Comparison - how to stop it, and live the life you want

Do you wonder how others do things? 

Do you see it as a failure on your part if you aren't doing things the way others are?

Comparison can be positive when it is in analysis of statistics to gain more information, or in decision making. But when used to compare ourselves to others, or comparing someone else’s life to our own can often lead to negative feelings like regret, frustration, sadness, depression, even anxiety.

We all get stuck in the trap of comparing ourselves to others from time to time, whether materialistic things or not. We've all coveted a neighbour’s garden, car, or holiday. We’ve all looked at someone’s success and compared it to our own, and been left disappointed with what we’ve achieved.

“The reason we struggle so much with insecurity is because we compare our behind-the-scenes with everyone else’s highlights reel.”- Steve Furtick

Those are clear cut examples of comparison, but there is a more insidious kind that is almost unconscious. It lies in conditioning within our society and culture, and is when we don’t do what the herd does, or matches what the herd does, and we are ousted and excluded, or ridiculed.

The pressure to stand true to ourselves is hard. If we think differently, take different actions, or desire different things, from tiny things to how you live your day to day life, run your household, do your job, raise your children, to how you respond to people, how open you are, how you see things from another perspective. It can be difficult. 

But the truth is we are not all the same, and not just in likes and dislikes and preferences, but in how we receive information, how we process things, how we respond or react to things. And this can make it so much harder, and cause us to be harder on ourselves.

“Comparison is the thief of joy.” – Teddy Roosevelt

A recent chat with a friend was a prime example of this. They felt they could not meditate, because they weren’t doing it ‘right’, because they were unable to follow online meditations due to struggling with visualisation.

Not everyone sees in pictures, some people see in words. My friend is an incredible poet, but felt limited because she couldn't conjure up the images the person narrating the meditation suggested. She felt she was wrong, or there was something wrong with her that she wasn't able to do this. But I told her that that is not the case; everyone has their own way, and not everyone can visualise and that’s normal. I could the relief in her face.

I see it in books I read on self-help, too, especially those that have a spiritual basis. Some of them define ways you should see/feel/process things. They are written as though it is only that way. But every person has their own way; they process things in their own way. They imagine things and relate to things differently; symbols mean different things to each individual.

These are external small pressures we as individuals often feel, and they can mount up. Small ways we feel we don’t fit into the crowd and are failing somehow.

With some people it can make them angry, and resentful, even causing them to reject an entire community, topic, or convention; wasting time and energy being hateful towards it or complaining about it. Others might view this behaviour as bitter or jealous, yet really it is a reaction to feeling insecure. They might like to be a part of it, but they don’t fit with the expected behaviour/method/thought process. They struggle to adjust to what is required. They haven’t worked out how they can encompass it in a way that works for them. This can lead to isolation, depression, or feeling ostracised.

“Don’t compare your life to others. There’s no comparison between the sun and moon. They shine when it’s their time.” – Abhishek Chauhan

So how do we stop feeling this way? How do we stop comparing ourselves?

We start by recognising when we are making those comparisons, and the negative or limiting impact they have on us. Identifying the areas they show up in and assessing how we feel about them.

When you look at others and what they are doing, and maybe feel anxious that you are not where they are, tell yourself, I’m doing what I’m doing, and I’m okay with where I am at. I don’t need to be there, or doing that. Reaffirm your own goals, and your own steps, as well as acknowledging the achievements you have made.

Only compare in a positive way, in a way that inspires you to better yourself. If you look at what someone is doing, you might think, ‘I want to do that too.’ But rather than then look at it as a failure that you are not,  look at how they are doing whatever it is you want to be doing, ask questions, get informed about how to go about - decide if it really is what you want to be doing, and then make your own way there. Use them as a positive role model.

Don’t let external pressures dictate who you want to be and how you want to show up. Take pride in your uniqueness.

Find your own way. Cherry pick if you like. Find what suits you.

Remind yourself there is no right or wrong way - only the way that works for you.

This your journey, your path, not theirs. 

You deserve to be seen. You deserve to be heard. You deserve to be known for the real deal that you are. The best place in life is where you’re already okay. Come home to you. It’s where you belong.” - Anne Bechard

Mirroring & Modelling: how to change it to create a better life

Did you grow up happy? 

Did you have happy parents and a sense of love at home and connection and community around you?

Do you find it easy to create the same in your own life?

We model behaviour based off what we learn as children. We mirror what we see as we grow up and subconsciously copy it. Depending on what we experience, depends on how it will affect our lives.

