Don’t compare your step one to someone’s step 25.

Easier said than done right?

The things we compare:

• our looks
• our weight
• our intelligence
• our career
• our salaries
• our personal lives and evolution

Why can’t we help it? Society has us in a cycle of comparison and wanting to be better. Showing us what “success” should look like. Do we all need to be stick thin and surgeons? That would make for a pretty bland and boring place to live. The best part about life is our differences and what our own lives and experiences bring to the table. I highly doubt we’d have all these unique inventions and services if we all thought the same way.

This is not to say that healthy competition is a bad thing. Students competing to be the best runner in the race, or competing to get the lead role in a play – now those are great ways to make ourselves feel determined and successful. In turn, the understudy and 2nd place runner should feel good too. They have something to work towards, but they should also be proud of how far they’ve come to date.

So how do we compare a little less?

• Appreciate our bodies for what they are. You may have great legs, and that can be something to focus on, rather than the faults you see.
• Weight is just a number. Focus on how you feel instead.
• Intelligence comes in many forms. Don’t let what someone else has feel better than yours – they could envy what you have as well.
• Where you are in your career, is because of how far you’ve come. Someone else may have gone to grad school or not taken the time to do so – putting them in a different place. It’s not right to compare their ladder versus yours.
• Same goes with salaries, as it does with careers.
• Our personal lives and evolution – whether we’re single, dating, married, divorced, or married again – it’s about whether we’re happy where we are, and not where we are. Looking ahead versus looking back always helps. Past relationships are in the past for a reason. Why look back, unless it’s to learn from them and stop comparing against them.

How will you compare a little less?

#radiatedaily

image source – pixabay