether you do that consciously or subconsciously, either way it will erode your belief in yourself and what's possible for you.

The other thing that happens when you get burnt like this is that you lose trust, not just in yourself, but in others. And you stop seeking out the education, the mentorship, the coaching, and guidance that you will still greatly benefit from. And I'll go so far as to say you need to invest into for a healthy and happy life.

I've invested hundreds of thousands of dollars over my lifetime into myself, into my education and my growth. And I can tell you, not all of that money delivered on its promise, but it all delivered valuably to the life I get to experience today. I know it's probably a little cliche, but it is true. There are lessons in the things that don't go to plan, that don't deliver like you wanted them to. This includes the false promises you buy into, and sometimes, pay a lot of money to buy into.

Listen, the greatest growth you will ever experience is to take responsibility for your outcomes, good and bad, false promises and all, tap into the lessons that these outcomes deliver and learn from them. Then get back in the saddle with greater wisdom, use that wisdom to question more wisely who and what you buy into, and invest into yourself and your growth again and again.

I personally made the mistake after being exposed to the self-improvement industry and mentorship in my early 20s and creating some truly extraordinary results in my life when I went from cleaning the homes of multi-millionaires to being one, I made the mistake of thinking I didn't need to work on myself anymore. At least, not at the level I had been.

And it is not a coincidence that the quality of my life experience declined in line with my effort to work on myself, in line with my willingness to invest into myself and my growth. Now, that led me to probably one of the lowest points in my life. And so I learned a hard lesson, but a lesson that drives me to do what I do today. Which is to work on myself, on who I be, first and foremost, every single day, and to help women like you do the same.

And since I've recommitted to doing this work on myself, to investing in myself and my growth every single day, my extraordinary life that became ordinary in the absence of doing this work has once again become something that I find truly extraordinary. Extraordinary to me, by the way, not necessarily to you.

Living a life of you love, really love, every minute of every single day. That is what is extraordinary to me. And that is going to look a whole lot different to you than it does to me. The key is to know what your extraordinary life looks like and feels like to you and you alone. And then avoid measuring yourself up against the lives and success of others. No one's extraordinary will ever look quite the same as your own.

And so this brings me back to what it is we are talking about here today. Stopping this business of measuring yourself and your success or progress in life against false measures. Against those false promises and pretenses that you, and me, are often too readily buying into that do not truly serve you or support you in having the kind of life actually want.

Remember we, are not talking about the life you think you should want here. We're talking about the life you want aside from the shoulds, aside from the norms and expectations you hold yourself to that don't, if we are honest, delight you or fulfill you or make you feel like you are living your best life.

You've got to be mindful of who and what you are allowing yourself to buy into as a measure of your worth, as a measure of your potential and your success. You've got to take control of the measures you choose to use to evaluate your potential, your progress, and your success.

It is good, by the way, to have a measure to help you understand where maybe more effort is required to continue to move you forward to the life you want. This is Goal Setting and Accountability 101. But that measure needs to be relevant to what you want, to your goals, and no one else's. It needs to be appropriate for your goals, and it needs to be empowering, not judgmental and limiting. Most of all, it needs to be firmly grounded in reality, not false pretenses like those we are brainwashed with on social media.

So, how can you break free from this Measuring Up Mindset and start to be more mindful of who and what you are buying into? Who and what you are placing on your perfectionist pedestal?

I am going to keep this really simple for you because it doesn't need to be all that complicated. I have just three tips for you and my first tip is to question your questions.

Here's what I mean. Whenever you find yourself asking questions of yourself like those I mentioned earlier, questions like, what am I doing wrong? Why don't I look like that? Why isn't my business as successful? Why isn't my life as polished? Whenever questions of self-doubt, self-judgment, or comparison come up for you, I want you to pause and question the source of these questions.

Start questioning what you see and hold on your picture-perfect pedestal that is triggering you to feel like you are not measuring up. Don't let those questions take root without asking where they came from. Who or what triggered these feelings and these thoughts? What are you really seeing here? Is this the full story or just a highlight reel?

