If You Want to Win at Life, Stop Comparing Yourself to Others All the Time
Do you compare yourself to others more times in a week than you’d care to mention? Just go ahead and nod, otherwise you wouldn’t be here. It’s cool, I do it sometimes too. Yesterday we chatted about imposter syndrome which is one of comparisons besties. No one is exempt from the comparison game, we all do it, a lot of times its a motivational tool when you see someone doing something you want to be doing and instead of feeling bad about you’re like “how can i do this too?” but when you start letting the comparison game just stop your flow completely, um Houston we have a problem.
Why We Compare
Why do we compare ourselves so much of the time to other people, other life journeys. Why do you even use instagram if every time you open it, you feel like you failed at life. Like you’re scrolling through instagram and you see somebody experiencing something you wish you could and you really start believing out of the billions of people in the world, only that one person can have a lock on that one thing, and because they’re doing it, now you for sure can’t….craziness
We compare ourselves to others in a negative way when we’re feeling inadequate, point blank. I refuse to sugar coat that for you. It is what it is. And while it is a possibility this could be warranted, 9 out of 10 it’s not.
There was a time when we couldn’t see everything everyone was doing or appeared to be doing, and so we didn’t have as many opportunities to compare ourselves to our peers the way we do now. Like a few years ago it was like what you were doing and then what…… Beyonce was doing. Like you couldn’t really compare yourself to too many people in your same circle.
But now we’re able to see what our friends are doing, what our family is doing, what that kid that you went to high school with is doing, what people your age are doing, what people younger than you are doing and it leaves a lot more room to feel a type of way.
But when we are comparing what we know to be true about ourselves to a curated, story of what someone else is telling us, what are we really doing?
You know how documentaries are generally one-sided and just kind of have that vibe about them like “this is the truth”. Well, social media has that same effect.
When it comes to information or social media content that we process on a day-to-day basis, the truth is: we only know about people what they choose to tell us. So to be scrolling through a feed of mini documentaries essentially, and then comparing your real life, good and bad, to another person’s best moments is kind of crazy.
You have to stop assuming that people don’t go through bullshit the way that you do, and instead assume that they just don’t tell everybody about it, the same way you don’t.
If you want to stop feeling that urge to compare yourself to somebody you’ve placed up here for whatever reason, here are my suggestions:
Follow Along With Relatable People
Start following social media accounts run by people who aren’t trying to be picture perfect. Follow accounts that have less than perfect images, or sometimes misspell words (if it doesn’t drive you too crazy), or that talk about their struggles in business and life as well as their triumphs. Level your own mental playing field by following people that you can relate to, so that you don’t find yourself comparing your bad to someone’s good, but rather you have people that you can empathize with, people you can support, people you can celebrate, as you follow along with their journey.
Remove Triggers from Your View
If you start tumbling down the comparison rabbit hole, log the fuck off! And if you just can’t log off maybe because you run a business and you need to stay active, at least stop following along with social media accounts or people in general that you know are a trigger for you until you feel better. When you are insecure about where you are in your life, seeing some people win can be triggering, it’s ok to admit that y’all. But with that being said, people can’t walk around dimming their light so that other people can feel better. It’s not somebody else’s responsibility to stop showing you their travels, or their accomplishments or the things that make them proud. So if you get triggered every time a Kardashian makes a new product that sells out in a day or births a perfectly ambiguous baby that has a face you want to bite off, then stop keeping up them. Log off, unfollow, unsubscribe, throw away the book, whatever you have to do, remove triggers yes, but also don’t forget to work on why you’re being triggered in the first place.
Practice Gratitude Daily
Stop focusing so much on what’s missing in your life and start being grateful for what you got. You are the only person that knows where you truly are in life and that goes for everybody, you are most likely comparing your chapter 3 to someone else’s chapter 30. You could be a mom who really loves that woman’s wardrobe and be like if i didn’t have kids i could afford that, meanwhile that woman with the wardrobe could have trouble having kids and she wants kids more than any pair of shoes in her closet. Any of us, including the people you admire the most, can easily point out something that someone else has that they wish they had.
If you see someone else winning, send them love, send them support, send them a freaking high five emoji, because guaranteed for every awesome thing someone posts about, they've had at least 10 not so awesome things happen to them within the past week that they’re trying to forget.
We need more grace, more good vibes, less comparing ourselves to somebody who lives in….freaking….New Zealand, like…... Shout out to New Zealand though, I hear it’s lovely.
Kelley Raye | Branding Photographer + Creative Business Coach | Atlanta - Los Angeles