Comparing, Who and How?

How do you compare yourself to others? As we said in last weeks blog post  No Need to Compare, we compare ourselves to friends, online friends, siblings, neighbors, celebrities, workmates, fellow students or anyone, in many different ways. We compare ourselves as fatter, thinner, smarter, funnier, more popular or attractive. This habit of comparing ourselves to others is often a well-established, unconscious pattern.
 
This comparing can involve focusing on others’ upside and our downside or the reverse.  We can compare ourselves and conclude others are more or less popular, attractive, smart, successful or talented than us. Unhelpfully we can lead us to feel either superior or inferior, both of which undermine our confidence and happiness.
 
We are all certainly unique and have different qualities, talents, interests and experiences that help to shape who we are. We have no need to compare our unique qualities with those of others in an effort to feel superior or inferior.  Doing so is detrimental to our happiness and confidence.
 
Have you been thinking about what attributes you have been gifted with and how you can do your best to have fun and share them to benefit others?   
 
Comparing yourself to others in any way is harmful to your self-confidence and won’t make you feel good about yourself.

How do we compare ourselves to others?
We compare ourselves to others by

1. Feeling we are somehow better than them

This tendency to compare ourselves and feel superior only gives us a false short-term hit of feeling good which will quickly become the cause of us feeling bad.  Thinking you are better than someone else will only make you feel good until it starts to feel bad.
Feeling good or finding entertainment in others misfortune is equally unhelpful.  Again this quickly causes us to feel yucky. Enjoying the misfortunes of others is toxic to our self-esteem.  Compassion is the only kind response to any pain. 

1. Feeling we are somehow worse than them

When we compare our qualities or lives to others and find lack we erode our self-confidence.  The truth is we are all different; we are all a unique mixture of positive and not so positive attributes, characteristics and experiences. All our lives are a mixture of positive and negative.  We can only know the positive because of the negative 
When we focus on what is going wrong, our weaknesses or ways we are not as good as others we undermine our confidence.  Instead when we choose to pay attention to what is going right, our unique gifts and strengths and how we can use these to be of benefit to others, our confidence and happiness grows. 
 
Humility and Inferiority
There is a difference between humility and inferiority.  Inferiority is unkind.  It is when we put ourselves down. Humility on the other hand is the absence pride or feeling better than others, however it is not about feeling worse than others.   Humility involves not taking yourself too seriously, being able to laugh warmheartedly when we make mistakes. Being able to laugh at yourself enhances your confidence.  Mocking yourself destroys it.   Inferiority, criticizing, mocking or belittling yourself like pride and will erode your confidence. 

Understand the difference between humility and inferiority.  Pride and inferiority both involve comparing ourselves to others (pride as better and inferiority as worse). Both are unkind and harmful.  Humility is doing your best without comparison. Humility will nurture your self-esteem and inferiority will destroy it.  

Make efforts to do your best to be better for others and not better thanothers - this promotes confidence and happiness for all.  

Next week - Comparing - How Can I Stop?