Remember, it is easy to forget that what you see online or in someone else's life is often carefully curated. You rarely see the struggles, the behind-the-scenes work, or the messy parts of their journey. So whenever you start feeling like you are not enough, take a step back and remind yourself that you are comparing your whole life to someone's edited moments. Look deeper and question what's real and what's missing from the picture. And is this really a true measure or the right measure for you?

The goal for you is to become aware of who and what you are buying into as a measure of your worth, potential and progress. Why you're questioning yourself and what you're measuring yourself against. Because I can guarantee, most of the time you'll realize you are measuring yourself up against something that is unrealistic, incomplete or irrelevant to you. This is going to help you very quickly squash your Measuring up mindset.

Questioning always challenges validity. So question the source of your self-judgment.

My second tip is to set your own standards. You must do the work to get clear on what your best life looks like to you and you alone aside from all the shoulds, aside from all the norms and expectations, you've been brainwashed to believe are the only path or the right path to a happy and fulfilled life.

There is more than one way to do life and there is no right or wrong way to do life. What's right for someone else is not always going to be right for you. I chased other people's version of success and I successfully achieved it, and I felt like a complete failure because it didn't make me happy and it didn't make me feel fulfilled. Their success simply wasn't right for me.

You have got to know what your best life looks like to you, free from all the noise you are measuring yourself against. So tune out from other people's version of success, other people's beauty, other people's happiness, and get clear on what you want for you in your life. What does your best life look like? What does good health, success and happiness mean to you? What do rewarding relationships look like to you? What does a day in the life of you who loves every minute of her life look like to you?

Set your own goals and standards based on what's important to you, not what you think you should want based on someone else's life. Then whenever you find yourself falling into the trap of not measuring up, refer back to your own measures. Are you making progress towards the things that truly matter to you? Are you holding yourself accountable to real, relevant standards? Or are you using someone else's picture-perfect measures that are, maybe once again, unrealistic, incomplete or irrelevant to you?

Doing this will help you stay grounded in your reality and your goals, and it ensures that you are measuring yourself in a way that is healthy and true to your values.

Now my third and final tip is to invest in keeping your mindset healthy.

To avoid falling into the comparison trap, you need to keep your mindset in shape. Just like a garden, if you don't tend to it daily, it will get overrun with weeds. The key to staying out of the Measuring Up Mindset is consistently working on your mindset. Strengthening it and nurturing it every single day just like you would to create a beautifully landscaped garden.

Let me give you some ideas for how you can do this.

Number one, read books that expand and grow your mindset. Just be careful here not to fall into reading the kind of books that place your focus on fixing you in some way because you are not broken. You do not need fixing.

Can you become a more expansive version of you? A version who is better aligned with being able to achieve your goals and dreams? YES! But it's about changing who you be, not because you are broken, but because there is more potential in who you can be in your lifetime. So make sure that what you read is growth-oriented or potential-oriented and not fixing-oriented.

The second thing I will suggest is to listen to empowering podcasts like this one. And also, find podcasts specific to your goals that help you maintain a healthy mindset in that area of your life. For example, for me currently, I am on the lookout for podcasts that will help me expand my mindset around midlife and all the wondrous experiences that come with it, because it is one of my goals to come out the other side of this whole aging process better and stronger than ever.

Now personally, I understand the power of an identity-based approach to mindset work and to creating a life you love. So, I would definitely highly encourage you to seek out podcasts that embrace an identity approach. Focusing on who I be first and foremost has been the key to every success I have ever experienced in my lifetime.

And the final thing I suggest, and I strongly suggest, is to do regular mindset work. Like the tips I share in my weekly email, Created. Remember the link to add your name to get that email is in the show notes. So, if you haven't joined the thousands of women who receive my weekly email, make sure you grab yourself a free backstage pass today.

I also have a lot of other free resources that you can use to help you work on your mindset, and you'll find the links to some of those in the show notes as well, or feel free to take a look around over on my website at https://selfcreationschool.com.

But whatever mindset work feels right for you, do it daily. No ifs, no buts. The more you tend to it, the less likely you'll fall into the perfectionist trap of measuring yourself against false ideals. Treat nourishing your mind daily like you do eating food to nourish your body daily.

