Why does a person compare himself to others? Why you shouldn't compare yourself to other people

“I constantly compare myself to others. Life seems to be wonderful, but it’s not – everything is spoiled by the habit of comparing yourself to others. My job is good, but hers is better. I bought a beautiful dress, but it seems that a colleague’s dress was prettier (and where did she get it?). She herself is not a fool, but she seems to be even smarter. And so in many ways. Is this a complex? Envy? Uncertainty? How can you overcome this habit?

Asem (37 years old)

Psychologist's answer:

Asem, what you are describing is the habit of comparing yourself to others with a little “seasoning” of envy. Its reason is low self-esteem and dislike for oneself. When you criticize yourself or others, envy or compare yourself to others, you do it because you are insecure. Valuing and respecting yourself means feeling satisfied with yourself as a person. It is this satisfaction that develops our self-confidence.

We are all born with a feeling of complete satisfaction with ourselves (remember small children), but as we grow up, people close to us unconsciously transmit and instill in us their own feelings of insecurity, comparison with others, feelings of competition, fear, guilt, etc. Such moments lead a person to the point that he begins to live by other people’s attitudes and value other people’s opinions, devaluing his own.

The solution to the problem will be to “increase the level” of self-love.

But, of course, it is impossible to love yourself if you are not satisfied with yourself and your life, if you do not accept your own self, if you often scold or criticize yourself. Comparing yourself with others is defining yourself through the prism not of your internal worldview, but through external circumstances and other people’s opinions. Let go of your old thinking patterns and what makes you feel bad about yourself.

Do the following exercise:

Take a piece of paper and write down at least 30 reasons why you can love yourself. Then write down at least 30 reasons why others might enjoy spending time with you. Temporarily hang these lists in a prominent place where you can see them every day before leaving home, and read them out loud. For more effective work on increasing self-esteem, I recommend contacting a psychologist you trust.

We have been accustomed to comparing ourselves with others since childhood. Perhaps everyone remembers how his parents more than once tried to prick him with his successes or some outstanding qualities of his peers, emphasizing that he was far from them? Growing up, we ourselves, out of habit, continue to compare ourselves with other people. And it doesn’t always turn out to be in our favor.

And if in childhood we were simply offended by our elders and internally resisted such comparisons, then as adults we suffer from our own habit of measuring our merits by the successes of others, involuntarily lowering our self-esteem.

When such comparisons increasingly interfere with enjoying life, you need to start fighting it. How to stop comparing yourself to others? There are different methods.

Is it worth fighting the habit of comparing?

How to stop comparing yourself to others and start living fully? And is this even possible, since everyone has such a habit? It may not be possible to completely get rid of it, but trying to make sure that it does not poison our lives is simply necessary. But how?

To begin with, you just need to consciously decide to give up comparisons. No one except the person himself can do this for him. Only by breaking the habit of comparing oneself with those who are more successful and fortunate can a person truly experience happiness and freedom. And it's worth it to learn how to stop comparing yourself to others and get rid of this habit forever.

Are we comparing it to the wrong thing?

How to stop comparing yourself to others? The reasons for this habit lie not only in upbringing. Artificial stereotypes of a beautiful life are constantly imposed on us through advertising on television and the Internet. And we often find ourselves unprepared to resist this, forgetting that advertising aims to sell, and not to show real life on screens.

Feelings of second-classness often arise when comparing yourself to more successful or more beautiful real people. For example, when viewing photos of your friends and acquaintances on social networks. Seemingly successful people love to display selfies taken while traveling abroad, in rich homes, and prestigious restaurants.

And it can be such a shame to realize that your life is not at all so bright... Compared to all this splendor, your own happy moments seem to fade.

Has it ever occurred to you that people who post these photos on the Internet are simply creating the illusion of well-being? And it’s not a fact that the “successful” and “brilliant” wouldn’t envy your cozy and simple happiness...

