No Box Thinking ® with Dinah Liversidge

Compare yourself to others and you feed your self doubt

May 19, 2020 Dinah Liversidge
No Box Thinking ® with Dinah Liversidge
Compare yourself to others and you feed your self doubt
Show Notes Transcript

When you compare your own reality with the 'reality' that you see in your timelines on social media, or in the video calls we're all having, you're simply feeding your own sense of not being enough.

Speaker 1:

Compare and you feed yourself doubt by diner , liversidge , it feels like an inevitable part of living in the developed world in this century, comparing ourselves to others in almost every aspect of our lives, whether it's our looks, our age, our accent, or even what we wear, we are constantly encouraged both openly and in less obvious and sometimes less ethical. Ways to find faults in ourselves that don't exist in the perfect human we should all aspire to be. Well , I'm calling time on this bs that's a polite way of saying, by the way. Um , making it my mission to fight back against the feeding of self-doubt that is just as we all suspected really about someone else making money. Comparison with, with others starts early in our lives and often before we're even born. You only have to skim through your social media feeds to find images of expectant mothers comparing this pregnancy to their last or to those of their peers. Soon enough. Many are convinced by these comparisons that they are to something or should be feeling or doing something other than the things they are. And throughout our childhood, we are measured and compared for our development using scales and tables and instruments, each accompanied by a set of comparisons that prove you fit into a certain box. And should you e ever then change from that box to another. Well perish the thought from prenatal to postmortem. We are compared at every stage and unless we are very lucky, the comparisons have negative messages at least part of the time. I found a wonderful quote on pin Pinterest recently, and despite my best efforts, I'm unable to attribute it to a , an original author. The grass only looks greener on the other side because it's being fertilized by. This is the core of the issue for me. When you compare yourself to another person, you're not actually comparing yourself to a real person. You are seeing only what that person chooses to share or portray in public. Do you actually think Everything you see on social media is real and perfect. It is easy to

Speaker 2:

Believe. The person sharing posts about confidence wakes up every day feeling on top of the world. It's hard to imagine the successful writer sitting at their desk for hours on end, questioning whether they have anything left worth right about far easier to believe that everyone else has their together and you are the only one who isn't achieving your potential. Next time you find yourself comparing yourself to another stop and ask, what's going on here? Really? Are you looking for attention and sympathy because someone else put in the hard work and got the results? Or are you in fact feeling frustrated because you are not being real about the situation? How many years has this person worked to be the overnight success you are comparing yourself to? Either way, give yourself a pep talk and get real about this. You are staying stuck with these kind of comparisons, and that means you are staying small. We've all heard the expression about only comparing yourself with the person you were yesterday clever and thought provoking, but in the current world, very hard to achieve. I'd look at this in a different way, and next time you find yourself comparing yourself to someone, ask yourself a couple of questions. Number one, am I comparing myself to someone I admire? If so, what can I learn from their success? If not, see that as self sabotage and shut it down. No, really play loud music or read something aloud if you have to. Just shut down the pattern. Secondly, am I going to take action as a result of this comparison or just keep repeating the negative messages I gave myself the last time I did this? <laugh> , always give yourself the chance to make this the time, the time you take action. And thirdly, am I feeding this with my own BS ow I know, but we all do it. We compare ourselves to someone who we hold in very high regard, perhaps even put them on a pedestal, and then find all the things we are less than they are. And in our truthful moments, if we stopped building them up in our head, we could acknowledge our own growth or achievement as being equal to theirs.

Speaker 3:

In our society where we are bombarded with messages about not being complete or enough or somehow worthy of being held up for others as a comparison, we have to learn to shut out a lot of noise that does not serve us. My husband commented this morning how much more positive I am. Since I got rid of the full length mirrors all around the house, I realized that all they served as for me was a way to constantly compare my reflection with the one I had in my head. And as any 51-year-old. Now as I read this back, 52-year-old will tell you I'm still expecting to see a 30 5-year-old looking back at me. By removing the daily comparison, I change my focus and now feel much closer to my shoe size than my age. I wonder what you regularly compare with others or your younger self that you'd benefit from leaving behind.