How To Stop Comparing Yourself To Others

Are you in the habit of comparing yourself to others, of seeing ways that they're better than you in all kinds of areas of life? More attractive, more successful, more charming, whatever it is, and then feeling less than inferior and just not good about yourself? And then losing a lot of confidence as a result, Losing the drive or inspiration to go after what you want. Because why would someone want me if so, I'm going to teach you one thing in this episode that's really going to help you with that. It's really going to help set you free. So stay tuned. Welcome to another episode of the Art of Extraordinary Confidence. I'm your host, Dr. Aziz, best selling author and the founder of the center for Social Confidence. And today we're going to talk about comparing ourselves to other people. This is something that I know is happening all the time in our heads. And I used to do it a ton and in a way that was really painful for me. And it leaves us feeling less than because what we do is we see the amazing qualities in other people and maybe they are amazing qualities, maybe we're blowing them out of proportion, but maybe we really do see the amazing things in other people and we look at our skill and then we say like, well, I don't have that. And then we just naturally feel inferior. We lose confidence, and at the same time we're not seeing our own strengths, our own value, our own worth. And I used to do this all the time. This used to be like my favorite pastime. It was very uncomfortable and painful, but it was my favorite because I did it all the time. And I remember there was one person that I used to compare myself a lot. But it got real intense when I went to high school and my best friend was Chris. And I used to compare myself to Chris all the time. And I remember I'd be sitting there in the shower before I go to school. This is high school. And I'd be like, just running through all the ways that Chris was awesome and better than me. He was taller, he was really athletic and really muscular and stronger and buffer than I was. He was an incredible artist, like graphite drawing. In fact, I'm actually commissioning him to draw a few pictures for my new book. So that's awesome because he's an amazing artist. But he was an amazing artist back then. Bastard. He had more women that were interested in him. Women would approach him, women never approached me. Those are the big ones. But I'm sure there was more at the time. And so I would just run through this daily or frequently and Just be like. And then I would do this major kicker. I would say, not only is he better at me than all those things, he is better at those things than I am at anything. It's not like I can point to, say, well, I'm better at math, but I was not as good at math as he was at any of those things. So there you go, case closed. I suck. And that's how I felt and that's how I lived and that's my confidence. And those are the results that I got. Those are the attention I got from women because of the level that I could go talk to them too. I mean, everything was just down. So how do we shift this? And the key here is we want to. Well, there's several ways to shift this. One is we gotta love the part that's hurting. Because what we do is we try to get better. We try to be like, well, I'll get better, I'll get better at drawing, or I'll get better at sports. And you know, to desire to get better and to grow is a beautiful thing. But when it's coming from that, like, I suck, so I should get better, so I'm good enough. It's like a never ending battle. We're not really solving the problem, we're just trying to put a band aid over it. We've got to solve the problem at the root, which is we gotta love ourselves. We gotta, you know, find we can find our own strengths. But before we do, we gotta find the wound in there that's like, I'm not enough, I'm not lovable. Because that's what the conclusion is. Because he's better at drawing, he's more lovable, I'm not lovable. Because he's stronger and more muscular, he's more lovable, I'm not lovable. And that's the part that needs healing. So how do we do that? It's a vague eye healing. What do I mean by that? Well, it's a wound. So if you think about like you got a big slice on your arm and you would need to do something to make that slice better. Maybe you'd need stitches, but maybe you would need to put, put something on that each day and you need to cover it and you need to make sure that it's getting healed and you need to take the covering off and you need to put something else on it, some sort of balm or ointment or herbs or something that's going to heal that thing. You don't. What most people do Is they're like, slice. Ow. Cover that shit up. Let's move on. Limp along with my, you know, like Arnold Schwarzenegger in a movie or something. He gets shot and you know, the average person to bleed out and die, but not Arnold. I love that example. He's the first. Isn't that amazing? What an icon he is. He's still like the action star, even though he's like 108 years old. But anyway, we just keep going, try to. But that's not gonna work. And it does not work with emotional wounds and things like that. So what we need to do is we need to slow down. Okay, I'm comparing myself to someone and feeling less than that should be like a signal. It should be like a check engine light on your dashboard, in your car that you need to do something. You need to lift up the hood, you know, roll up the sleeve, find the wound. The best way to do that is to be like, okay, I'm feeling less than right now. I'm not loving myself right now. Where do I feel that? Like self criticism, whenever we're criticizing ourselves, you'll feel it in your body. Oftentimes it's in your heart. It's squeezing, it's burning. Sometimes it's in your stomach. You want to slow down and breathe and just bring your attention to your stomach or to your heart, wherever you feel it and send it love. Like, ouch, okay, you're hurting right now. Okay, I love you. It's okay. And you want to be with it for a few minutes. You don't want to try to solve it. You want to give it some empathy. You want to give yourself some love. You don't want to want to stop the comparing and just really focus. Get out of your head and focus on the sensations as if you're rubbing a balm. And the best way I like to describe this to people is imagine I put an ice cube in your hand and said, hold this as it melts. It might be a little uncomfortable, but you could deal with it, right? And you would just feel it like, okay, pay