Why Waste Your Energy with Comparisons
“Always be a first-rate version of yourself, rather than a second-rate version of someone else.” ~ Judy Garland
Let’s face it, at one time or another when you are building your business, you will probably be discouraged, daunted or even just plain tired of the whole thing. Sigh. You may even be feeling that there are people out there who are smarter, more savvy, better, brighter than you. Whether or not that’s true, if that’s where you focus your attention and energy, that’s where you will get stuck.
It’s true that when we are busy comparing ourselves to others, there is not as much time, energy and motivation left for us to create our own thing. Which is what we really want to do. While Facebook, LinkedIn and other social media sites can be a wonderful tool to stay connected to people and promote our businesses, it can also be a place where insecurity, judgments and comparisons flourish.
If we go looking for it, we have plenty of opportunity to see what is missing with us. We see other people with perfect lives, taking the perfect vacations to beautiful, exotic locales, having perfect children, driving perfect cars. Oh, did I mention that they have perfect seven figure businesses and work only a few hours a week, etc…The result of this comparing, evaluating and judging? Even though we try not to, we may feel that pinch of scarcity, lack and less-than. Hello Inner Critic! In other words. no matter how hard we try, human nature can take over. We compare ourselves to these perfect people and something is missing.
On the other side of the comparison coin, it can be equally as immobilizing when we focus on finding flaws and faults with others, rather than focusing on ourselves and our businesses.
My two cents? As humans, we seek to find our place and to find order. Think back to being is school when we were asked to line up short-to-tall. Or youngest to oldest, or whatever else we could measure depending on the lesson and our teacher’s creativity. So while finding our place and order can be natural, when we add our judgment about what that means is when things begin to get muddy and we can get stuck.
When I was in my teens, my mother used to tell me, much to my irritation and chagrin, “Comparisons are odious.” Which was motivating in its way, if only to have me pick up a dictionary and look up the definition of odious, which I found out means “extremely unpleasant, repulsive.” Much as I hated to admit it, she was right. Comparisons are odious.
It doesn’t have to be this way. In fact, for many of us, the feelings of jealousy, envy and “What’s-wrong-with-me-and- why-isn’t-my-life-perfect-itis” or “I’m-better-than-you” are rare occurrences. But, when those feelings do hit, look out! All bets are off, and we can go down a crooked, bumpy road until we can get back on the right track.
What to do when you feel yourself being drawn into this trap?
Notice what you are feeling.
Take a breath and let that feeling settle in.
Notice what you are making this mean to you.
Separate the facts from your judgment of those facts.
Let go of the judgment or uneasiness you may be feeling.
Find a new, more empowering thought to replace it with.
Practice compassion and forgiveness for both yourself and for others.
Take new and inspired action on your new thoughts.
The more you practice, the easier it is to move quickly out of the comparison trap ant truly become the first-rate version of yourself. And guess what? The world is waiting for the unique gifts, talents and wisdom that only you can offer.