15 Jul Measuring Yourself Against Others

The danger of measuring yourself against others is that you will inevitably end up feeling bad about yourself and therefore disillusioned with your own life. Comparing yourself to others isn’t helpful in that it focusses you on somebody else’s life and can leave you feeling envious, inadequate and inferior and can also lead to feelings associated with anxiety, stress and depression.

When we compare ourselves to others it’s often material wealth we focus on rather than emotional wealth. Usually it’s based on external appearance such as a bigger house, better car, fantastic job. Let’s not forget that perfect relationship and fabulous figure too. Does this really say much about what’s happening on the inside of a person and does it in any way compare to what is happening within you.

Just as you put on that brave face and smile as if everything is just fantastic in your world, so do others. Those material things you so envy could well be causing financial stress behind closed doors and that relationship could sour any day, but that too shouldn’t preoccupy us. We shouldn’t measure ourselves against others, certainly what we perceive their lives to be from an external viewpoint.

Think about those close to you, do their material possessions really describe what you love or like about them or the reality of their life, I’d guess not because you know them inside and out, you see and know the depth.

Our dreams to are different as each of us are unique.  Don’t follow the dreams of others, create and follow your own. Somebody else’s dream will always be their dream, not yours, their aspirations and their happiness.

If it’s material wealth you focus on, think about that initial happiness you felt when you first got something you’d longed for, how long did that happiness last. Money does not and will not bring eternal joy however much people try and tell you otherwise. People curate their lives on social media and the like to be something they are not, share only the things they think will communicate happiness.

We are all at different stages and life will go up and down for each of us. You will get lucky and you will experience failure, you will hurt and then feel the warmth of success, if life was a bowl of cherries you wouldn’t know happiness.

All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances, and one man in his time plays many parts, his acts being seven ages. At first, the infant, Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms ~ William Shakespeare

When we compare ourselves, it’s often to the end result and not the journey it took to get there and whether you drive an old jalopy or a top of the range Mercedes, the road remains the same whatever vehicle you travel in.

Your own success will only come when you look at your own life and begin to take the steps required to make the improvements you want, not when your busy looking at how well everybody else is doing. Look at what you want for yourself, based on what it will do for you in terms of happiness and personal fulfilment.

Need to work on your own dreams?

©workingtherapies