Stop Comparing Yourself to Others

It’s tough not to compare yourself with others, given the preoccupation we have with perfection in modern life. If we start examining our achievements and accomplishments, then we can raise the bar even further. It is natural to compare yourself to others, and even envy them. But when you become obsessed with your deficiencies, rather than the areas in which you excel, you are focused on the wrong thing. This can be debilitating, and it can even prevent you from taking part in many aspects of your life. Constant comparison with others tends to lower your self-esteem and make you feel bad about yourself. Resist the urge to compare yourself with others by becoming aware of how you view yourself. Set goals for yourself that will build your confidence, and relearn behaviors that will improve your opinion of yourself.

Steps

Finding the Source of Your Comparative Behavior

  1. Pay attention to how you view yourself. The first step in the process of changing how you view yourself is to become aware of your thoughts about yourself. Without this awareness, you may not be able to realize the underlying problem. After having made the decision to carryout a rather difficult task of breaking the pattern, it helps to have someone to support you go through this; however, once you are consciously aware of a behavior that you’re looking to change, it becomes easier to break it down into attainable goals.
  2. Assess your self-esteem. Self-esteem can be described as your positive or negative evaluations about yourself. We all have good and bad days, and how we feel about ourselves often changes daily to reflect events. Self-esteem can also be thought of as a stable personality trait that develops over your lifetime.[1]
    • Do you have a pretty good opinion about yourself? Do you allow others to control the way you feel about yourself? If you find yourself looking to others to determine your self-esteem, this is a sign that you could work on your happiness.
  3. Identify your comparative behaviors. Comparative behavior happens when you compare yourself with other people, whether they are in superior or inferior positions to you. Usually, you compare positive or negative characteristics with your own. Sometimes, social comparisons can be helpful, but negative comparative behaviors can damage your own self-esteem.[1]
    • An example of positive behavior is when you compare yourself to someone with qualities you admire. Rather than just envy this person for his good quality (he is a caring person, for example), you strive to make yourself more caring.
    • An example of negative behavior is when you compare yourself with someone who has something you want. For example, you are jealous of this person’s new car.
  4. Write down comparative thoughts or feelings. Write down the attitudes that are a direct result of comparing yourself to someone else. If you can, write it down immediately after having the thought or recalling the memory. This way, it's fresh in your mind, and you're more likely to be descriptive.
    • Think about how this comparison made you feel. Write down all the thoughts and feelings that come to mind. For example, you feel depressed because you are jealous of someone’s new car, and you still drive a 20-year-old car.[2]
  5. Try to locate how your comparative behavior began. Attempt to write about a time in your life when you can remember not comparing yourself to others and begin journaling from there. Eventually, you may remember where your comparative thoughts originated.
    • For example, you may think back to your childhood before you started comparing yourself to a sibling. You may then realize that you began comparing yourself to a sibling because you felt neglected. You can now start exploring the cause of your comparative behavior.
    • One of the hardest things about comparative behavior is realizing that it's having a negative impact on you. By tracking and acknowledging the way comparing yourself makes you feel, you'll be more likely to change the negative behavior.

Appreciating What You Have

  1. Focus on what you have. Once you realize that comparing yourself to others doesn’t work in your favor, you’ll look for additional measures of your success. If you start to feel and express gratitude for the gifts that you do have, you will shift your focus from others to yourself.
    • Spend more of your time focusing on the positive and good in your life. You may find that you start noticing more of it when you're not busy comparing yourself to others.
  2. Keep a gratitude journal. A gratitude journal is a way to remind yourself of what you have. This will help you look at things that you may have taken for granted. Then, you can give appreciation to them. Think about several of your best memories. They can be things you did, places you went, friends, you spent time with, whatever makes you most happy. Focus on being grateful for those things.[3]
    • By keeping a gratitude journal you can increase your chances of success. However, just going through the motions without motivation will work against you.[4] You need to force yourself to look at things you may have taken for granted and give appreciation to them. Make the decision to acknowledge the depth of your gratitude and enhance your life.
    • Write in depth. Instead of just making a laundry list of things, give a thorough explanation of a few things that make you feel grateful.
    • Write about surprises or unexpected events. This will give you a chance to savor the good feelings that you experienced.
    • You don’t need to write every day. In fact, writing a couple of times a week might be more beneficial than writing every day.
  3. Be kind to yourself. By being kinder and less harsh with yourself, you will encourage yourself to go the extra mile and to try harder.
  4. Understand that you are in control of your life. It is tough to resist comparing yourself to others. But you are ultimately in control of your life. You make choices to lead your life in a particular way. You make decisions that are best for you, not for anybody else.[5]
    • It doesn’t matter what other people do or have. You are the one that matters in the course of your life.