“Children are great imitators, so give them someone great to imitate”. – Joy D Jones

I grew up with a sense of fear and dread. I didn’t feel connected to anyone, that I was safe, or that I belonged. My mother was negative about everything in her life: herself, her children, everything around her. She had been raised with the same negative toxicity and she created more by repeating that example.

I struggled once out on my own to stop myself doing the same, but it has taken many years. It had become so engrained and was all I had known all my life. I remember one defining moment, when a friend said to me ‘the only person you think is neurotic is yourself’.

From that point on I began to hear the negative self talk inside my head, which I reflected out into and onto my world, and began a long journey to break that pattern of thinking and create a new one, so I could create a better life for myself.

“Never use others as a mirror to judge yourself by, their view may be distorted”. - Unknown

The people we attract into our lives mirror ourselves, which in turn mirrors the people we are raised by, because we subconsciously copy the behaviour, reactions and actions of our parents. We repeat what was modelled for us and seek out people, subconsciously, that respond to us in the same way our parents did.

I started to find that my long-term relationships felt empty; I felt disconnected and unfulfilled. I didn’t feel that they were interested in me, or even liked me. I became angry, feeling hurt and disrespected. I didn’t think my partner cared. I didn’t feel listened to, emotionally supported, and I believed my partners were emotionally unavailable to me. This is how I felt as a child, in response to how my mother treated me.

Then I understood two things:

1. I was empty, disconnected and emotionally unavailable myself – both to my own feelings and to those of my partner;
2. My partners were mirroring my behaviour and responding to me the same way my mother did.

Not only did I mirror my mother’s behaviour in my own negative talk (both internally and externally), I was disconnected and had become emotionally unavailable to my partners and unresponsive. This was exactly how she had treated me when I was a child. And I demanded support from my partners, while at the same time rejecting it – just as she had done.

“Life, like a mirror, never gives back more than we put into it.” – Unknown.

And when I looked back on my relationships and my marriage, I realised that all the men I had sought and attracted had been emotionally unavailable. They treated me as I treated myself: they didn’t listen to me, weren’t interested in anything I had to say, and often ignored me, and especially my feelings - just like my parent had done.

Fundamentally I was trying to get my partners to fulfil something that was missing within me. I realised I was still seeking attention and approval I didn’t receive as a child. I wanted to be heard, and noticed and cherished. And I learned that to resolve this I needed to start giving it to myself.

When I started giving myself time and attention – listening to myself, my thoughts, my feelings, focusing positive energy on myself – I started to find what I needed. Self-approval worked to satisfy my needs.

And then once I stopped demanding all that time and attention from those externally, it gave them room to be who they were, and step forward and connect with me in an honest and authentic way, rather than being forced.

This really hit home for me when I became a parent, when I heard myself use the words my mother used, the behaviours she displayed and the actions she took. So many were unconscious, the most profound being that I had always felt like a burden and like a problem my mother wanted to be rid of. I became aware that I was beginning to treat my children the same: The more difficult I found them, the more of a burden they became.

But once I changed my perspective and dialogue with them, seeing them as people to be loved and cherished and that I wanted to connect with, they changed along with me, and everyone began to feel more secure and stable. And I managed to displace the sense of fear and dread I had started to mirror and model from my own childhood. I wanted to feel connected to them with a sense of warmth and love; to have a bond and a sense of belonging, and I managed to begin to create that and it felt a whole lot better.

“By being a living role model of what you want to receive from others, you create more of what you want in your life.” – Eric Allenbaugh

So when you find yourself modelling or mirroring behaviour that isn’t working for you, think about how you can change it.

The first step is becoming conscious of it.

The next is how you can change it: internally by changing your thoughts and perspective to what you DO want to feel and see, and externally in the ways you act and react. 

Attracting those that are the same – people that mirror us – means those people are often missing something too. This can cause difficulties, especially when we change. We either grow together or we grow apart. But either way you have to be honest with yourself if you really want to live an emotionally fulfilled life.

Projecting & Reflecting: What it is & how to stop doing it.

What is Projecting and Reflecting?

Do you accuse others of things you are guilty of yourself?

Do you point out in others things you are doing yourself? 

This is part one of two posts about patterns of behaviour, and how we get stuck in repeating negative destructive patterns, and how we can overcome them once we recognise and understand them.

In a previous blog post about Perception and Perspective, I talk about how we interpret what we experience, and how that interpretation colours our point of view and ongoing experience. Our perception of the world is based on what we think, and our perspective is affected by our experience. We process everything – from how we feel, how we think, to how we experience it – in this way. And our expectation of everything around us is based off this same perception and perspective.

