Hello happiness Seekers, My name is Klaudia. Welcome back to The Alphabet Happiness 26 Day Boost where I'm bringing you 26 days of science backed happiness principles, one for every letter of the Alphabet. And this boost is a celebration of my newly published book the Alphabet of Happiness and it's also our official countdown to the big book launch party on 31st of October at the Science Museum in London and I'm so pleased to see that the event is filling up so fast and I'm so excited to meet some of you in person. If it's not possible for you to attend in person, join my online webinar on Monday 8th of December where I'll be exploring how to live a happier life. So if you want to find out more about those two events, visit my website thehappinesschallenge.co.uk also massive thank you. Just like massive thank you to all of you who are tagging the book and me in your posts. I really appreciate your support and remember by doing so you are entering a chance to win the signed copy copy of the Alphabet of Happiness and some of you already having their copy and sharing pictures of the book and messaging me saying how much the book is helping you. Which it just makes me so ecstatic. But I would really love you to then go on to Goodreads, Amazon or any other retailers where you got the book and leave a review. Because we live in the society that reviews are the key currency and I really want to spread more happiness in the world and share what I have learned through my journey and the science of happiness. So please, if you're already reading the book and you're enjoying it, please leave a review and very timely Today Letter in relation to that idea of currency and social media Today letter is S for self image which is very much about being mindful of social comparison and the way we use social media. And yes, what a topic that is. So self image is defined as how you see yourself as a person and how you compare to the ideal person you want to be. And unfortunately over 12% of our daily thoughts are spent on making comparisons in our head and these include comparing yourself and your self image to others and they are situations when the idea of us comparing ourselves to other people might be helpful because we might be looking for inspiration in external role models, we might be trying to set clear goals of what happiness could look like for us. But unfortunately the problem arises when we experience envy, resentment, we feel inferior, inadequate, we feel not good enough as a result of the social comparison and social media feeds into those feelings. One study specifically found that seeing daily pictures of people with perfect lives evokes envy, leading to being less satisfied with our own lives over a long period of time. And I think that is really sad. That is really sad. Rather than appreciating what we have and thinking what else we want to change or how we can find our own happiness, we unfortunately induce negative feelings as a result of social comparison. And in the Alphabet of Happiness I explore how can we turn social comparison to your advantage and how to use social media mindfully to enrich your compassionate self image and feel that self compassion towards our own experiences and to really start you on that journey. Today's action is to create your three principles of using social media. This could include the times when you use social media Again, using social media first thing in the morning is a really not great idea. There is so much science showing that if you reaching for your phone and using social media in the first few minutes of waking up that really sets you for a not great day because we are flooding our system with stress hormones. So that your principles could include not using your phone first in the morning. It could include the accounts you want to follow. Again, we have ability to to say no to the algorithm and don't look at accounts that are feeding into our negative emotions. And also having some principles on the type of content you share, how are you engaging on those social media platforms? So again, really interesting research that shows that if we are actively using social media it can boost our happiness. But if we are using it only passively, that is we not creating principles, we only do scrolling. That is definitely not good for our overall well being. And remember, limiting time on social media means more time spent on another activities that support our self image. So in one study by spending less time on Facebook, participants increase the frequency of jogging, cycling and even decrease the number of daily cigarettes they smoke. Wow. Basically that's what I would say to that study. So thank you so much for listening. Hope you liked today's hack. Remember, if you would like a summary of all the letters we've explored so far and just keep on top on all of the events that I'm running, please subscribe to my newsletter on Substack. Simply search for the Happiness Challenge. So see you tomorrow for the next letter and another happiness boost. Bye.