Self Confidence and Comparing Yourself to Others

I am not like them

Poor Joe, he is not as handsome as movie stars nor does he have a bigger car than his friends, he is not that rich nor he is that intelligent as his college mates, why should Joe feel confident then? He must be feeling inferior to everyone. Is that true? Of course it is not; simply Because Joe never compares himself to others and so he is happy.

Self confidence And comparing yourself to others

Some people have developed the bad habit of always comparing themselves to others, and the problem with these comparisons is that they are usually triggered when they find that they already lack something!! That is they play a game that they have already lost, take the example of a guy walking down the street and on seeing someone passing by with his cute girl friend his negative self talk is triggered “I don’t have a cute girl friend, I guess that makes me less worth, maybe I am ugly…bla bla bla” As you can see the comparison started when he already discovered that he has lost it,the comparison was started because of one thing, because he lacked self confidence, its like a self reinforcing cycle, you feel that you are inferior and so you assume that you lack something compared to others and on finding anything that you miss you start the comparison and so reinforce your false beliefs about yourself and cause more damage to your self confidence.

Break the Cycle

The good news is that you could break this cycle in two different points, you can either start building your self confidence and as you gain more self confidence you will gradually unlea the habit of comparing yourself to others or you can train yourself to stop comparing yourself to others and so stop this self reinforcement, Personally I recommend doing both because self confident is so important and its worth trying every possible method available untill you get it.

Look at the whole package

The second mistake people do when they start to compare themselves to others is choosing just one trait or activity then building their whole judgment upon it!! Someone may be very intelligent yet consider himself inadequate because he is not as good as his friends in playing soccer. If it’s a must to compare your self to someone else then compare the whole package and not just a single trait, yes he may be more handsome than you but you may be smarter than him, he may be richer than you but you may be happier than him, think of yourself as a package because it not fair to judge yourself based on only one thing that you don’t have or that you cant do.