Removing or Replacing Comparative Thoughts

  1. Understand the process of changing your behaviors and thoughts. The Transtheoretical Model of change [6] says that we go through stages leading up to our awareness of a situation. The individual goes through a process that finally ends by accepting the new behavior. These stages include:
    • Pre-contemplation: During this stage, the individual is not ready to change. Often, this is due to being uninformed or under-informed on the issue at hand.
    • Contemplation: This stage involves considering making a change. The individual begins to weigh the positive angles of change, although he is aware of the negative sides of changing.
    • Preparation: During this stage, the individual has made a decision to change, and has started making plans to institute the change.
    • Action: During this stage, the person is making efforts to change the behavior. This may involve a reduction in certain activities, or an increase in other activities, for example.
    • Maintenance: This stage involves maintaining a level of activity to ensure that the behavior has changed and remains changed.
    • Termination: During this stage, the behavior has changed so that the individual does not experience relapse, even under stress, depression, anxiety or other emotional states.
  2. Realize that idealizing someone is unrealistic. We only focus on certain aspects of the person we idealize, and they become a grandiose fantasy that we create. We choose only to look at those features we idealize while we reject other characteristics that were not appealing to us.
  3. Replace negative thoughts with positive ones. When you compare yourself with others, you may view yourself negatively. If you have negative thoughts about yourself, tell yourself to change those thoughts into something about yourself that you are proud of.
    • For example, if you know someone else who can write well, instead of envying her talents, think about your talents. Tell yourself, “I may not be the best writer, but I can draw very well. Besides, if I want to improve in writing, I can work towards this goal for myself instead of envying others for their talent."

Achieving Your Goals

  1. State your goal. Achieving your goals will help you establish your life and set of experiences separate from others’ expectations. Begin by stating your goal.
    • If you want to run a marathon, state this as your goal. You can assess where you’re at (for example, get a sense of how much distance you can run before any training begins).
  2. Mark your progress. When you set a goal for yourself, track your progress so that you can see how you are moving toward that goal. This will help you focus on yourself and not on other people.
    • Go at your pace. Take your unique situation into account when you track your progress. For example, if you are taking longer to get a graduate degree than some of your friends, you can think about how you are also working full-time, or you are raising a family, or you are caring for your elderly parents. Everyone faces a unique situation that enables or restricts progress. Think about your circumstances as you track your progress.
    • If you are training for a marathon, you can track how much improvement you see every week. Run for a longer distance each week until you hit the 26-mile mark. At the same time you are gaining distance, you are also increasing your speed. By charting your progress, you can see how far you’ve come and how much further you have to go.
  3. Work on improving your abilities. If you see areas that you would like to improve, take classes, workshops or lessons to hone your skills and techniques. This will add to your self-confidence and help you find your place and value.
    • It's important to recognize that perfection is an unproductive thought pattern where one holds an unrealistic ideal as a standard of achievement. Recognize that everyone's circumstances are entirely unique. You can work on improving your abilities to make yourself happy.
  4. Compete against yourself. Many high achieving athletes and actors have said that they compete against themselves. They constantly try to improve their own personal best. That is a good way to elevate your esteem as you see yourself reaching higher and higher goals. When an athlete aims to be the best in his sport, he may be encouraged to set goals for himself and push himself to run faster and sharpen his skills.[7]
  5. Judge you by your standards. When you learn to use your standards to assess yourself, you will stop comparing yourself to others. This practice takes away the competition you may be feeling because other people’s expectations are not yours. If you acknowledge your ability to create the life you desire for yourself, you have control over the outcome. Judge yourself by your standards, and not by anyone else’s standards.
  6. Appreciate others instead of envying them. Consider the advantage that others can bring you. If you have friends who are highly achieving people, you might consider that their networks are full of people who might be able to help you become more successful in your life. Instead of envying their success, use their success to your advantage.
    • For example, you might look at pictures of athletes to admire their fitness. Instead of feeling inferior and jealous, you can use these as motivation to make changes in your life. You might decide to change your eating habits and get more exercise. Then, you are using the pictures productively instead of negatively.
  7. Take occasional risks. Once you learn to judge yourself by your standards, you will feel freer to start with small, incremental risks. These risks will enable you to raise the bar even higher for yourself. Often what prevents people from reaching their personal best is that they’re afraid to take risks. They become bound up in fears that keep them from achieving beyond others’ expectations.
    • Start with small steps. This will help build your self-confidence in your abilities.
  8. Build your support network. When you surround yourself with supportive people, you will find that you improve your perception of yourself.
  9. Be your coach. Good coaching comes in many forms. There are those coaches who scream and humiliate their players. There are those who insist on excellence, push their athletes to run faster, jump higher, or swim more laps, but follow up with love and support. The coach who teaches with love is the one that will help produce the most balanced overall human being.
    • Think of yourself as your coach, pushing you toward excellence. Give love and appreciation for your efforts. Then you will reach goals that you set for yourself by raising your esteem, instead of destroying it.

