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Hey Everyone!
How to stop comparing yourself
with other people
It’s totally normal to use happy,successful people as a benchmark, but
here’s how to keep it from eating you up.Maybe it starts with a LinkedIn notification that your professional nemesis got a big promotion. Or, perhaps you heard through the
grapevine that a former colleague landed your dream job. Suddenly, you’re a wash in negative emotions like envy,anger, or frustration.
How to stop comparing yourself
with other people
It’s totally normal to use happy,successful people as a benchmark, but
here’s how to keep it from eating you up.Maybe it starts with a LinkedIn notification that your professional nemesis got a big promotion. Or, perhaps you heard through the
grapevine that a former colleague landed your dream job. Suddenly, you’re a wash in negative emotions like envy,anger, or frustration.
“Comparison
is adaptive and has helped us survive, think, feel, judge, and cooperate. But,
like many adaptive psychological mechanisms, there can be a downside,” says Matthew Baldwin,
PhD, of the Social Cognition Center at the University of Cologne in
Germany. It opens the door for jealousy and, in extreme cases, could even lead
to negative actions like sabotaging someone else’s success.
The always-connected world of social media doesn’t help. A November 2018 University of Pennsylvania study found that frequent use of Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat led to greater feelings of depression and loneliness. The researchers found that the carefully curated images can make others feel as though they’re not doing as well or that someone else’s life is so much better than theirs.
How To Stop Comparing Yourself With People
PAY ATTENTION TO YOUR FEELINGS
Those feelings may be an indication that there’s a bigger issue, says Natalie Pennington, PhD, assistant professor of communication studies at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. And it’s often related to your relationships and satisfaction with life, in general. “It’s not that the tech makes you depressed, it’s that you already are probably struggling with your relationships and so the tech just makes it worse,” she says.
Cognitive biases also creep into our tendency to compare ourselves to others, online and offline, says Preston Ni, professor of communication studies at Foothill College in Los Altos Hills, California, and author of How to Let Go of Negative Thoughts and Emotions–A Practical Guide. Recency bias, the tendency to remember events that happened more recently, and social comparison bias, where we feel competitive with someone who seems to be doing better than we are, can powerfully distort our interpretations. “We don’t know the whole story. We only know what we see, and what we see is completely biased,” he says.
In addition, our attention is often captivated by
people who are doing or achieving remarkable things. But, you don’t know the
story behind how they reached their achievement,says Toronto-based
organizational psychologist and management consultant Michael Vodianoi. And, sometimes, our tendency
to take a pessimistic view–possibly because of negativity bias–may extrapolate
someone else’s success into something far worse,
he says.
“A
‘catastrophizer’ or a pessimist might take that and start to globalize it, or
blow it up, and say, ‘You know, nobody’s gonna find me. I’m never gonna get a
promotion. I’m not good enough,'” he says.
TURN COMPARISON INTO A COMPETITIVE EDGE
When used in a healthy way, comparison can be a motivational tool, Baldwin says. If you feel like someone is smarter than you and it motivates you to study for a test, that’s a good thing. The challenge is to keep the negative feelings at bay. Here are steps that can help.
Spend some time with your values.
Compare apples to apples.
Go after the goal.
Build relationships.
There is only one you
Comparing,Happiness,Relationships,Charm,Work,Popularity,Mirrors,
Psychology,Self,Impressions,Behavior,Paradoxes,Human,optimize
Getting distracted by others’ accomplishments may be
a sign that you need to check in with what’s important to
you, Ni says. “Ultimately, if you have a strong set of internal best
practices or internal values and you are good at what you do, you’re dedicated
with your career, you have a good strong likelihood of feeling good about your
professional performance no matter what, and it doesn’t matter whether or not
somebody gets promoted or demoted. You know who you are,” he says. So, think
about what really matters to you.
Acknowledge what’s
working.
Take inventory of what’s going well in
your life, Ni says. Where are you crushing it? What positive accomplishments
have you enjoyed lately? Recognize them, even if they’re small.
Look closer at the person or situation, Vodianoi
says. Are you really comparing apples to apples? Did the person have
connections you didn’t have? Did they have special training or advantages?
Examine the evidence you have about what led to another person’s
achievement–and acknowledge what you don’t know. The unknown can play a big
role in what happened.
If someone is achieving at a level you want to
reach, use them as a model. Study what they’re doing to rack up those
accomplishments and integrate those activities into your routine. Discuss the
issue with your mentor, manager, or other trusted adviser to explore how you
can get there, too.
The most important thing
you can do, both professionally and personally, is to focus on building a
strong sense of purpose in your life, as well as relationships and interests
that give you satisfaction. Pennington says that failing to invest in these
elements of a balanced life can lead to giving outsize meaning or importance to
others’ good news. Instead, you’ll have many areas of strength and satisfaction from
which to draw, leaving you better able to keep the situation in perspective.
This
might sound cheesy, but there is one you. You’re utterly unique, and so are
your experiences, your world review.That makes you valuable, and pretty awesome. Be the best
version of yourself you can be, because no matter how hard you try, you can’t
be anyone else. There is always going to be someone taller, smarter, thinner,
or richer than you. Trying to get to the top of that is a losing game, and
physically impossible.
If you let it.
In order to succeed, you have to be the best you. Oscar Wilde was right: “Everyone else is already taken.”
Hope you enjoyed reading this;)
“What Do You Think?Do you agree or Disagree or Have any other ideas?Please Share your thoughts in the comments below as I learn just as much from you as you do from me!”
Bye for Know,
Sameer
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