We often catch ourselves playing the comparison game. Each of us have our own triggers that cause us to fall into the trap of comparing, thus resulting in our confidence taking a nose dive! We all know the gut wrenching feeling that arises when we see or hear something that immediately has us second guessing our appearance, personality, or skill set. The more we scroll through our feeds on social media, the more likely we are to start comparing ourselves to others, sometimes with people we have not even met!
The reason we struggle with insecurity is because we compare our behind-the-scenes with everyone else’s highlight reel.
Steve Furtick
Most of the time we highlight the best versions of ourselves instead of the real versions. Life can be hard, ugly, and downright depressing at times. But those likely aren’t the adjectives most of us would use to describe the photos we post onto our accounts. And then we compare our realities with the incomplete, one-sided reality of our friends and connections on social media. We use the same scale to measure two completely different realities!
So what do we do instead of comparing? Well the easiest would be to reduce your time on things that trigger these comparisons. And focus on things that really matter. For example, if you envy the well-sculpted body of the trainer or model you’ve been following on Insta, make time to focus on starting your exercise routine.
More importantly assess where those negative comparisons are stemming from and figure out how to overcome the same. The next time you make an unfair comparison, instead of allowing it to make you feel poorly about yourself, view it as an opportunity for a little self-evaluating.
Another thing that helps me is to change my mindset from comparing to complimenting. Rather than get into being jealous about something, find something you admire and compliment them. Being genuinely happy for someone else changes your mood entirely and keeps you positive and brightens up not only your day but theirs as well!
And along with complimenting others, make sure you find your awesome! We are all unique, talented and gifted. You have talents, traits, and accomplishments that make you who you are. Find your awesome and you will find that you are less affected by others.
The power of each of our individual uniqueness is that it’s the one thing someone else can’t match – no one can be as good of a version of me than I can be when I set my mind to being my very best self. So, get in touch with what unique gifts you bring to the world, then devote yourself to cultivating the things that light you up and cause you to overflow with energy and love.
Kenrick Vaz 