I had a real wake-up call the other day.
A friend of mine wrote to me and said she hoped I didn’t think poorly of her because she had a meager bank account.
That really resonated with me, because I used to do the same thing; I compared myself with others. I struggled financially, and it made me feel bad about myself. I wondered if I’d ever be able to get out of the situation I was in.
Today, I want to address those of you who may be feeling the same way as her; comparing yourself to others and ending up feeling lesser.
It’s not that we shouldn’t compare ourselves. Comparing ourselves to others is just human nature, but it can be destructive to our view of ourselves.
I was thinking about this woman making comparisons with me and others, and asked my husband, “Do you ever compare yourself to other people?” and he said, “Yeah, I compare myself to people.”
So I asked him, “How do you feel when you make that comparison?”
He said he didn’t feel anything. Meaning, he doesn’t get emotionally involved in those comparisons.
Comparison isn’t the problem, it’s our perspective and attitude towards it.
This woman was reinforcing negative thoughts about herself and her sense of success, by cherry-picking through people in her life who had more than her financially.
She is also in Costa Rica, which is an environment where there are people with a lot of money. But there are also a lot of people who don’t have much of anything. Instead of looking at everyone around her and comparing herself equally, she chose one person, and decided that she wasn’t good enough.
She stood in judgement of herself, and made herself feel bad.
What I’m trying to say here is that it’s all about your attitude. Just as we’ve talked about in other blog posts, your attitude impacts your feelings about yourself.
You are the judge of yourself and your success, and as such, you have total control over what you do and how you feel. That’s the beauty of this.
So what can you do if you’re in a situation like hers?
Realize that you are totally in control of whether or not you make the comparisons and with whom. Instead of making yourself feel bad, think, “That inspires me to do something different.”
Or you can look at others and realize that they made those choices for themselves, and you’re making choices for yourself, and be perfectly happy.
It’s all up to you how you decide to feel, how you handle comparison, and how you choose to live your life. It’s totally under your control.
In the next post, we’re going to talk about how to really take control of your thought processes. The most important thing that you can do, is understand the power you have to feel whatever way you want to in a situation.
I hope you’ll join me next week,
Lorna Rasmussen
What Did You Think of Do You Compare Yourself To Others?
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