Only by learning to be grateful to fate for this can a person truly experience the taste of life!

Self-flagellation is stupid

If in childhood we “measure ourselves” with our peers regarding behavior that is correct, from the point of view of adults, or good grades, prestigious toys, then at an older age we already begin to compare cars, outfits, figures, career growth, vacation spots, luck and success...

When such comparisons increasingly turn out to be in favor of others, a person becomes disillusioned, begins to doubt himself and feels inferior. Lack of confidence in one’s own abilities does not at all stimulate one to achieve more, but, on the contrary, contributes to giving up...

Psychologists say that such self-flagellation is meaningless and even stupid. After all, the universe created each person unique. Each of us is unique. Some are given talent in one area, others in another; some received extraordinary external beauty from God, while others were given a beautiful soul; still others seem to have neither beauty nor special abilities, but are so lucky in life that many envy them...

That's why you don't need to compare yourself with other people - the same unique creatures. It is logical to compare only... with yourself, but with others, in other circumstances or at another time.

How to compare yourself... with yourself

Why compare your merits and successes with outstanding athletes or artists? It is much more useful to compare yourself with yourself, but some time ago. For example, remember what was unavailable just recently, but today has already become a reality. This comparison motivates you to improve yourself and become better.

So, if the question of how to stop comparing yourself to others is relevant to you, it is useful to learn how to make such a comparison with yourself yesterday in order to give a real assessment of your movement forward and begin to be proud of today's successes. How?

Don't forget about your own strengths

Usually we compare ourselves with others according to some specific indicator. But some people are given certain advantages from birth, and others are given others... Everyone has both strengths and weaknesses.

But here’s a paradox: we praise other people’s successes to the skies; they seem amazing and unique to us. But for some reason we very quickly forget about our own achievements. They warm the soul only at the beginning, and after a while the feelings of pride and joy are replaced by a gray streak of despondency.

Psychologists advise people with low self-esteem to write down all their achievements, even the smallest ones. For this, it is recommended to keep a special diary. And as soon as you feel that once again, after comparing yourself with others, your self-esteem is again falling catastrophically, you just need to re-read your entries in your achievement diary. It is very important not to forget to constantly add to the list of your successes!

But don't be vain either

The other side of the coin is comparing yourself with those who in some way fall short of your standard. This will also not lead to anything good. Only at first glance it may seem that by comparing oneself with those who are less successful in some area, a person raises his self-esteem. This actually leads to vanity. And most importantly, it slows down one’s own self-development and does not allow an arrogant personality to grow. After all, why become better if you are already superior to someone in something?

In any case, comparing yourself to others is harmful. After all, such a comparison makes a person either unhappy or vain. Both one and the other do not carry anything positive in themselves.

Control yourself

Control the moments when you begin to compare yourself with others: as soon as the thought of your own superiority or inferiority comes into your head, immediately drive it out of there! It is easier to get rid of vanity or bitter envy in their very bud.

And at the same time, it won’t hurt to start working on your complexes. Maybe you should not envy others, but try to improve that area of ​​life in which you are a little behind?

For example, are you far from the ideal figure of a friend or film actress? Don’t rush to get upset about this - it’s better to go to a fitness club! And if you feel that your successes at work are significantly inferior to the achievements of your colleagues, you should engage in self-development or enroll in retraining courses.

If, on the contrary, you feel somehow superior to others, help them catch up to your level. Your self-esteem will only increase from this.

How to stop comparing yourself to other women

Representatives of the fairer sex most often suffer from comparing themselves to others. Starting from external data and ending with success in your personal life and career. Solving the question of how to stop comparing themselves with other girls often becomes one of the important conditions for them to feel happy.

Psychologists say that those who are deprived of love in life compare themselves with more beautiful or successful ones. Real, selfless, who is not for something, but “just like that.” Such an inferiority complex is involuntarily cultivated in girls by parents even in childhood, when they praise, kiss or allow something pleasant for good grades, help around the house, etc.

