HOW DO WE STOP COMPARING OURSELF TO OTHERS?
Coaching clients around refraining from comparing themselves to others, mostly to what they consider to be “success” of others in a particular area or in more than one area is a process that involves dismantling beliefs, presuppositions, and perceptions, breaking destructive habits and paving the way to building new habits, and mostly a brand-new state of mind.
So how do we stop comparing ourself to others?
The process involves defining what success & happiness mean to us on a number of levels, such as the personal, physical, financial, mental, emotional, and spiritual levels. If we fall short of defining what success means to us - by default - we will be forced to use the definition of others, hence basing the success in our life to someone else’s definition of success, or worse yet to our perception of their success.
One of the challenges of comparing is that we tend to focus on our weaknesses and other people’s strengths – or what we perceive as their strengths. Let’s flip it around; discover our strengths and focus on them. Then, we become more confident, tend to value our capabilities, and find ways to put them into practice. One way to do that is through writing our own narrative of one time in our life where we were at our best – and may be ask some close people to do the same for us – then collect these stories, identify the patterns, and write our own profile that shows our skills, capabilities, qualities, qualifications, strengths, etc.
Another exercise that proves to be very valuable is to study people’s pains and have real conversations with them. We will come to realize that they did not have it easy; again, we will discover that we have fallen prey to our perceptions and beliefs, yet these people worked hard and still are, and to our surprise might not be happy and fulfilled at all. A big AHA moment to reflect on!
Also, watching others is energy & time depleting; one of the reasons why people procrastinate is related to constantly “spotting others”, and social media has made it even worse. Now, not only we compare & compete with people we know in real life, rather we have allowed social media to hijack us to a global “virtual” level of compare & compete! So, let’s reclaim our free will back, gear up, and stop procrastinating; let’s do something we have put off for a long time so that we reinstate our self-confidence, our sense of achievement, …. and feel good about ourself.
Likewise, let’s look at collaboration vs competition; collaborating with like-minded people, people at our own level and taking the first step - instead of competing – we will achieve more together. Collaboration opens the door to opportunities and opportunities are the entrance to our own success.
Equally, staying curious, remaining an ever learner - instead of being judgmental & labelling others - is a blessing that helps us grow and thrive. Volunteering & contributing to our community with a big heart is phenomenal and has a spill over effect on our sense of fulfilment and happiness.
To bottom line, we will always compare ourself to others as long as we are focusing our attention on others instead of focusing on the one in the shadow which is OURSELF.
Don’t get fantasized by “OTHERS”! Their world is different from your world! Build on your acumen, you will enjoy more, grow faster and be more confident!
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