Everyone has Done this

Scroll, scroll, scroll… gazing at pictures and videos of people that we’ve never met. What began with our [now ritualistic] habit of picking up our phone, has turned into minutes or even hours wasted on nothing, except maybe poorer self-esteem. We were seemingly care-free, but now we suddenly feel insecure about every life choice made since we first started remembering them.

Then come the “hows?”

How can I get my stomach to show a defined six pack? How do I get my butt to be big, round and perky? How can I get my hair to flow effortlessly down to my belly button? How do I make enough money to fly to a tropical island on a Tuesday?

So we then look even further into these influencer pages hoping they will provide the special secrets to their lives.

Scroll, scroll, click, swipe, swipe, swipe, click, scroll, scroll, repeat.

Do we finally find those secrets to a better life? ..no

What You See on Instagram Isn’t Real Life

What we’ll probably find is a “booty bands” workout program combined with a meal plan copy & pasted from Pinterest by @ “some random douchebag.” An overpriced supplement line with impressive packaging. Then maybe a magic tea claiming to give us (1) great hair (2) great skin and (3) the body of our dreams fully equipped with unlimited rainbows and orgasms. Wait! You can even hire them to be your mentor so you too can achieve great success.. just like them!

It can be easy to get lost in the bullshit of social media. What most influencers won’t tell us is the truth.

Like how the booty bands are just $0.03 rubber bands made in China being sold for $30 and they’re supposed to stimulate the muscles before a workout begins. That the same expensive supplements they’re selling can be found at less than ½ the cost without their name and fancy packaging. Or that the magical tea is just tea, and the only business this influencer has ever been involved with is attempting to be a “professional life and business mentor” to others.

It’s important to realize that being an influencer is how these people make their money. It’s their job to post pictures of themselves and promote what they’re selling or claiming to use.

Make Your Own Success

In today’s online environment, we absolutely must do our own research and make informed decisions. If an influencer is selling business mentoring when their only business has been to sell business mentoring, that person obviously has no knowledge to mentor us. That would be like paying someone to explain how to train our dog while that person has never owned or even trained a dog themselves.

See how absurd that sounds?

It doesn’t matter what Instagram says they look like, where they live, what they own, or who they are friends with. These days absolutely anything can be made up, faked, or overly embellished upon. We don’t need to be wasting our valued dollars on someone who has never had and grown a successful business. Every dollar we spend for our business should be a smart dollar that will give us a benefit in return.

What the people attracted to this sort of system fail to realize is that they already have everything they need to achieve their goals. No mentor is going to give world-saving advice that will change everything.

They’re going to tell you two things:

1. You can do it, and either keep trying or

2. move on to your next idea.

If we do need this kind of business advice or motivation, there are plenty of free and noteworthy resources; we can do what many grown adults love to do and ask our parents for advice.. or our grandparents, other family and friends. We can go to business networking events and conventions to meet other business owners.

Or we can do my personal favorite, seek the help in books. Books are written by truly credible, inspirational, and actual influential people. I can say with certainty that no Instagram wannabe is going to give you better advice than you can find at a bookstore.

Besides, if they’re at all smart, that’s probably what they’re doing themselves.

The secrets to any goal, no matter how far off in the distance it seems, isn’t even a secret. Attaining success really just requires one thing of us: to keep trying, no matter the time and hard work.

There just isn’t any special secret that can transform our lives overnight.

Most of it is a scam

We all know how comparing ourselves to others can feel. But it’s important to keep in mind that things are rarely how they appear. Looking at fitness goals, there are some influencers out there who are selling a meal-and-booty-building plan when they themselves have had butt injections!

I’m sorry to break it to the hopeful girls out there but it’s not possible to build a big butt without having the leg muscles to go along with it. The only way a person can have a huge caboose with slender legs is either by hitting the genetic jackpot or by getting plastic surgery.

If that’s the case, then said influencer has no right to be selling a booty building plan that they’ve never used themselves! Keep in mind that many, if not most, female body and physique influencers have probably had some sort of work done. Which, if this is something they wish to do, then great.

I have nothing against plastic surgery and don’t discredit anyone for it. What I do have a problem with is those people that lie about how they’ve achieved their looks, attribute the results to something else, and then try to sell you that. We have names for those people and it’s not influencers… we call them con-artists.

Here’s some Advice That Might Actually Work

So let’s say we do want a bubble-butt: we can spend the many thousands of dollars to get injections or we can actually do what we know we should and build our glute muscles. If we choose to build the muscle, then it’s going to take changing behaviors and making those changes into solid habits. This is done by nothing other than consistency. The real mountain to climb for the majority of people is staying committed.

It’s true that anyone can toast to a better year and workout on January 1st.. as can be witnessed on the first week every January. But make the trip to that same gym on January 31st and it will tell another story. This is because people respond to rewards. Yet the real sought after and life-changing rewards only come to those that are willing to keep showing up, even when they don’t want to.

Although no one secret will bypass this, there are some tricks that make it easier than most people think. It’s all about reducing the friction between ourselves and the behaviors we wish we’d do. It just takes making the most daunting tasks more rewarding to us in the short-term.

Want to watch Netflix but know you should workout? Put your stationary bike in front of your TV and workout while you watch. Want to eat better but would rather buy food? Transfer $25 to your savings account every time you make a meal at home instead of buying dinner. Every time you do it you can think about when you’ll finally use that money to show off your new abs on the vacation you just saved up for.

Most of our behavior consists of automated habits we’ve already learned. But it’s really not hard to automate the good habits instead of the bad.. it just takes a little hacking. Eventually, the friction doesn’t even matter to us because the behavior is no longer a choice, it becomes part of who we are.

Confront Yourself

We are either our best friend or our worst enemy. That’s because at it’s core, you are the only person who can help yourself. That’s why looking at another person who has the body we want might not mean they have the knowledge to tell us what to eat. There is no one-size-fits-all meal plan. Every person is different and how we eat should reflect this.

A meal plan should be curated for ourselves, and preferably by ourselves by taking into account what our body goals are, how we have been eating and how much exercise we do. From there it can still take time to figure out what works best for us. Some bodies may perform better with high carbs and low fats while some may be better off with moderate carbs and high fats. But just like with any truly and inherently rewarding goal, it comes with time and persistence.

The quicker we lose the weight, I can guarantee, the faster it will come back. That’s because it was never actually gone in the first place. Don’t you remember the Tortoise Versus the Hare?

What to Take Away from This

When we scroll through social media, we shouldn’t take it at face value. Understandably, not all influencers are created equal. I’m sure that there are a few who are genuine.

I mean, who wouldn’t want a job in which all they have to do is tell someone else how to live their lives?

But we don’t need it.

Each of us can learn how to do anything that someone else has done, and probably do it even better. But if we do want to pursue advice or need support in a certain area of our lives, we should do our due diligence to make sure the people we are receiving information from have some actual experience in that field.