Honestly, daily mindset work for me is simply a non-negotiable. Like I said before, there is a direct link between how much I loved my life and how much I took care of my mindset. And personally for me, I love using journaling every single day to help me look after my mindset in this way.

I also like to ensure that I surround myself with empowered, like-minded people who inspire me. As the saying goes, you are the sum of the five people you spend the most time with. So, consider curating your social feeds and clearing out those accounts that are maybe too picture-perfect, for example, that don't help you maintain a healthy mindset and that don't contribute in a meaningful way to the life experience you want.

Just be careful that you don't avoid doing the real work that is needed here which is to clean up your own self-judgment mindset first and foremost, set your own standards, and then tend to your mindset to nurture these standards. I recommend you do the internal work first and then look at your feeds with fresh eyes. You'll probably find that some of the accounts that triggered a Measuring Up Mindset for you will no longer have that effect.

And last but certainly not least, I always, always, always have some form of mentorship in my life, whether it's a coach, a mentor, or someone that holds me accountable and supports my growth.

This has been invaluable in my life, and it continues to be invaluable. The return on investment for me, including those investments that didn't seem to pay out all that well initially, isn't something that I can truly calculate because it is now so far beyond the initial investment, and it compounds with each and every year that passes.

But here's the thing, when it comes to choosing a mentor, integrity and authenticity are key. There are a lot of grand promises out there, we have been talking about that today, and it's easy to get caught up in the hype of the quick and easy. But there really are no shortcuts, my friend, to doing this work.

Listen, you may not want to hear this, but I am committed to not being part of the hype. I personally am a coach who is deeply committed to helping women like you grow in a way that is realistic and honest.

Challenging your norms and creating a life you love does take effort. It does take time. And whilst it does take time and effort, I also want to encourage you that it can and often does happen a whole lot faster than you think. You can fall in love with the process, and the effort can be the most rewarding effort you'll ever experience in your lifetime.

There is no greater work you can do than the work on yourself. And there is no such thing as a cookie cutter approach to you becoming you and you are not ever going to be an overnight success story. I mean that in a good way. You are a success story from beginning to end, my friend. As a coach, my job is to help you see that. To help you stop measuring yourself against the success of others, and instead embrace your strength to help you say YES! to your even greater potential.

And my focus as a coach and in delivering this podcast every week is always going to be to offer support that's grounded in truth, not in shortcuts or false promises. If you want to skip doing the work or you're looking for a magic pill, this isn't the place for you. But if you want tips and strategies that work if you do the work, then you are in the right place. And I am so glad you're here.

At the end of the day, whether it's me or another coach or mentor, in whatever capacity you have, I encourage you to find a way to have the regular support of someone who helps you say YES! to who you can be and create the life you can live.

Now, these three steps, questioning what you see, setting your own standards, and investing into your mindset daily, they might be simple, but they will very powerfully help you stop comparing yourself to others and start living in alignment with your own truth.

My friend, you do not need to measure up to anyone else's life. You just need to stay focused on creating the life you want. One that feels authentic, fulfilling, and uniquely yours. No person outside of you, no picture-perfect post in your feeds can provide a measure for how well you do you.

Challenge your Measuring Up Mindset. Curate your own picture-perfect measure of success. Put your mindset on a pedestal each and every day. And I promise, you will not only feel freer, but you will feel so much more empowered to start saying YES! to the only thing that truly matters, you.

With that, I'm bringing today's episode to a close. As always, I'd love to hear about your biggest takeaways and your thoughts on today's topic. So, join me in my DMs over on my socials or drop me a line by email and tell me all the things. I do love reading your messages, I can't say that enough, and I do reply personally to every single one.

I'll be back next Wednesday with more Self-Creation insights and tips to help you say YES! to a life you love. I do hope you'll join me.

Until then, be the woman who says YES!

Hey, want to know what's stopping you from saying YES! to you and a life you love?

Head over to https://selfcreationschool.com/yesblock and take my FREE 60 second quiz to find out what's standing in your way today and I'll send you my Self-Creation Shift process for shifting it.

That's https://selfcreationschool.com/yesblock. I’ll see you there.