And if this completely wrong idea of ​​love is firmly entrenched in the mind, it must be eradicated. First, every girl must learn to love herself the way God created her. Everyone has their own shortcomings, but there are also advantages behind which minor imperfections are simply not visible! It is important to remember that only by loving herself and accepting her imperfections can a woman find harmony.

How to stop comparing yourself to other people. Conclusion

Since childhood, we all compare ourselves with others, but we need to get rid of this bad habit.

Consciously monitor and stop every desire to compare.

While you admire the strengths of others, don't forget about your own strengths.

Love yourself as you are. Accept your imperfections. Remember that perfect people do not exist.

By acting in this way, you will not even notice that you are no longer faced with the task of how to stop comparing yourself to others.

We are all different, but we all tend to compare ourselves to others. Thinking about our achievements, we raise the bar higher and higher. It's natural to compare yourself to others and even envy them sometimes. But if we focus on our shortcomings rather than on what we could improve on, we have chosen the wrong path. This way of thinking is very draining and affects daily life in a negative way. By constantly comparing ourselves to others, we lower our self-esteem, which makes us feel very bad about ourselves. Resist the temptation to compare yourself to others. Learn to evaluate yourself objectively. Make it a goal to improve your self-esteem and learn to think better of yourself than you currently think.

Steps

Part 1

Think about how you value yourself. If you want to change, you need to look at yourself from the outside. It may seem to you that such a problem simply does not exist. Once you realize your problem, it will be easier for you to solve it. Be prepared that this is not an easy process. However, once you realize that you need to change, it will be easier for you to set goals for yourself.

Pay attention to your self-esteem. Self-esteem is a positive or negative assessment of oneself. There are both black and white stripes in our lives, and sometimes the perception of ourselves can change daily. Self-esteem is formed throughout life.

• Do you feel good about yourself? Do you allow others to influence your opinion of yourself? If you compare yourself to others to improve your self-esteem, you build your happiness.

1. Determine what you look for when comparing yourself to others. When you compare yourself to others, you place yourself above or below them. As a rule, when we notice the positive or negative character traits of others, we begin to compare them with our own. Sometimes such comparison can be useful, but in some cases it can negatively affect self-esteem.

   • An example of a positive comparison: You compare yourself to someone whose qualities you admire. Instead of simply being jealous of this person (for example, because they are a caring person), you strive to be like them.
   • An example of a negative comparison: You compare yourself to someone who has something you really want. For example, you are jealous that your friend has a new car.

2. Write down your thoughts or feelings. Write down why you compare yourself to others. If you can, write it down immediately after the thought comes to mind, or if you can't, try to remember. If the memories are fresh in your mind, it will be easy for you to write down your thoughts.

   Try to remember when you started comparing yourself to others. Try to remember the origins of your behavior and write about this time in a journal. Try to remember the first time you had these thoughts.

   • For example, you may remember during your childhood when you compared yourself to your sibling. You can reflect on this situation and see the reason. Most likely, you compared yourself to your sibling because you felt that you were treated worse than him. So you can speculate about the reason for this behavior.
   • The hardest part is admitting that this behavior is having a negative impact on you. However, it can be an incentive to change your behavior.

3. Evaluate yourself by your own criteria. When you evaluate yourself by your own criteria, you will stop comparing yourself to others. You won't experience constant competition. If you manage your life yourself, you will get the desired result. Evaluate yourself by your own criteria, not by criteria that someone else has set.

   Be grateful to people, don't envy them. Think about the benefits that others can bring to you. If you have friends who are high in society, chances are they can help you become more successful in life. Instead of being jealous of their success, use that success to your advantage.

   • For example, you can look at photos of athletes to admire their athletic form. Instead of envying them, you can use their example as motivation so you can change your life. You may decide to change your eating habits and start doing more exercise. Therefore, use these photos to your benefit, not to your detriment.

