If you’ve experienced anxiety, stress, or discontentment regularly, that’s a good indication that you’re not living in alignment with your values. It’s also a good indication that you may not be living your full potential.
As you notice feelings of uneasiness, and it starts to demand more and more of your attention, this is an excellent time to slow down and pay attention.
Nothing will change until we start working on reversing discontentment. Our body, mind, and soul will let us know that we are not moving in the direction of our aspirations.
When we avoid taking action, our minds and body continue to get our attention through pain and discomfort.
When we find our mind compulsively thinking of what we should have done, what we should do next, and why we don’t do things a certain way, we invite chaos into our world.
Then we do the inevitable. We start to compare ourselves to others. And slowly, we begin to take away our joy of living.
You see, comparison is known as the thief of joy, as Theodore Roosevelt famously expressed.
It sneaks in quietly and takes a seat beside our dreams. It distracts us from tapping into our intuition, which is the part of ourselves that holds our holographic library and, more importantly, the solution to all our lives’ ambitions.
How do we cure comparison? Let me show you.
There are two types of Comparison – Downward and Upward
How are you comparing?
Do you tend to continually evaluate yourselves for attractiveness, physique, wealth, intelligence, and success?
According to some studies, as much as 10 percent of our thoughts involve comparisons of some kind.
Social comparison theory is the idea that individuals determine their own social and personal worth based on how they stack up against others.
The theory was developed in 1954 by psychologist Leon Festinger.
With further research, later it was discovered that people who regularly compared themselves to others might find the motivation to improve. Still, most likely, they will experience feelings of deep dissatisfaction, guilt, or remorse that lead to destructive behaviours.
Finding motivation and modelling someone to improve is critical to our growth. But looking at someone else’s life with a feeling of envy, jealousy, or defeat takes us away from where we should be focusing. We usually don’t know what we are comparing ourselves to, as we are looking at a vision of someone else through our filters of how we see the world. With a lot of smoke and mirrors clouding our perception, we rarely get an accurate picture.
Stop Focusing on the Wrong Things
Most people focus on what they don’t have or why they can’t achieve something, for example: “I don’t have enough time”, “I don’t have enough money”, “I’m not smart enough”, or “I don’t have the right skills,” and often ask themselves, who do I think I am to want or have this?
Whatever you focus on expands. If you’re always focusing on why you can’t do something, you can’t think about solutions or plans to achieve something. You’re wasting so much valuable brainpower complaining, feeling pessimistic that you don’t have space for ideas or solutions to come your way.
Don’t Listen to Your Feelings
If you make decisions based solely on you’re emotions, you will be stressed and unhappy. Without being aware of your inner experiences, like your intuition and your current reality, making decisions based on emotions causes an automatic signal to go to your brain. That emotion attaches itself to a similar past decision. Since most of our memories are not accurate and filtered through our current perceptions, those decisions become out of habit and not logic. As we continue to make decisions based on our emotions, we continuously trust ourselves based on our emotional state. Since our feelings can be deceptive because our brain’s goal is to keep us comfortable, we lose the ability to differentiate between our intelligence and emotion.
When we compare ourselves, we automatically invite emotions into our consciousness, debilitating good decision-making. If these emotions are negative and we start to believe them, we are now allowing ourselves to be lead by a false external direction that has nothing to with what we want in life.
Learn the Fine Art of Not Caring What Other People Think
If the person who is giving you unsolicited advice isn’t living or doing what you want to be doing, don’t listen to them.
What others think of you should be none of your business. Not caring what people think of you is the best decision you can make.
When anyone tries to take away your power to make decisions and tries to tell you how and what you should be doing, this is a form of self-avoidance. By focusing on someone else’s life, they are turning away from the issues in their lives. It’s a form of being disconnected and living unconsciously. Don’t let it sink it.
Have a Secret Affair with Self Esteem
How do we maintain healthy self-esteem so we feel more secure and confident?
Self-esteem is the value you give yourself, the confidence and satisfaction you have with yourself. It’s also your self-perception and how you feel about your achievements. Believing in yourself and knowing that you are a loving and capable human being is the key to healthy self-esteem. Self-esteem is not bragging, placing yourself above others, or thinking you are perfect.
Values, Habits, and Action
Living by personal values sounds easy—at least in theory. After all, your values are the things that are important to you in life, so it should be natural to live by them.
And yet, so many of us don’t consistently live by our values.
Values matter because you’re likely to feel better if you’re living according to your values and to feel worse if you don’t. This applies both to day-to-day decisions and to more extensive life choices.
How do we sustain conscious living? We start by building habits that serve us. Habits make up our days, meaning that in the long run, the quality of our lives and what we spend our time doing depends on the habits we’ve developed.
If we can spend the time being a little bit more intentional about what habits we’re cultivating and what patterns aren’t serving us, we can create remarkable change.
So the next time you start to compare yourself, remember, the comparison has to have two parts of existence. It has to have us in the picture and have someone else or something else in the picture.
What if, what we were comparing ourselves to, didn’t exist because we were making up what we were seeing?
If you take anything away from this article – remember – if you’re chasing someone else’s dreams – you will only go as far as they can go – rather than how far YOU can actually go.
Choose wisely. Choose life. And make sure it’s yours.
Need help stopping the comparison lies?
Join Johanna Nichola for a 7-day Journey to learn why and how we are comparing ourselves, how to stop the comparison lies, understand that comparison doesn’t actually exist, and what we should be doing instead of comparing in order to fulfill our happiness and individuality.
Go on a journey of self-discovery through our guided coaching experience. Start today. Download the Huddol App now.
Huddol helps you wake up to your very best self:
- Overcome negative self-talk and shift your mindset
- Build life-changing habits that nurture well-being and help you achieve your goals
- Cultivate deep self-awareness and learn the art of self-mastery
- Build relationships and family connections that nurture gratitude
- Say goodbye to pain, fatigue, burnout and stress and access boundless energy
- Explore the ancient practices of meditation, stillness and mind-body alignment