Projecting and reflecting works the same way. We project and reflect our feelings onto someone or something based on how we are feeling at that moment, or how we have previously experienced something.

The most common example of projecting and reflecting our feelings is when we do it with animals. We’ll look at an animal and imagine how they are feeling based on how we are feeling. We imagine what we think we would feel if we were them. And if we are not feeling good about ourselves this won’t be positive – the animal is sad, the animal is not having a good time. (I am not talking about an instance where this is actually true like an abused animal, I mean a pet that is just sitting there minding its own business and we are observing it.)

We do the same with people: we look at someone and we read their expression, behaviour or body language based on how we’re feeling at the time.

If our perception or perspective of our external world is coloured by our internal thoughts and feelings, it will affect how we react to those around us. When we project or reflect our negative feelings it is often based in insecurity about ourselves, and it works against us.

 “Projecting your anger or emotions on another crosses universal law and ensures a returned karma.” – Ariaa Jaeger

For example: if I’m angry with myself about something, I might accuse someone else of being angry with me. I am projecting/reflecting my emotion onto someone externally.

I have heard myself tell my husband he doesn’t respect me, but when I stopped and thought about it I realised that it wasn’t him who wasn’t respecting me, it was me! I was reflecting my own lack of self-respect onto him and blaming him for it.

I have also found myself saying to my husband, ‘you don’t think I’m a good parent’, when actually it is me that thinks I’m not a good parent – or fear that I am not a good parent and that everyone thinks that too.

Projecting/reflecting our fears or negative beliefs about ourselves onto others is quite common, and often the basis for a lot of negative patterns of behaviour and self-destructive actions. We can sabotage friends and relationships this way.

For example: if I am in a social situation that I am not comfortable in, or where I don’t feel I belong, I might say to myself, ‘these people don’t like me’, but in fact I am the one who thinks they don’t like me because I don’t feel comfortable. I am projecting my negative thoughts about myself onto the situation because I am fearful.

This same behaviour can show up in our expectations, in particular when we expect people to behave or react how we would. It can be a shock when they don’t. And we then blame those people for not doing or saying the things we would. It can create rifts and breakdowns in friendships and relationships, causing disconnection, separation or withdrawal. 

“Relationships fail when people take their own insecurities and project them as their partners' flaws.” - Steve Maraboli

The key to stopping and changing these negative patterns of behaviour can be difficult. It isn’t something that we can do overnight, but the first step is to become conscious that we are doing it.

When we catch ourselves saying that somebody thinks/acts/believes something about us, we need to ask ourselves if that is actually true. We need to ask ourselves: is it actually me that thinks and believes that about myself? We need to identify what we are projecting or reflecting on to others.

• When I tell my husband he doesn’t respect me, I need to ask: am I respecting myself?
• When I say he thinks I am not a good parent, I need to ask: do I think I’m not a good parent?
• When I say that I don’t think people/friends like me, I need to ask: am I not liking myself?

We need to consider the basis of these projections, where they come from. Our negative thoughts are from a lack of self-esteem or self-worth, and are formed by insecurities within ourselves.

We need to build self-trust, self-respect and self-esteem to counter those thoughts. We need to value ourselves and care about ourselves in the form of self-love and self-care.

“Self-respect, self-worth and self-love all start with self. Stop looking outside yourself for value.” - Rob Liano

We need to become our own best friend and treat ourselves better. We need to call ourselves out when we find ourselves accusing somebody else of doing something we should be doing ourselves. And then we need to ask and answer those questions.

• Ask how do I respect myself? And answer it: I respect myself because I am strong and I see things through, and I am a loyal friend. Remind yourself of all your good qualities that earn respect.
• Ask how am I a good parent? And answer it: I cook, clean and care for my children. I am there for them when they need me with words of comfort and empathy. They are the top priority in my life, and I always put them first.
• Ask, what do I like about myself? And answer it: I am friendly and open. I put people at ease and easily chat to people. I am supportive and loyal in my friendships

Each time we do this, we break the negative patterns and thought processes. We build self-esteem by reminding ourselves of the good inside of us, and in what ways we are valuable and worthy, reaffirming and reassuring ourselves and building self-trust and self-respect. And by creating a more positive dialogue inside, we create a more positive dialogue outside with the people around us.

