“Personality begins where comparison ends. Be unique, be memorable. Above all, be proud.”
Buddhism says…
Comparison is usually the fast track to unhappiness. It’s a recipe for suffering. It keeps you firmly anchored to what you don’t like about yourself and your life, so you can spin in circles in your negative thoughts.
Overcoming mental comparison
Comparing ourselves to others often leaves us frustrated, anxious and paralyzed about moving forward. It doesn’t help us design the life we want. On the contrary, it wastes precious time and energy that could have been devoted to building our future.
Every time you focus on what others have that you don’t, you give up your power. Every minute spent comparing your path to someone else’s is a minute lost in creating your own.
So take your power back from all the people, places and situations where you’ve left it, and bring it home with you. Decide that your energy will be used to believe, not to doubt, and to create, not to destroy.
Focus on yourself. Water your garden and get busy building your path. Focus on being the best you can be and sharing it with the rest of us (the goal of the Women’s Conscious Network).
Remember that life is organized around your success and that you have the ability to create what you want for yourself. It’s up to you. Your life depends 80% on how you react to life.
At the same time, we need to deal with this poison before it immobilizes us: social comparison.
Overcoming social comparison
This tendency to compare ourselves to other people is called social comparison, and it’s a natural way for us to evaluate our position.
When we compare ourselves to other people who are better off than we are, we’re engaging in an upward social comparison that pushes us to look above ourselves, making us feel smaller and dissatisfied. If we feel there’s nothing we can do to improve our situation, this dissatisfaction turns into frustration.
When we compare ourselves with people less well off than we are, we engage in a top-down social comparison, looking down on others, which generates a sense of satisfaction (or even complacency), but also tends to reduce our motivation to put in more effort.
In all cases, social comparisons tend to generate negative effects most of the time (the exception is friendly competition with colleagues of the same level, where comparing each other can motivate the whole group to achieve a goal).
If you find social comparisons dragging you down, here are three more useful things to do instead:
Focusing on your path
A fundamental problem with social comparisons is that they allow other people’s lives to cannibalize your own! After all, what makes an upward social comparison frustrating is that someone else has achieved something you haven’t!
It’s helpful to think about what makes you happy and satisfied, both personally and professionally.
Make a list of the essential things you’d like to do or achieve. (the 99 tips) Striving to live a life that is authentic to your personal aspirations and ambitions is invaluable.
Focusing on the achievements of others can make you dissatisfied with the daily activities you used to enjoy. You used to enjoy writing articles, but now you find that others do it better than you, and you’ve lost your taste for writing. Knowing that someone else has achieved a certain level of success can take away the pleasure of what you used to enjoy doing.
A second problem is that other people’s accomplishments, while they may seem wonderful, may not be the things that make you happy.
Appreciate other people’s successes
When you catch yourself looking enviously at someone else’s achievements, try to reframe your own reaction. By staying focused on your own goals, you’ll set the course for your life, choosing your own adventure.
Envy is the emotion you feel when someone else has or does something you’d like to have or do. If a colleague gets a promotion or an award you’ve been coveting, it’s natural to feel a twinge of envy. Instead, consider sending a note of congratulations and enjoying his or her success. Change your mental perspective and keep your power.
There are many reasons to strive to be happy for others, even if it seems difficult or hypocritical.
- Every opportunity is a good one to be inspired rather than jealous of others. As an adult, you now have the resources to do just that. You can learn, you can grow, because nothing about you is broken! So observing others can help.
- Look at that “resentment” that’s awakening in you, listen to the words you use to describe the other person’s success… It’s probably your reactive reptilian-limbic system that’s in control of your mind. Change your point of view. And talk to yourself. The morning pages are great for that.
- Don’t mix your path with that of others, your progress with the achievements of others. Benevolence and compassion above all, but without complacency either!
Focus on gratitude
One of the reasons why social comparison is so common is that we are by nature social creatures. We naturally focus on what others are doing. It’s hard to simply ignore the actions of others – especially those of people doing things similar to our own.
It’s likely that you find it hard to ignore others. I therefore invite you to change the nature of your feelings towards the other people in your world.
A great way to do this is to make a gratitude list (a daily gratitude ritual). It’s helpful to focus on gratitude, because much of what you’re grateful for is about the people around you, those who have looked after you, mentored you and encouraged your work. Gratitude is therefore a powerful antidote to negative social comparisons. It reminds you that there are many people around you who contribute to your success.
Overcoming physical comparison
Here’s another very feminine trap. Without judging or criticizing yourself, take some time to observe your relationship with your physical appearance and your body.
The way you feel physically is reflected in the way you relate to yourself and to others. Most beliefs about your physical appearance are unconscious. Bringing them to the surface will help you understand your current beliefs and create new ones.
As you go through these questions, remember to be kind and compassionate to yourself. You’re not judging yourself, let alone making yourself feel guilty. Your aim is to remain objective about what’s going on unconsciously, to become aware of it and to show your curiosity about it. (the 3rd eye)
This exercise echoes the work you can do with your Lover, the archetype who is in love with you as you are.
Answering questions
- How do I talk to myself about my body?
- How do I talk to my friends about my body?
- Do I often compare myself to other people on a physical level?
- How do I talk about other people’s physical appearance?
There’s a saying in French that “comparaison n’est pas raison”. I hope I’ve convinced you. What are you going to do now?