4. Be willing to take risks. Once you learn to evaluate yourself by your own criteria, you will feel freer and more willing to take risks. Thanks to this, you can raise the bar higher and higher. Many people are afraid to take risks, so this prevents them from achieving success. They are constrained by fear, and they cannot achieve anything in this life.

   • Start with small steps. This will make you more confident in yourself and your abilities.

5. Surround yourself with people who will support you. Thanks to this, you will be able to achieve your goal faster.

   Train yourself. As a rule, coaches behave differently. There are coaches who yell and humiliate their players. There are those who encourage athletes to run faster, jump higher, or swim longer distances, but they do it with love and care. A coach who teaches with love develops a holistic personality.

   • Think of yourself as a coach who pushes you to improve. Give love and appreciation for your efforts. Then you will achieve the goals you set for yourself while improving your self-esteem.

Part 5

1. Limit media viewing. If you find that idealistic views in the media are having a negative impact on your self-esteem, you may want to limit your media viewing. Limit your viewing time or stop watching TV entirely. Delete or disable your social media pages.

   Avoid media that portrays ideal images. Limit viewing of fashion magazines, reality TV shows, certain movies and music. If you often compare yourself to a certain model or athlete, don't look at magazines, shows or games in which that person takes part.

I decided a long time ago that comparing myself to others is a program of self-destruction. There will always be someone better in this world. And there will always be someone worse in this world.

In this video I will tell you whether you need to compare yourself with yourself and others and how best to do it?

While we compare, we live in a state of egoism. When we stop comparing, we begin to live in a state of love. But in order to develop, you still need to compare. But we do not compare to understand who is better or worse, but we compare to understand our progress. And we compare ourselves in the past and ourselves in the future.

I have incredible women in my life who have much better results in some ways than me, and in some ways I have much better results. What we do: we help each other improve those areas where they are weak. And I compare myself, what I am today compared to myself a year ago, 10 years ago. And in this comparison, I make a decision compared to the me who will make a decision in 10 years. I decided that this would be the only measure for me and this is the only way for me to be happy - to remove all comparisons.

As a result, it gave me a calm confidence in myself. Because while you are evaluating, you are either proud of yourself because I am cooler than someone else, or you feel humiliated. And you are always on this swing, like a tumbler, all the time either in pride or in humiliation.

This is the very value of a woman who accepts and loves herself, develops to her essence, to her best version. I like the analogy of a bird just having to learn to sing and fly well. She should not learn to swim, but the fish should just swim beautifully, and not sing and fly beautifully. And the fact that one is a fish and the other is a bird does not make them worse. But what we women often do is we compare: I’m a bird, I compare myself to a fish and I feel inferior because I haven’t learned to swim.

Our very essence and value grows in the fact that we have revealed our talents and abilities. We develop ourselves, we reach a new level in our hierarchy of values. This is very important.

I have a friend whose body and health are very important to her. And she has a model body! I don’t have a model body, but for me, for example, spiritual development and personal self-realization are more important. I understand that my body could be like my friend’s if I spent 2-3 hours a day on my body. But I’m not ready to devote my time to this in my own value system.

Why then will I feel inferior, that I don’t have such a beautiful and perfect body like hers? We just have different value systems. And in my value system I am congruent, I have no conflicts within myself, I know when I work on my body, where it ranks

How to stop comparing yourself to others - this question is often asked by insecure people at the beginning of their professional or creative journey. There is no definite answer, but there is something that can be identified as the uniqueness and individuality of each person, and if you start looking at yourself, and not at others, the need for comparison will disappear.

Why do people compare themselves to others?