“Change how you talk to yourself will change how you think. Changing how you think will change how you react. Changing how you react will change your interactions. Changing your interaction will change the outcome.” - Miranda Kate

How to be accepting & stop resisting what you don't like about your life

Do you get frustrated by the things you can’t change or control in your life?

Do you get angry when things don’t go the way you want?

Do you waste time and energy refusing to accept the ways things are?

 “Resistance is futile”- The Borg Collective - Star Trek: First Contact 😉

I am a not a Trekkie per se, but The Borg were correct. It will cause you more trouble than it’s worth to resist assimilation.

There are some things that you can’t change or control in life, but resisting them will cause you more pain in the long term and keep you stuck in a negative place for longer than necessary.

My best friend used to repeat to me on the phone, “Accept and allow, go with the flow of life.” It took me years to fully understand and embrace this concept. I could understand it in theory but it felt like an unachievable goal for me. I found everything difficult.

Even though I made decisions to do things – like moving to a foreign country and culture to be with my partner - I resisted them. Often it was because I didn’t really want to do them and I was doing them to please another, but I made it harder on myself by refusing to accept that it was a choice that I had made and not one that was forced upon me.

I was locked in the victim mindset.

In the instance of moving to a foreign country for love, this led me to reject what I found there: the friends, community, and the different culture. And rather than embrace the life on offer, I resisted it. I attempted a few things, but when they didn’t go the way I wanted or didn’t achieve the results I was looking for, I felt stuck and I fixated on feeling powerless.

I longed for the things I didn’t have and only focused on what was missing from my life. I became miserable, tense, stressed, frustrated and very angry. For me this manifested mentally in a breakdown in 2008, and physically in two slipped discs in my neck in 2014.

“Resisting what is happening is a major cause of suffering.” -  Pema Chodron 

But it was during the pain I experienced with the slipped disc in my neck (which trapped a nerve, putting my right shoulder and arm in excruciating pain for 8 weeks at a time – they slipped twice) that I learnt to surrender.

I learnt to accept that I couldn’t do anything. I let go of everything – all the expectations I had of myself and of others, all the things I thought I had to do, all the chores I did to try and feel that my life was worth living. I could do nothing, so I did nothing.

And what I found was that there were people to support me and my husband to pick up the slack. And when you aren’t able to lose your temper over something petty, you respond differently - quietly and calmly, and people respond differently.

Within the pain I found the calm I was seeking.

“You can't calm the storm, so stop trying. What you can do is calm yourself. The storm will pass.” - Timber Hawkeye

I had to surrender.

I don’t like to use the word surrender, because to me it means to give up – but I didn’t give up, I opened up.

I accepted that this was how things were going to be and to let go in that moment. I let others help me; I relinquished control; I stopped and observed the life around me.

In accepting that time (and fortunately recovering) I was able to understand that I needed to accept other aspects of my life too. I needed to look at what I did have in my life and appreciate it and embrace it. I started to take walks in nature and appreciate where I was living. I stopped thinking about my future and where my life was going, and started living in the present.

“If you are depressed, you are living in the past. If you are anxious, you are living in the future. If you are at peace, you are living in the present.” – Lao Tzu

When the noise in my mind would start up about where I wanted to live, what I wanted to be doing with my life, and how I felt like I was stagnating and not growing, I would just let the noise go.

I would hear it, register it, but know that I could only get to where I wanted to step by step, day by day. I took the end goal, the one thing I wanted to do the most, and broke it down into small steps - things I could achieve on a daily basis.

This enabled me to feel like I was moving forward. I would still have moments of frustration, but rather than fight that frustration I would allow myself to feel it – journal it out, or express it to a trusted friend, but then I would let it go.

“Resisting your negative feelings just keeps you stuck.” - Kute Blackson

When I was learning to drive, my driving instructor told me I thought too much about what I was doing to make the learning process easy. He said he could always tell when I started thinking about what I was doing because I would stall the car or crunch the gears. He said, “If you just let go and let your body do what you have trained it to do, it will be much easier. When you think about it, you interrupt the flow.”

By thinking about what I was doing I was letting my brain take over and panic about what I was doing. If I had accepted that I did know and allowed the training to flow through me, I wouldn’t have had a problem.

Often resistance is built up from having too many expectations. If we drop expectation of how something will be, and of ourselves in that situation, and not focus on a desired outcome, we can accept whatever happens organically.

We can release ourselves from the need to control. We become open to whatever happens. And accepting how our life is, in that moment, brings freedom and peace.