Using Media Responsibly

  1. Decrease your exposure to media and social media outlets. If you find that idealistic representations in the media are having a negative effect on your self-esteem, it may be a good idea to decrease your exposure to media and social media outlets. Limit your time spent on social media websites, or eliminate it altogether. Delete or disable your social media pages.
    • If you don’t want to completely disable or delete your Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram account, then limit the time you spend each day, or each week, checking up on your accounts. For example, keep it to 10 minutes a day or 30 minutes a week, but use caution since even small amounts of exposure can lead to negative comparative thinking.[8]
  2. Avoid media that show ideal images. Limit your exposure by avoiding fashion magazines, reality television shows, certain movies, and music, etc. If you found yourself frequently comparing you to a certain model or athlete, avoid magazines, shows, or games that feature them.
    • Even temporary exposure to media depicting ideal images has been shown to impact self-esteem and self-image negatively.[8] This can even put you at risk for rumination and depression symptoms.[9]
  3. Start thinking realistically. Idealistic images in the media cannot always be avoided, so be aware if you're comparing yourself to them. Think about the realities of those seemingly perfect people or things.
    • For example, if you envy the perfect relationship that a friend has with her spouse, remember how difficult it was for her to find that partner and the challenges she may have faced. Empathy will replace jealousy.
    • If you see someone with the body, car, or life you want, try to think of actions you can take to get yourself closer to these goals and write them down.
  4. Use social media in a positive way. Find ways to use them that will enrich your life. Follow educational, informative, or inspirational pages. If you want success, follow entrepreneurial accounts. If you want to achieve a better physical condition, follow fitness and healthy eating pages. If you want to improve your mind and personality, try following brain and psychology-related accounts.

Tips

Warnings

  • Don't allow other people to compare you with others, either.
  • Avoid becoming too stressed or anxious, since this can negatively affect your self-esteem.

Related Articles

Sources and Citations

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 Vogel, E., Rose, J., Roberts, L., & Eckles, K. (2014). Social comparison, social media, and self-esteem. Psychology of Popular Media Culture, 3(4), 206-222.
  2. ↑ http://journaltherapy.com/journaltherapy/journal-cafe-3/journal-course
  3. ↑ http://www.oprah.com/spirit/Martha-Beck-Whos-on-Top
  4. ↑ http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/tips_for_keeping_a_gratitude_journal
  5. ↑ http://jamesclear.com/quality-comparison
  6. ↑ http://www.prochange.com/transtheoretical-model-of-behavior-change
  7. ↑ https://www.sportpsych.org/nine-mental-skills-overview
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 Turner, S., Hamilton, H., Jacobs, M., Angood, L., & Hovde Dwyer, D. (1997). The influence of fashion magazines on the body image satisfaction of college women: An exploratory analysis. Adolescence, 32(127), 603-614.
  9. ↑ Feinstein, B., Hershenberg, R., Bhatia, V., Latack, J., Meuwly, N., & Davila, J. (2013). Negative social comparison on Facebook and depressive symptoms: Rumination as a mechanism. Psychology of Popular Media Culture, 2(3), 161-170.

 

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