Everything can be learned by comparison - even the most ancient thinkers spoke about this, and there is a lot of reason in this. Comparing oneself with other people - modern psychology explains this phenomenon by the fact that any phenomenon in society has a certain standard, ideal, or standard of “how it should be.” From infancy, parents cultivate in their child those qualities and properties that are welcomed in a given society, and if their child does not cope, then a lot of comparisons fall on him and are not in his favor. We compare ourselves to others because:

• I want to be involved with others;
• meet expectations;
• to be the best in your craft, profession, creative expression;

Why can't you compare yourself to others?

Should you compare yourself to others? This is ineffective and is always not in favor of the comparer - even if a person has achieved serious results, the inner critic will always find something to be dissatisfied with. The only correct option is to compare yourself today with yourself yesterday and strive to realize in yourself the qualities that you want to develop. What happens if a man or woman, for some reason, begins to compare themselves with others:

• there is a decrease;
• bitter disappointment in oneself;
• self-flagellation and self-deprecation;
• depreciation of their performance results;
• joy goes away, in its place there is constant tension that “I don’t measure up.”

The child compares himself to others

Childhood is fertile ground for sowing a positive or negative “I” in a little person - a concept, the task of the parent is to help the child become self-sufficient and autonomous as he grows up. How not to compare yourself with others - even in loving and prosperous families, parents may notice that at some point their children begin to compare themselves with other children, these can be comparisons based on external parameters, on how another child has something then it turns out better and this cannot but upset. How can a child stop comparing himself to other children, recommendations from psychologists:

• parents themselves need to stop comparing themselves and their child with someone else;
• Explain to the child that everyone comes into this life to develop their talents and skills, and this is unique and unique;
• tell your child what good qualities he has, that he is wonderful the way he is, and these best sides of him can and should be developed.

How to learn not to compare yourself with others?

Other people can be standards for us, causing admiration, we want to be equal to them, and the important key point here may not be comparison, but the understanding that this other person was able to become who he became, and arises from the fact that he one is such a unique, charismatic personality - the other is not. How to stop comparing yourself to other people:

• try to remember the first cases when comparisons with others not in your favor began to occur, discover the feelings that arose during this (depression, anger, despondency), live these feelings and let them go, they have nothing to do with reality and with you as a person ;
• becoming the best version of yourself is the only correct option for personal development;
• looking at yourself with loving eyes and starting to increase your self-esteem is not an easy process, but it is an integral part of stopping living with caution and comparing yourself to others;
• comparison gives rise to envy - and this is a destructive feeling; it would be correct to conclude for yourself: this person was able to achieve success, which means I can be successful in my endeavor;
• Feelings such as kindness and gratitude to yourself and others, to the fact that life as it is is happening now and you can start being yourself right here and now - help a person become himself.

How to stop comparing yourself to other girls?

Adolescence is a difficult time for many girls, hormonal changes in the body, the formation of an adult figure, and attractiveness to the opposite sex. “What should I do if I constantly compare myself to other girls?” - this question is often heard on various forums and social networks. Psychologists give the following recommendations on how to stop comparing yourself to other girls:

• nature loves variety - if everyone is tall, thin and blond, then this will be a sad phenomenon, a girl with freckles is no less beautiful than the one without them;
• There will always be those around you who are smarter, more beautiful, sexier and those who are less beautiful, intelligent, etc. - but this is just a focus of attention, and where attention is, there is energy, so you need to focus on your unique qualities and make them your highlight, only inherent in you;
• accept and love yourself, and from these feelings you can already change what you don’t like about yourself.

Comparing yourself to your husband's ex

“I compare myself with other women of my man/husband, what should I do?” – Such comparisons can unsettle a woman for a long time, preventing her from enjoying her existing relationship. In such a situation, the following tips may help:

1. Everyone has their own past and this is true, but the truth is that today you are together, he made his choice.
2. Feelings are experienced differently with each person.
3. It is important to understand what the comparison is about: appearance, ways of living together, personal qualities, and stop putting yourself in her place, she is she.
4. Increase your own self-esteem and be interesting to yourself, then your husband, if he compares, will stop doing this, because a self-sufficient woman is very attractive to men.