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Comparing Yourself to Others Can Seriously Damage Your Confidence

One of the ways that we judge our abilities or our performance in life is by comparing ourselves to others. This seems to make sense, since it would be a good indicator of how we are doing. “Am I earning enough? Let me look at my friends. They seem to be earning less than me, so I must be doing ok. No wait, they are all earning more than me. I must be doing terribly.” His kind of comparison is of course the root of the “Keeping up with the Joneses” phenomenon.

But it is also the root of much low confidence. Why?

When we compare ourselves to others, we are almost never in a position to do it properly. We almost never have all the information. And our perception of them is almost always colored by our own beliefs.

An example would be comparing yourself to a friend who appears to be making more money than you. He lives in a big house and drives a fast car. Lucky guy! Don’t you just feel absolutely awful about yourself when you compare yourself to him? But let’s take a closer look. Let’s take a look at some of the information that you may not have had access to when you made an interpretation about how he is doing compared to you.

Firstly, he is up to his eyeballs in debt. He doesn’t own either the car or the house. He has massive loan repayments that he sometimes struggles to make.

Secondly, he has a terrible relationship with his wife and children. He hates coming home at night, because things are so bad.

Thirdly, he actually feels jealous of you, because he thinks you have a great lifestyle.

Fourthly, even if he had 400 fancy cars, that actually has no physical effect on you, your lifestyle or your ability to be happy. When you take a step back you realize that it’s all in your interpretation of what his success means to you.

When we compare ourselves to others we almost never do it from an objective point of view. We never have the information to make a proper comparison. And it hides the fact that comparison does not actually give a proper measure of your success. You could be comparing to the wrong people!

March 25th, 2010 | Category: Uncategorized

567 comments to Comparing Yourself to Others Can Seriously Damage Your Confidence

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