I’m going to be discussing about how to avoid comparing yourself with others making yourself feel rubbish. If you are someone who is constantly getting sucked into the world of comparing yourself to other people and making yourself feel bad about it. Firstly, let me say that making comparisons isn’t always a bad thing and there are times where we should and shouldn’t do it. Let’s also note that making comparisons might not always be to make yourself feel bad, sometimes we compare ourselves to others to make ourselves feel smug “Look at how great I am”. 

One of the most popular ways these days to do this is using social media where you can look at the lives of other people and see what’s going on and see how much better they are than you. However, the truth is you don’t really know what’s going on behind that instagram picture, do you? There’s probably an awful lot more to it. 

Remember sometimes it can look really good on the outside by looking at somebody’s instagram post, facebook feed, twitter comment or whatever else it might be! it can appear as if they have got the world by the tail but actually they maybe in a very deep dark place on the inside world, inside of their head and providing you are not in that deep dark place, inside of your head then there is literally no way in which you can make a comparison between your life and theirs because you are simply comparing what you can see on the outside of them with what’s going on in the inside of you.

What’s going on for them on the outside may look significantly better than what’s going on for them on the inside and equally what’s going on for you on the outside maybe doesn’t look quite as polished and shiny. If you are a good person with good strong values and you’re a decent human being then really that’s the most important thing. 

In addition, we want to be aware of who might trigger us into making these sorts of comparisons and sometimes that someone that you know very well. In fact, you may have a sibling or a friend who is particularly braggy, you know, a showy off type, who’s like “yeah, I have the perfect life. I’m just so fortunate I get everything I want in life. I have so much money”. If you have a friend like that, that is, super annoying it might be time to either have a quiet word in their ear or to start keeping your distance because ultimately the friendships and relationships we have should be bringing us joy not pain and discomfort. If they’re doing that for you, it might be time for you to move on from the relationship. 

There may be other triggers for you too perhaps certain places that you might go shopping where you can never afford to buy the stuff that you see or certain websites that you go to where you look at what’s available and realize you actually can’t afford it, avoid doing those things if they make you feel bad. Don’t do that anymore but crucially remember and this is such a cliche but it’s also so true ‘money doesn’t buy you happiness’. It really doesn’t! 

I mean it makes life significantly easier and maybe it is easier to be happy if you have a jet ski but the point is there are plenty of incredibly wealthy people who have terrible mental health issues and are in a terrible state of wellbeing because actually they didn’t get the important things right.

The most important stuff is what goes on in that inside world, not all of that materialistic stuff that exists outside of you. Be grateful for what you have got and you have got something even if all you have is hope even if all you have is potential, you’ve still got something so put your focus onto being grateful for the good stuff that you’ve got and finally improve the things that you are not yet satisfied with if you have the potential to improve then actually it kind of doesn’t matter if other people are better than you because you can go ahead and start working on yourself and changing and improving yourself in a way that not just works really well for you.

The most important thing is that you focus on your own happiness and if there are ways in which you would like to improve yourself then at that stage you can be using comparisons as a good way to motivate yourself to become even better than you already are so those are my tips around how we can not just stop comparing ourselves to others but actually to begin using those comparisons in a way that’s going to be quite helpful for us.

By Gemma Bailey
www.childtherapisthertfordshire.nlp4kids.org