Stop comparing yourself to others — because it's not their life, it's yours.

In this episode of Really, Universe?, Mari breaks down comparison as a single underlying mechanism that shows up everywhere: FOMO (wanting someone's outcome without their inputs), beauty standards for both men and women, feeling behind in life, and believing you need a specific number in the bank before you're allowed to relax.

Drawing on Shawn Achor's research on gratitude and FOMO, the real neuroscience behind cortical thinning and compulsive behavior, a 2024 meta-analysis on social media and happiness, NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang's own description of his relentless daily life, and Olympic rugby player Ilona Maher's public rejection of the traditional beauty standard, Mari makes the case that every comparison is really the same question: whose standard is this, and did I ever actually agree to it? Walk away with two tools — naming the source of the standard, and a hard, honest look at limiting social media usage versus retraining your algorithm — plus a preview of two future episodes (Enoughness and Ageism) that will dig even deeper into the timeline and money versions of this trap.

• Achor, S. The Power of Beliefs. (FOMO/gratitude framing, cortical thinning and FOMO research citations as compiled in the book.)
• Diener, E., & Seligman, M. E. P. (2002). Very Happy People. Psychological Science, 13(1), 81-84.
• Huang, J. Public fireside chat with Patrick Collison (Stripe CEO). Attributed public quote, not a formal citation — noted in-episode as such.
• National Women's History Museum. Ilona Maher biography. womenshistory.org (verified current as of script date).
• Meta-analysis (2024). Does social media use make us happy? A meta-analysis on social media and positive well-being outcomes. ScienceDirect/Computers in Human Behavior.
• De Neve, J-E., et al. World Happiness Report 2026: Happiness and Social Media, executive summary. Wellbeing Research Centre, University of Oxford.
• Study on negative-word headlines and click-through rate (Upworthy headline analysis, 100,000+ variations), published in Nature, as reported by Social Media Today.

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