Breaking the Habit of Comparing Yourself to Others
If you took the strengths of others, and compared them to your weaknesses, how do you think you’d size up? And do you think this would make you feel good? The funny thing is, this is something most of us do— and some of us do pretty often.
Comparing yourself to others will likely create a drop in self-confidence and cause unhappiness. It’s also not that useful. Instead of comparing yourself to others, if you make it a practice to look at your strengths often, you will see that you have a lot to offer and a lot to be happy about.
Being able to look at your own strengths and see your true value is so important to your self-confidence. It’s one of the keys to success, because without this ability, it can be a vicious cycle of comparing your weaknesses to others successes and never feeling valued or worthwhile.
Here are a few tips to help free yourself from the trap of comparison:
Focus on your strengths. Instead of looking at your weaknesses, ask yourself what your strengths are. Celebrate them! Be proud of them and work on using them to your best advantage.
Be good to others. When you're being your best self, you may be less prone to compare yourself to others or focus on the things that you lack. Helping others (altruism), especially those less fortunate than you, can provide a great perspective on how blessed you truly are in life.
Consider what you have. Count what you have, not what you don’t. Think about how lucky you are to have what you have, to have the people in your life who care about you, to be alive at all. Consider keeping an ongoing gratitude journal to help you focus on your own life and not the lives of others.
Focus on the journey. Don’t focus on how you rank in comparison to others — life is not a competition. It’s a journey. We are all on a journey, to find something, to become something, to learn, or to create. That journey has nothing to do with how well other people are doing, or what they have. It has everything to do with what we want to do, and where we want to go. That’s all you need to worry about.
Seek positive support. As you remove the negative people in your life, it's also important to cultivate a social circle of people who support and motivate you to be your best self, and who remind you of the good in you.
Don’t knock others down. Sometimes we try to criticize others just to make ourselves look or feel better. Taking someone else down for your benefit is destructive. It forms an enemy when you could be forming a friend. In the end, that hurts you as well. Instead, try to support others in their success — that will lead to more success on your part.
Today you are you! That is truer than true! There is no one alive who is you-er than you – Dr. Seuss
At some point everyone will experience struggles with self-confidence. But if your self-confidence struggles interfere with your work, social life, or education, you should consider seeking help from a mental health professional. Sometimes, low self-confidence stems from a bigger issue, like a traumatic event from the past. At other times, it might be a symptom of a mental health challenge.
If you or a loved one are struggling with self-confidence, LifeWays is here 24/7. The first step is to call our Access/Crisis Phoneline at 1 (800) 284-8288.
Hope and help begin at LifeWays.
For related self-confidence boosting articles, see our Boost Your Self-Confidence post.
Source: Verywell mind Amy Morin, LCSW 5 Ways to Build Your Self-Confidence. 01-11-2021