The Danger of Comparison | Crush It Mondays

This is an episode of Crush It Mondays. Each week, I’ll bring to you an inspiring message, habit, or contemplation in 5 minutes or less to get your week off to a powerful start. 

This week, I want to talk about comparison.  It's normal to compare yourself to other people, but with the rise of social media over the last decade, we compare ourselves on a much larger scale.  We can get the play by play of other people's highlight reels. There are filters that can make us look more attractive.  The things we read, see, post all can affect our happiness, our feelings of being "enough" - fast enough, hot enough, smart enough, successful enough, busy enough and it can be really overwhelming.  As athletes, event and race results are based on comparison to others. Comparison to others can be good if it inspires you to be better, but if it leaves you feeling like you're not enough, you might want to change what you are comparing yourself to.

We can't control what other people are doing, what people are showing us online, or even necessarily if someone IS actually better than us at something.  But we can control our own actions - as podcast guest Brad Stulberg so eloquently put it - our only true possessions in this world are our actions. So if you want to compare something, compare yourself to a previous version of yourself. Or even better- compare yourself to where you were a week or a month ago.  We can even get caught up comparing ourselves to the best version of something we did like 10 years ago. The reality is that our lives change, our priorities change- so try to compare yourself to a more recent version of yourself.  Are you committed to showing up to be better than you were yesterday?  Are you trending in the right direction of improvement?

This week, I challenge you to simply be aware of when you are comparing yourself to someone else.  Are you feeling less than or are you feeling inspired?  When was the last time you sat down, zoomed out, and looked at how you've changed to a previous version of yourself?  I'll leave you with that.  Have an awesome week.