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Why Comparing Yourself To Others Can Be Destructive

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Everyone compares themselves to others from time to time. It is a natural thing for humans to do. But often these comparisons can be really destructive. When you compare yourself to another person for the wrong reasons you are actually looking at how your worth as a person compares to yours.

There are some people that have got into the habit of comparing themselves to others so much that they do it on an almost daily basis – and sometimes more than once a day. They do it with their friends and family, at work with their colleagues and even with famous people. So why can this be so bad for you to do?

Bitterness and Anger

You are at work and you get the news that another coworker has received a promotion. This person is younger than you and joined the team later than you did. In your opinion they are just average and they didn’t deserve to get promoted before you did.

So what happens here? You go into a negative thought spiral that runs around in your head for most of the day. “How dare they promote this person before me!” The negative spiral makes you start to doubt your own ability so you experience thoughts like “I am not good enough” and “nobody here respects me”.

What you are not taking into account is that this person has been attending night classes to learn about business and management. They have also taken on projects that you would never take on because they could go wrong and that is just too risky for you.

You are totally bitter about this situation. Every time you arrive in the office the negative thought spiral kicks in. Now your bitterness towards this person has turned to anger and you do everything that you can to avoid them. The person invites you to celebrate with them but you find an excuse not to attend.

Before this person received the promotion you had no problem with them at all. You used to talk to them all the time and even laugh and joke with them. Now everything has changed. You are just bitter and resentful.

This is a very bad situation. Every time you go to your office you feel bitterness and anger. This is not good for your health or your self esteem. You are not interested in the back story and the person’s efforts to achieve promotion. You have not done any of these things and expect everything to just fall into your lap.

Impact on Self Esteem

One of the most dangerous things about negative comparisons is the harm that it does to your self esteem. You probably don’t realize this is happening but you are thinking that you were overlooked for promotion because you are not good enough.

When your self esteem takes a hit like this it can be devastating for you. If you rant and rave about the situation to others in your team then they quickly tire of your complaining and you can lose their support. This in turn makes your self esteem crash even more.

What you can do?

Try to see the positive side of things rather than the negative. Find out how the person got the promotion and use this as inspiration so that you can embark on a similar journey. Whining and complaining when things like this happen will get you nowhere. It will just make you feel terrible and can lead to lots of other problems.

What Is Your Self View And Why Is It So Important?

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The “self view” is a term created by psychology experts for how you see yourself. Sometimes you will also see this called your “self concept”. Basically your self view is a combination of your opinions, beliefs, attitudes and preferences that form your definition of who you are.

It is all about how you think about yourself. This is really powerful because it will define how you think and the way that you act. Our self view is critical and we really need it to make sense of our world.

The Self has been Studied by Psychologists for a long time

The concept of the self view is easy to understand but it is a very complex psychological area which has had psychologists trying to figure it all out for a very long time. Although everyone has a self view it is not always easy for us to know what is really going on on the inside.

This is because we are all different and our mixture of traits, preferences, personality characteristics and abilities differs wildly to the next person. It doesn’t matter that much that we cannot explain everything about the self view though.

What is important is that we are aware of its existence. People need their self view so that they can form their own perceptions of the world and feel comfortable in their environment. Without it we would always be asking others how we stack up (which a lot of people do anyway but this is usually due to low self esteem rather than not having a self view).

In the very early days of research into the self view, Descartes formed the conclusion that the very existence of an individual was totally dependent on how they perceived the world around them.

The well known psychologist, Simund Freud, believed that the self view comprised of three elements which are:

1. Your ID which is pleasure based
2. Your ego which is a state of balance between your ID and your superego
3. Your superego which is driven by your conscience
Important Aspects about the

Self View

There are a lot of different assumptions held about the self view to make sense about it. Here are some of the most important ones:

You Learn your Self View

The assumption here is that you are not born with your self view. You will develop it as you grow and become an adult. In fact your self view can change many times during your life. Many experts believe that you can change your self view if you need to and this is a good thing.

Your Self View has Structure

Over the years you are likely to develop many different views about yourself. The assumption here is that all of these different opinions are organized into a single self view. This structure helps you to instantly challenge anything that doesn’t conform to your self view.

Every day an individual is likely to be subjected to many different messages and a number of these can challenge their self view. Even though these different challenges are about different aspects of a person’s life the reaction is automatic.

Your Self View can Change

It is not easy to change your self view because you have built it up over a long period of time. But you can change it. Sometimes different environmental changes can force you to change your self view. Other times you may want to change it yourself because it is not supporting what you want to do.

Ways To Boost Your Self Esteem After Making Bad Comparisons

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If you are someone that keeps making bad comparisons with others that make you feel negatively about yourself then your self esteem is going to be low. When you see that your neighbor has a brand new car and your car is years old then you can go into a negative spiral which will lower your self esteem dramatically.

You start to question your worth. “Why don’t I earn enough money to buy a new car?” and other similar thoughts fill your head. This is not rational behavior as you don’t know the full story. Your neighbor might have received the car as part of his job or even leased it. All you are focusing on is the pain and the fact that you are not good enough.

So if you find yourself in a situation like this how can you boost your self esteem so that you stop having such a low opinion of yourself which makes you feel terrible? We have some great techniques for you in this article.

List your previous Achievements

We have all achieved a number of things in our lives and often don’t give ourselves any credit for doing this. Just because millions of other people passed their driving test doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t give yourself credit for doing this too.

Take some time out and write down some of your past achievements. If you had to overcome a number of challenges to achieve something then these need to be on your list. It doesn’t matter how insignificant you think these achievements are. Just write them down and reflect on how well you did.

Stop Dwelling in the Past

Something that will definitely affect your self esteem in the wrong way is to dwell on the past mistakes you have made. Everyone makes mistakes but people with high self esteem learn from their mistakes and move on. They don’t keep raking up the past so that it influences their future.

A lot of people believe that if they tried something once and failed that they will never be able to do this in the future. Do you think like this? So if you wanted to learn Spanish in the past and gave up after a few days this means that you will never be able to learn Spanish. This is just ridiculous and you are letting your past rule you.

Look your Best

A lot of people with low self esteem get to the point where they do not care how they present themselves to the world. If you are a man then maybe you haven’t had a shave for a few days and you look terrible.

To give yourself a much needed boost shave off that horrible stubble now and put on some nice clothes. If you are a woman then get your hair done or your nails. Buy some new clothes that you can wear outside with pride. This will give your self esteem a much needed boost.

Don’t let Fear hold you back

We all have irrational fears that we carry around with us. People with low self esteem can have a lot more of these than others do. The best way to boost your self esteem in this situation is to tackle a fear head on and do it anyway.

This is not going to be easy for you but once you have challenged this fear and done something that scared you before you will feel so much better about yourself. So identify an irrational fear today and just go for it!

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