What's wrong with striving for perfection?

A fitness tracker is a great thing.

Not only does it track my sleep and monitor my heart rate, but it also praises me when I do well. “You’ve walked ten thousand steps—good job,” the bracelet purrs to me. “You’ve met your goal.”

The language-learning app praises you for completing another French lesson.

The meditation app—for the fact that I meditated for eleven minutes instead of ten.

My gadgets are practically all cheering me on in my quest to become the best version of myself.

That's pretty cool, isn't it?

On the one hand, of course, yes.

Getting better every day—it’s so great! More physical activity, more self-improvement, more mindfulness, more travel, a cooler job, goals, achievements, success, and a really beautiful profile picture.

All of this is so perfect and right that it would seem there’s nothing to criticize. But there’s one catch.

It's one thing if you're working on yourself because you want to. It's quite another if you're being pushed into it.

And they're pushing us around!

Push notifications, likes, view counts, and other virtual perks that are so nice to receive.

But behind one achievement there will always be another. 

Today you have walked twelve thousand steps, tomorrow you will walk even more. This week you are the best in Duo Lingvo, next week you will move up to the diamond league. You're more active than ninety percent of users. 

But there will always be someone better than you.

And you inevitably begin to feel that somewhere you are underworking, underdeveloping. It seems that you are trying, but still as if you are a loser.

And the digital economy loves losers. 

More precisely, it creates them better than anything else. That is, people who are dissatisfied with themselves. 

After all, a person who is dissatisfied with himself is, on the one hand, unhappy and feels sorry for him. And on the other hand, he is an ideal consumer. 

Striving for digital success is a very slippery slope. 

Social networks are basically evil and a vanity fair. But among them, Instagram stands apart. 

That's where people have perfect lives! 

All photos and videos have been calibrated, edited, and had filters applied.

The perfect setting: champagne and caviar in the morning, expensive cars, planes that will whisk you away to the Maldives in literally a minute, New York’s skyscrapers, and huge bouquets of flowers.

Ideal people: fit, athletic, with an even tan, wearing fashionable, clean, and ironed clothes.

The perfect mood: smiles all the time, happiness everywhere, and joyful laughter.

Perhaps nothing is further from reality than the digital personas of Instagram accounts.

If you spend too much time on Instagram, psychological damage is guaranteed. You’ll put your phone down, take a mental look at your pathetic life, and sit there quietly crying. Because your reality is strikingly different from that polished ideal.

Women are particularly vulnerable to this pressure.

Surveys have shown that 40 percent of girls aged 6 to 10 dream of losing weight. And as they get older, the percentage of those dissatisfied with their appearance only increases.

Men have their own ideals.

Let’s say you’re forty, but you don’t have a Range Rover; your phone is a crappy Samsung; there’s no “CEO” nameplate on your door; and you don’t own a single business. Instead, you’ve got a receding hairline, shortness of breath, and an ordinary life. And you yourself are just kind of ordinary—nothing about you stands out.

And that makes you unhappy.

Basically, there are a lot of unhappy people these days.

What was it like back then? You lived in a village with twenty houses. And compared to the other villagers, you basically always seemed to measure up. A man—that in itself wasn’t bad. If he didn’t drink much and was a hard worker—he was a real gem! A nice log cabin, a kind wife, a cow, a couple of pigs—that was basically all you needed to be successful in life.

Are you comparing yourself to an endless number of people, among whom there’s bound to be someone younger, taller, broader-shouldered, richer, smarter, and more successful?

In other words, you always lose—every single time.

Meanwhile, every one of your gadgets, flashing and buzzing, hints that you can do better. And so you try harder, chasing likes, views, comments, and virtual rewards that seem more valuable than real ones.

In this race, it's very easy to lose sight of who you really are.

But you need to realize and accept that you're good just the way you are.

Zalina Marshenkulova once suggested that young women “switch from seeking men’s approval to focusing on men’s faces.”

What I'm suggesting is that, instead of seeking virtual approval, we rely only on our own approval and that of our loved ones.

Even if the fitness tracker isn't happy about something.