“It takes radical acceptance to bring inner peace.”- Kute Blackson

It can be a struggle to accept where you are in life if it is not what you want or where you saw yourself being. You can be consumed with trying to change it. But while you are spending time looking at all the things that aren’t working, you are closed to what IS working.

But how do you stop, if you are truly unhappy with your situation?

Have you ever thought about taking a holiday from your thinking?

If there is something you know you can’t do anything about right now, such as: move house, move job, create more time for yourself, go traveling, then set a date in the future  - a month, 6 months, a year from now, when you can review it again.

And every time you find yourself thinking about it, say, “No, I'm not going to think about that until *insert date*.”

I found this worked to stop me constantly thinking about how to change my situation. I knew I wouldn’t be able to for more than a year, so I set a date to review it the following year. And every time I thought about it, I stopped myself. I said, no, I’m not going to think about that now. I took a holiday from thinking about it. And the more often I stopped myself from thinking about it, the easier it became, until I was thinking about it less and less.

And what also happened, during that holiday, was say to myself, okay, I’m here for the next year, so how can I enjoy and embrace the life I have right now?

It changed the entire perspective I had on the life I was actually living. I was able to engage more with the people in my life and create a better day to day existence.

It broke the habit of the negative frustrated thoughts I was experiencing and allowed me to concentrate on the things that I could change in my life at that moment, and give myself room to work on the things that would help me move forward to the change I did want to see.

By accepting my life as it was I'd freed myself from being a victim in my life, which enabled me to find my personal power over the things I could do something about. It gave me freedom and peace of mind.

“Accept – then act. Whatever the present moment contains, accept it as if you had chosen it. Always work with it, not against it.” – Eckhart Tolle

Living without The Mask: How to be Okay and Be Vulnerable at the Same Time

Do you struggle to let others see who you really are?

Do you find it hard to talk openly about your thoughts and feelings?

Do you let others takeover conversations and keep your mouth shut? 

I discussed the ‘mask’ we create to protect ourselves in my Being Authentic post, and the steps we can take to remove it.

The next step is living without it.

At first this can be difficult; we may feel exposed, vulnerable and raw, causing us to flick between being defensive and being over emotional.

What is being defensive?

Being defensive is when we react sharply or aggressively to something said to us, about us; a comment that we perceive as negative and take as a criticism or insult. It hits a nerve – the nerve being our insecurity about ourselves.

“Defensiveness is usually someone silently screaming that they need you to value and respect them in disguise.”- Shannon L. Alder

We worry that what they said about us is true; or we may feel that we are NOT like they said, but worry that everyone believes we are. Either way it triggers a feeling of insecurity about who we are - a momentary identity crisis.

A defensive reaction will often bring about an uncomfortable or negative response, giving us reason to chide ourselves about our reaction later. This may lead us to return to the person we were defensive with and apologise, maybe becoming tearful or emotional at the same time as we expose our inner self. But this too can leave us feeling bad about ourselves, as though we have over shared, as we go from one extreme to another - defensive to submissive.

If we are not sure about who we are inside, we struggle to portray who we want to be seen as on the outside. This creates a conflict - a conflict based on a lack of confidence. We are conflicted between wanting others to accept us and being true to ourselves. And in lacking self confidence we may believe that who we truly are will not be accepted by others, hence the reason we created the mask in the first place. 

To live without it means letting go of pleasing others, seeking their approval, or putting their needs before our own; it means being honest about who we are - being vulnerable.

“Vulnerability is the courage to show up and be seen.”- Brene Brown

So as we struggle to find our true selves and work out who we are and start living that truth,  we can overreact and overcompensate. Neither of these two extremes represent who we are, or who we want to be, and we can remain on this sea-saw, struggling to find the balance for quite some time - on occasion returning to living behind the mask.

But the balance can be found once we start being comfortable with who we are and accepting ourselves, inside and out. Only once we stop fearing other people's responses and start embracing who we are, will we be able to show our true nature in a calm, positive way.

“The more you know who you are, and what you want, the less you let things upset you.” - Stephanie Perkins

Here’s a list of ways we can do that:

•           Start caring about ourselves more and others less.

•           Stop apologising for who we are.

•           Stop overriding our own feelings to please others.

•           Accept that not everyone will like us, just as we don't have to like them. 

•           Be sure and honest about the things we do like and the things we don’t.

•           Be proud of ourselves, and appreciate all we do and achieve.

•           Remember that we are the most important person in our life.

•           Tell ourselves: All of me is what makes me the special unique person I am.

Give it a try and see if it helps find you the balance when living without the mask.