attention to the water as it trickles out down your hand. Is there burning anything like that? Same thing with that wound. It might feel like it's burning. You're like, oh, I can't handle this. No, just stay with it. Just breathe and feel it good. And just keep doing that. Do that for five minutes straight and you'll start to notice and feel it shift and move and just keep giving it your attention and love not to make it go away. But just like you're, you know, you're not rubbing the salve on and being like, this wound is still here. Shit doesn't work well, you got to put it on and then wait a while and then put it on again, and then put it on again. And the more you do that, the more it's gonna heal, the faster it's gonna heal. So that's what we want to do, is we want to love that part. And then after you've done that, you want to look at, you know what makes me me. You don't need to be the best at anything. You're not going to be the best at anything. I mean, I remember Chris, I think, could have pursued an amazing career in art. And he's incredible. And one of the things that maybe there's many reasons, maybe it's not his passion. That's just my perception. But I remember in college, he was looking at that and he was like, man, other guys are just better at art than I am and they devote more time to it. I saw that and I was like, really? Your shit's really good. Like, your shit looks professional to me. But, you know, and so there's always someone better we can compare ourselves to. So we're not going to be the best, but you don't need to be. You want to just find what makes me me. Maybe I can make people laugh. Maybe I have a really kind heart. Maybe I love animals. Maybe I am decent at the guitar, Maybe I have a decent voice, whatever it is. But you want to just start giving yourself some credit for who you are. And you don't need to be the best. You don't need to be the best in order to get love, be successful, make money, have an awesome life, have friends, find a wife, have a family. You don't need to be the best to do any of that. Just need to be you. And I want to share one little story as we end here about that little wound is I stopped comparing myself to Chris long time ago. I really healed all that stuff up, really like myself a lot more, a lot less comparison. Started to feel a lot more confident in a lot of ways, and I thought it was done. And then not too long ago, I went to a wedding. A high school friend of ours got married and we all gathered together. It was awesome. I got to hang out with all of them. And we all went for a run one day. It was real hot, like 85 degrees and humid. And Chris is an amazing runner. He does like these fucking ultra marathons. You familiar with those. So like 100 mile plus runs. Guy's a beast. Anyway, so we're going for a run. There's like five or six of us. And before the run, we said, hey, let's get a photo. So we all had our shirts off. Cause it was hot. And we all stood there and we took a photo and we were kind of making jokes about this, like a bunch of guys shirtless, taking a photo, you know, And. And then later, someone texted me the photo because they took it on a phone. And my wife saw it and she looked at the photo and she said, wow, Chris has a really nice body. It's true, he does. Real strong, muscular. And guess what happened inside of me? Chris better than I am. And like, poke that little wound from high school, even though she's married to me, right? She loves me. She chose me. But man, that's just still there. So fortunately, I know how to heal that stuff a lot better than I did when I was in high school. And I was just like, ah. So I felt it for a little while. I didn't really fully. I mean, I felt it in the time, but I didn't really go into it. But I think it was like later that night as I was laying in bed, I just really went into it and sent it love and felt it. And then I went one step further, which you can do if you want to create amazing relationships with people, is be vulnerable. So the next morning, I told her, I said, you know, it's really interesting is when you said that, I noticed this, like, kind of deflated feeling, like, I'm not attractive enough, my body's not good enough. And man, took me years to be able to say stuff like that. I used to never say anything like that. But now I learned there's so much power in just owning it. So I said it, and there's so much power. And especially for all relationships, but especially with women, man, women respond really well to that. I mean, you could just see it in her eyes. She's like, oh, you can see the love, like, oozing out of her. She's like, honey, you have a beautiful body. I tell you that a lot. And I love this about it, and I love this. And it was just real. And then the next challenge for me is to let it in. I'll be like, you're just saying that. I'm just like, okay, let me just really receive this love that she's giving me. And I did. And another little piece of that wound is healed now. I don't know if it'll come back. Damn you, Chris, and your perfect body. But maybe not. I don't know. It feels good right now. And so that's what you want to do, is you want to heal that stuff. And if you can be vulnerable to people in your life and if you want to, really, if what I'm saying is like Greek to. You're like, what the hell is this guy talking about? Heal this stuff. Send love. Feel the feeling. Share with people. You got to check out my conf. The. My program called the confidence code. You can get it@yourconfidencecode.com it goes way in depth on how to do all this stuff. And then with these skills that I'm describing, man, you're going to be more powerful in your life. You're going to draw people, too. You're going to have better relationships, better dating, awesome relationship for life with a partner, more networking opportunities, better business, more client relationships and sales. I mean, it all comes down to these skills. So check out that program if you'd like to do that. Yourconfidencecode.com and leave a comment. Share what is your experience about comparing to people? What have you done to heal it? How do you deal with that wound? How do you heal that? Share what's working for you. Share the challenges you have. Let's all help each other and also check out other episodes of the show. If you want to go deeper, then you can click on those and learn more for free. YouTube. Hooray. So until we speak again, may you have the courage to be who you are and to know that you're enough as you are and know that you're awesome as you are. I'll talk to you soon. Sam.