Sometimes we feel stuck, and we feel bad when we look at how well others are doing, other people with the life, body, career that we wish we had.
But to compare yourself with anyone except yourself is not a fair comparison. How could it ever be? You should not be competing with anyone but yourself. Motivation should come from within – intrinsic motivation, from a positive place of self-appreciation and self-compassion because motivation from comparison to how well someone else is doing is not coming from a good place, and it is not sustainable – eventually you’ll burn out even if you do achieve a lot. Do it for yourself, and no one else. Don’t do anything to impress anyone. If you do things based on other people’s idea of success, when you achieve your goals you won’t feel like you’ve accomplished anything, you won’t be satisfied.
Here’s an exercise for you next time you compare yourself to someone else or you feel bad – stagnant where you are in your life right now. Write down your achievements that you are proud of within the last year or even the last few years. These must be achievements you are genuinely proud of, from your heart – not by other people’s standard of success, not your parents or your peers, not what looks good on paper but what actually means something to you. And this could be something small and something that others would not see as an achievement but it doesn’t matter, as long as it matters to you, then write it down.
Then after you have done that, spend some time thinking about what progress you have made over the last 5 years. I bet you are very different from how you were 5 years ago. You would have learnt a lot, changed and grown a lot in that time. Write down how you have changed for the better, these can be qualities in character for example, or concrete qualitative things with a numerical value.
In doing this short exercise, you will feel better about yourself, your achievements and you will have made a comparison with the only person whom it is fair to make a comparison with – yourself. You’ll realise that actually, you have achieved a lot and that you should appreciate how far you have come in the past few years. So give yourself more credit!
Transformation in progress, is more important than the end goal, and the person you become is really what matters. There is no need to compare to anyone else because there is only one version of you in the whole world! So be the best version of yourself you can be.