COMPARING TO OTHERS

One destructive habit is to constantly compare your life and yourself to other people and their lives. You compare cars, houses, jobs, shoes, money, relationships, social popularity and so on. And at the end of the day you create a lot of negative feelings within. And perhaps also outside of yourself.

1. Be Kind

Judge people more and you tend to judge yourself more.  Be more kind to other people and help them and you tend to be more kind and helpful to yourself.  The more you love other people, the more your love yourself.

2. Don’t fall into the trap of hero worship

When you start to make myths out of people - even though they may have produced extraordinary results - you run the risk of becoming disconnected from them. You can start to feel like you could never achieve similar things that they did because they are so very different. So it's important to keep in mind that everyone is just a human being no matter who they are.  Openness is in the long run more fun than being judgmental.

3. Just realize that you can't win

Just consciously realizing this can be helpful. No matter what you do you can pretty much always find someone else in the world that has more than you or are better than you at something. Yes, you may feel good for a while when you get a nicer car than you neighbor. But a week or two later you'll see someone from the next block with an even finer car than yours.

4. Give up both sides of comparing

If you can't stop doing the negative comparisons then stop doing them both. Because if you're in the head space where you compare to feel better about yourself then it's hard to stop it and not also start to compare in way that make you feel worse and inferior. So you may need to step out of that whole comparing habit because the two sides are often connected. Give up the upside to be able to move away from the downside.

5. Compare yourself to yourself.

Instead of comparing yourself to other people create the habit of comparing yourself to yourself. See how much you have grown, what you have achieved and what progress you have made towards your goals.

This habit has the benefit of creating gratitude, appreciation and kindness towards yourself as you observe how far you have come, the obstacles you have overcome and the good stuff you have done. You feel good about yourself without having to think less of other people.