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      Our peers are not only our friends and acquaintances, but also our benchmarks to measure whether or not we are hitting the right societal milestones at a similar pace. Since we were young and began socializing, we have compared ourselves to others. The comparisons started off small, when Becky with the nice hair showed up on the first day of school with a designer book bag. All the other girls who were initially so excited about their bags now looked at them with a sense of deflated pride. As we have gotten older, our comparisons have evolved to a larger scale; from colleges to jobs, finances, significant others, body images, and even the amount of followers on our social media. The inadequacies we create in our mind become so much more damaging to our self-esteem when disparities become more apparent with our peers. If somebody has bigger, if somebody has better, our self-esteem plummets which affects our relationships with ourselves and the daily lens we view our lives through. These comparisons combined with the effects of social media have been detrimental in magnifying those ‘inadequacies’. Researchers in this field show that people who regularly compare themselves to others often experience feelings of deep dissatisfaction, guilt and engage in destructive behaviors. Like when we scroll through Facebook and see the girl from high school, who is now a mother of three, ran her fourth marathon as we try to get the energy to get a single workout in; with the goal of trying to fit into that dress we were planning to wear on our first date. Oh, right, did we neglect to mention that we are single, sans children?

 

We have done this ourselves firsthand. How do you not? It’s all around us. Regardless of whatever success we have in our lives, we tend to concentrate on the void. With every milestone your friends and coworkers hit, you are left with the feeling being inadequate and a failure. Especially as a woman, if  your title doesn’t include wife or mother, you still fall short. Even when we want to hide in the comfort of our home, our shortcomings are center stage on our phone with any social media we open up. What’s almost never shown is what people went through or what they did to get to be where they are. Every single person’s journey is so different. How can we possibly compare ourselves with a stranger who is a completely different human being than us? Although, yes, comparison sometimes is a great source of motivation, but the mindset is very important. Almost crucial. Also, keep in mind that everyone posts their accomplishments, but most people don’t post their failures. We all fail, to move forward. 

 

      Doing the research for this blog post we kept seeing a repetitive theme of a solution to this issue. It is said that if you focus more on yourself and get to know yourself better, that you compare yourself to others less and actually liberate yourself from comparison. They say that it is actually a very powerful feeling and way to gain control, perspective and become appreciative and happy at where you are and where you plan to be.  It’s okay to take inspiration from others, not desolation. We get it, so much easier said than done. If you could figure out a way on achieving this, please share with us! All jokes aside, you are beautiful. You are strong. You are imperfectly perfect. Most importantly, you are enough. You don’t need to compare yourself to anyone else to know that.